Talk:Curry

This felt like appropriation

As a Malayalam speaker, "curry" is a normal daily word we use for a category of food, and yet the article contains claims that no Indian would refer to their food as "curry", which is simply false. "Rice and curry" (chorum kariyum) is how we describe our traditional meals. It seems the quoted scholar at best talked to north Indians (Indo-Aryan speakers) who may find the word alien except for narrowly defined borrowings from southern languages.

I have made some edits such as removing the claim that no Indian language contains the word, but I don't have a lot of academic references to go on. Matthayichen (talk) 16:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap I see you have reverted my edit. Can you reply, please. Matthayichen (talk) 16:31, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I was replying as you wrote, there is no need to be rudely hasty. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:34, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Is there a way to identify if someone is replying to me? The purpose of the second comment was simply to tag you in a comment. No rudeness was intended. Matthayichen (talk) 17:42, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks for discussing, and you are right to be concerned if you are making claims that are not supported by suitable sources. The etymology section is fully cited, and it mentions different South Indian languages as indirect sources of the English word. The statement about Indians is reliably cited and attributed, so readers can take it as it stands in the context; situations change, not least because English is a global language. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:33, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

How does it make sense to say that "the word 'curry' does not occur in any Indian language", when two paragraphs later the same word is identified as occurring in Tamil?

It is not as if the meaning or structure of the word has changed too much to consider them the same word. Tamils and Malayalis have no problem identifying the English word "curry" as being highly similar in pronunciation and meaning to the Dravidian word. The Tamil wiki on "curry" talks about the international usage.

I consider this appropriation and denying agency to Indians, for Westerners to claim the word as essentially their creation when it is an ancient Dravidian word that is almost unchanged in international usage. Matthayichen (talk) 16:45, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

No, the word "curry" (c-u-r-r-y) does not occur in Tamil. Etymology dictionaries agree that there is a connection, but (the Etymological fallacy) it is not true to say that the existence of a connection means identity of meaning: it doesn't. Jodhpur is the name of a city in India, but jodhpurs are riding trousers in English, for instance, so your argument is incorrect. As for emotional talk about "appropriation and denying agency", that is I'm afraid nonsense. The article traces the cultural origins of curry, quite a lot of which was in India, but certainly mediated by the British, who encountered highly diverse and sophisticated Indian food in different parts of the subcontinent, and devised a far more limited and frankly unsophisticated "curry" (and curry powder) which suited Anglo-Indian (British Raj) tastes. Since then, of course, the word has become global: all this is reliably cited in the article. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

No etymological fallacy is intended seeing as we are literally discussing the etymology section.

However, near-identity of meaning exists between usage in Malayalam/Tamil and English. "Indians referred to their different dishes by specific names... The British lumped all these together under the heading of curry" -- but that's exactly the usage in south India. The word "curry" is a broad heading under which the various accompaniments to rice are lumped, which also have specific names such as avial or chili chicken.

The only difference in usage is that Dravidians see the rice as the chief component of the meal rather than the curries, so no one says "I'm eating curry", but rather "I'm eating rice" when they are eating a traditional meal ("oonu" ഊണ്) composed of rice and curry. Matthayichen (talk) 18:26, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

The English spelling (c-u-r-r-y) is not found in Indian languages for the trivial reason that Indian languages do not use the Latin script. How is that an argument?

The English word "computer" (c-o-m-p-u-t-e-r) does not exist in Malayalam then, but the word "കമ്പ്യൂട്ടർ" (pronounced "computer", of course). If retaining the script is required, there can be no borrowed English words in Malayalam or vice versa. Which is not how identification of borrowing works.

We use manufactured curry powder ("karippodi" or "curry-podi" -- "കറിപ്പൊടി") daily in cooking. Either we borrowed the word right back from English, or it was here all along. In either case, it is a strange and false claim that 'curry' does not occur in Malayalam or Tamil usage at all. Matthayichen (talk) 17:16, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

"The word 'curry' does not occur in any Indian language."

"The idea of a curry is, in fact, a concept that the Europeans imposed on India's food culture. Indians referred to their different dishes by specific names... But the British lumped all these together under the heading of curry."

These two claims in the article are actually contradictory given the context I have provided. If the second is true, then my language has fully accepted the concept invented by the British -- we do lump our dishes together under the heading of curries, since to us a curry is any spicy accompaniment to rice regardless of their specific names. Rice and curry (ചോറും കറിയും, chorum kariyum) is how we describe a traditional meal.

That then contradicts the first statement that the word does not occur in Malayalam. Surely it must if we just imported the concept wholesale from the Brits including the term for it. Matthayichen (talk) 17:34, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm afraid your arguments are getting tendentious and repetitive; I'll just say they're not correct, as you can readily verify by studying the sources rather than trying to make things up from first principles. Discussions should be policy-based; this is not a forum. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:49, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

The article is as silly as a putative Malayalam article claiming that the word kāṟŭ ("കാറ്"), referring to a four-wheel passenger vehicle, does not occur in any European language, only to admit later that it is "ultimately derived" from the English word "car".

I took a gander at Lizzie Collingham's book, and even if we suppose that every detail of her argument is correct, then Dravidian usage has somehow changed significantly since the Portuguese because today the usage of the word "curry"/"kaṟi" exactly mirrors English usage. All sorts of curries invented by the British are real curries to us, because curry is indeed a heading under with all curries are lumped rather than a specific recipe to us.

However, the even more superficial article in the Atlantic goes one step further and makes the claim that the word is found in no modern Indian language, which is patently wrong. Matthayichen (talk) 19:59, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

You're entitled to your opinion, but you're going way off-beam here. Once again, this is not a forum; there are plenty of websites where you can share your views as much as you like, but Wikipedia is not the place for it. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Are you still sticking to your view/opinion that as long as the Latin script spelling (c-u-r-r-y) does not occur in a language which does not use the Latin script, the word "curry" cannot exist in said language?

Given this position, why keep the sentence in there at all, since it is then trivially true that no English word is used in any Indian language usage at all, since they are also immediately transliterated into local scripts? No word that occurs in English can occur in any Indian language. Matthayichen (talk) 03:05, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

The article says correctly that there is no Indian word "curry" with the modern meaning, leaving aside the obvious point that borrowing back from English is now international. The South Indian words that sound roughly like "curry" are correctly stated to have had more specific meanings, which is the point that you are continually missing, once again the etymological fallacy (please read that article). This is not a mere matter of difficulties in transliteration; it is a change of meaning from a specific sauce in one regional culture or another, to a style of dish in a different culture, as I already explained above. If you can't follow that, then it'd be best if you just dropped the stick really. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:36, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

I see that you have edited the sentence, adding "with its modern meaning" during this discussion and chose not to mention the edit here, to the point of pretending that the article has always been thus, which tells me even more about who I'm dealing with here.

You keep saying the Brits generalized the name of a specific sauce, but that is just a misunderstanding of a Western scholar who chiefly dealt with non-Dravidians for whom the word is almost as alien as it is to Englishmen.

I shall deal with the modern meaning in a separate topic. There will be no dropping of sticks. Matthayichen (talk) 06:36, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

"with its modern meaning"

@Chiswick Chap

This article previously had the claim that the word "curry" is not found in any Indian language, but it has since been qualified with "with its modern meaning". Let's ignore the colonial logic of 21st century Dravidian words/meanings not being as modern as their English contemporaries, and focus on how Dravidian usage, or specifically Malayalam usage, differs or doesn't differ from the English language usage. Especially whether it refers to a specific sauce in Malayalam, or the general category of dishes that accompany rice or other carbs as it means internationally, ie, "Rice and Curry".

I shall refer to the multi-volume "Malayalam Lexicon" published by The University of Kerala in 1976. Subtitled as "A Comprehensive Malayalam-Malayalam-English Dictionary on Historical and Philological Principles".

Volume III of said work contains the definition of curry (കറി, /kɐri/):

"പ്രധാന ഭക്ഷ്യപദാർത്ഥത്തോടൊപ്പം കഴിക്കാൻ പാകപ്പെടുത്തിയ മലക്കറി, മത്സ്യമാംസാദികൾ തുടങ്ങിയവ, കൂട്ടാൻ, ഉപദംശം. curry, side-dish, hot condiments."

I.e., it is directly translated to the English word "curry", not to "a specific sauce". The non-English part means (translation mine):

"Vegetables, fish, meat, etc. prepared to eat alongside the main food material"

No mention of a specific dish or sauce here either. The "main food material" of Kerala traditionally would be rice, boiled plain.

There are multiple pages of historical literary references to curry given, and also words with curry (കറി) as a prefix, such as (I'll copy the English definitions given):

• കറിച്ചട്ടി ("an earthen pot to cook the curry in")
• കറിക്കത്തി ("a kitchen knife")
• കറിയുപ്പ് ("common salt, sodium chloride")
• കറിശ്ലോകം ("a verse describing a feast")
• കറിമസാല ("spices used for flavouring curries")
• കറിക്കായം ("asafoetida specially prepared for use in curries")
• കറിക്കായ ("green plantain used for curries")
• ...etc.

It is clear that this major academic work treats the modern English word "curry" (as it refers to food) as being rather identical in meaning to the modern Malayalam word. It is also clear that the definitions given are not of a specific sauce, but of the entire category of fish/meat/vegetable accompaniments to rice or other carbohydrates.

For a more historical perspective, I shall next consider a colonial-era dictionary. Matthayichen (talk) 06:05, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Could you get to the point and make an actionable recommendation of change to the article and not waste everyone's time and bandwidth lecturing us? I mean, it's quite obvious you want a change made to the article, but it's not clear what you want with your long lectures. Mr Fink (talk) 06:22, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Let me bring you up to speed. I made some edits, Chiswick Chap reverted them, and then we engaged in some rather hostile "talk" since Chiswick considers this article of his to be already perfect enough to nominate for 'good article'. The "talk" already has forced some discreet edits on his part although he chose not to mention that here, meaning the discussion was actionable after all. However, the problems are much more extensive, hence the academic references and explanations.

I could of course just make the changes myself again, but I think it has been made abundantly clear that I need to convince the Westerners/non-Dravidians who maintain the article, hence the above explanation. You don't have to read if you don't want to. Just don't revert my edits.

But since you want actionable recommendations, here you go, at the cost of repeating myself:

• Remove the claim that the word curry is not found in any Indian language (in its modern meaning or otherwise). Ref: the 1976 dictionary.
• Remove the sensational and highly inaccurate quote from Lizzie Collingham that no Indian in the colonial era would refer to their food as curries. I shall provide a colonial-era (1872) dictionary as reference.
• Mention that the people of Goa with whom the Portuguese interacted spoke Konkani, an Indo-Aryan language, while the origin of the word "curry" (and the meaning as later adopted by the British) belongs to Dravidian languages further south.
• Rewrite the intro and etymology sections at least, in the style of an article like the one on "sushi", that properly recognizes the Dravidian usage and tradition of the word "curry".

Matthayichen (talk) 01:24, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Here's the landmark "Malayalam and English Dictionary" by Hermann Gundert, published in 1872.

കറി/curry is defined (page 216) as:

"Hot condiments; meats, vegetables."

It is again not defined as any specific sauce or dish. Specific curries such as "pulse-curry" are mentioned, making it clear that curry is a general category of foods just like it is in English. A categorization of four "kinds" of curries based on the dominant flavor is also given, namely sour, hot, sweet, and salty curries.

• Page 216, "Malayalam and English Dictionary"

Matthayichen (talk) 01:47, 26 December 2024 (UTC)