Please vote on respective comments for results so we can see the results

  • Sean
    shield
    OP
    link
    1169 months ago

    “Tuna”

  • Sean
    shield
    OP
    link
    39 months ago

    “Tuna Fish”

  • Pons_Aelius
    link
    fedilink
    75
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    As far as I know Tuna-fish is only a nth American thing and sounds very weird to my ears.

    So this vote will likely be Nth America vs the rest.

    Honestly, why only tuna fish?

    Salmon-fish?

    Chicken-bird?

    • @spongebue
      link
      209 months ago

      Is it really that hard to write the word “north”? Is that even what nth is supposed to mean? I keep reading it as the mathematical “1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th…, nth” and it makes my head hurt

      • @NPC
        link
        4
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        deleted by creator

    • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠
      link
      fedilink
      169 months ago

      “tunafish” sounds weird but “nth American” (not first or second or thirteenth but nth) sounds fine?

      • Pons_Aelius
        link
        fedilink
        79 months ago

        ‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language’ - Oscar Wilde

      • GrimSheeper
        link
        59 months ago

        We don’t talk about 1st America and 2nd America

      • @elephantium
        link
        English
        89 months ago

        Served with pig-mammal bacon?

    • @allan
      link
      79 months ago

      Swordfish? Plenty other languages keep the fish-part in the Tuna name, also

      • Pons_Aelius
        link
        fedilink
        99 months ago

        Not the same as there is no one calling a swordfish just sword.

        Plenty other languages keep the fish-part in the Tuna name

        Do they? Which ones?

        • @Dicska
          link
          7
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          Hungarian here. Probably it would sound weird without the ‘fish’ bit, since we call it ‘tonhal’ (‘hal’ meaning fish). I just can’t imagine someone offering some tuna to me, asking ‘Ton?’.

          EDIT: However, in English, I call it tuna, not tuna fish.

    • @RBWells
      link
      4
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      We do have a tuna cactus here that people eat. Nopales are from the Tuna. Prickly pear fruit also. That cactus is called Tuna here.

      I mean the fish when I say Tuna though, and would say Prickly Pear cactus.

      But do hear Tuna often used to mean the plant.

    • @SpaceNoodle
      link
      29 months ago

      And what about the tuna-cat and tuna-bird?

    • Deebster
      link
      fedilink
      English
      14 months ago

      There’s a few other redundant versions, like how they say “horse-back riding”. Why not bikeseat riding or plane cockpit flying?

  • Nix
    link
    fedilink
    309 months ago

    Why is this a pinned post 😅

    • Sean
      link
      fedilink
      29 months ago

      I was kinda drunk when I saw a comment chain in another thread and decided to have a bit of fun ;)

      :P

    • SeanOP
      link
      19 months ago

      I was drunk and saw a comment chain in another thread so I decided to have a bit of fun ;)

      :P

  • @j4k3
    link
    English
    179 months ago

    All you crazy foreigners just don’t realize. 'Merica has no regulations, sense, or laws. We call it “Tuna Fish” because just “Tuna” is sawdust and cat liter.

  • @zeppo
    link
    English
    139 months ago

    I consider “tuna fish” to be outdated and regional to the South and maybe Midwest US. I grew up hearing it but at some point started wondering why tf we would say that rather than just tuna, so I’ve made a point to just say tuna since then.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      59 months ago

      Huh, I grew up in the South and never realized it wasn’t normal to say tuna fish sandwich. I guess it doesn’t really make sense, but I still kinda like the ring of it

      • @zeppo
        link
        English
        19 months ago

        It is normal, I guess. I grew up with my mother and grandmother saying that. I decided it was silly and I should stop, though.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    129 months ago

    For some reason if I think of a tuna fish sandwich I imagine canned tuna, but if I think tuna sandwich I imagine whole seared tuna.

  • @kemsat
    link
    119 months ago

    Is there a tuna that is not fish?

    • @Badass_panda
      link
      69 months ago

      There is, yes … that’s the main Spanish name for prickly pear.

      Up until around 1907, your odds of encountering the fruit by the name “tuna” were about the same as the fish, when the first commercial canneries started to pop up in California… hence, a habit of clarifying between the two that stuck, even though most folks outside of the southwest had never heard of a tuna cactus.

      • @theragu40
        link
        49 months ago

        Fascinating. I’ll add a slight addition of info that prickly pears are actually present in the Midwestern and eastern parts of the US. Saw them growing in the wild at the Indiana Dunes national park last year. Very weird to see cacti that far north, but there they were.

        Never knew the Spanish name for them!

      • @kemsat
        link
        39 months ago

        Thanks for the info :)

  • Arin
    link
    fedilink
    109 months ago

    Are there Tunas that aren’t fish? We just say Tuna here in California unless we ask for yellow fin tuna or blue fin tuna

  • @elephantium
    link
    English
    99 months ago

    Neither. I never order a tuna sandwich. I sometimes make myself a tuna sandwich. 😂

  • @Badass_panda
    link
    79 months ago

    I order a tuna salad sandwich or a tuna sandwich, but I grew up hearing tuna fish… specifically in reference to the stuff that came in a can.

    Both were equally common years ago but over time, “tuna” sans fish has won out… likely because fresh, non canned tuna is very common.

    I read an article a while ago that theorized the reason for Americans calling it “tuna fish” was that it rose to prominence as a canned staple good in the 1940s, and many Americans who didn’t live on the coasts had never heard of tuna before. Its light meat, when canned and cooked, was very mild and chicken-y compared with the heavily salted, oily canned fish folks were familiar with, hence both “chicken of the sea” and the precaution of labeling the can with not only tuna, but “fish”.

    I think an alternate explanation is probably more likely… the 1919 Oxford English Dictionary describes “Tuna” as an alternative spelling of “tunny”, the old name for the fish (still used in a culinary sense in Britain) … not coincidentally:

    • Californians would also have been familiar with the other tuna… tuna fruit, the prickly pear.

    • Possessed of both a fruit and a fish of the same name, distinguishing one from the other when canning fish seems reasonable

    • The largest canneries of tuna (e.g., the one that ultimately became Chicken of the Sea) were all based in California.

  • @Coricus
    link
    English
    6
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    I’m in camp “Midwestern American who says tuna fish”. . .but I’m also right there with the person that said they don’t order them and tuna fish sandwiches are something made at home.

    For the record, I don’t know why the fish part is specified. It just always was. It’s not like my family called it a “can of tuna fish” growing up or anything. It’s just the sandwiches. Put that tuna between two slices of bread and suddenly the word “fish” gets thrown in there. Maybe it just sounds more fun if you add more syllables? Either that or somebody in the region had to explain that tuna was a kind of fish years and years ago and it just stuck.