Do YOU know how to distinguish the following: cookie, biscuit, cake (variant a), cake (b), pie, scone, muffin, roll, bun, pastry, strudel, croissant, bread, doughnut, sweet roll, pudding, tart, wafer, cracker, tiffin, brownie, florentine, shortbread, nougat, quiche, macaroon, meringue, custard, mousse, sponge cake, curd, cupcake..
What are chips? How about crisps? Fries or wedges? Pretzels, saltines? Not even going into hardtacks.
Point being, I've come to realise that there is a ridiculous amount of terms for very similar 'food objects' in English, that are close to impossible to use properly for a non-native speaker. I mean, everyone knows chocolate-chip-cookies, of course, but why the heck can't I call them biscuits? Jaffa cakes (as opposed to birthday cakes) are an absolute blasphemy (the vocabulary, not the actual edibles, I mean, those things are addictive). Not to mention that when talking about fried potatoes, I now have to figure out where the person is from, before choosing whether to use the word chips or crisps or wedges or fries to get the (junk)food I want.
Oh and while I'm ranting about expressions already, the term "Half ten" (or whatever other time.. no, I haven't drunk anything yet, it's Sunday morning and a full lab day, so no push-ups right now, thank you very much) should be banned!
Küpsis, kreeker, kook, tort, pirukas, pontšik, rullbiskviit, muffin, struudel, leib, sai, vahvel.. umm...
Cheers,
Hedi
