ROLLING “R”s

by Steven Steinbock

Your Jabberwalking journalist and his beamish boy (Nate, the 17 year-old, not Sam the 13 year-old Travis McGee fan) are on the road visiting colleges. In that academic spirit I’m going to wax linguistical. There are funny things going on with that eighteenth letter of ours.

I was cooking the other day, and I finished the last of our turmeric. An interesting spice, that turmeric. It turns out that turmeric is a cousin to ginger, and like ginger, it is the root that is used as a spice. Once harvested, the rhizomes (roots) of the curcuma longa are boiled, then baked dry and ground into a deep orange colored powder. In the Middle Ages this powder was known as “Indian Saffron.” It gets its name from the Medieval Latin terra merita (meritorious earth). Go figure.

Anything you cook with turmeric takes on that rich color. In fact, I got some on my fingers, and they kept that rusty look for a whole day. (And yes, I washed my hands numerous times). Imagine what it does to the tongue.

Which brings up the topic at hand: why is it so often pronounced without the initial “R”? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it pronounced TUR-meric, but instead it’s usually said TOO-meric. Some dictionaries (Merriam Webster Medical Dictionary, for one) even include turmeric as an alternate spelling. What happened to the “R”?

(Granted, I live in New England. Talk about a strange dialect! The natives here have a habit of dropping the Rs off of the end of words, and then adding an “er” to any word ending in an “a” sound. I’m not making this up. Out here a Jewish boy is likely to get a ski parker for his Bah Mitzver.)

When I opened the freezer, I saw the solution to the missing letter mystery. The “R” deserted the spice rack and ran off with the dessert where it resides with another orange-colored food: sherbet.

You ever notice how many people pronounce “sherbet” so that it rhymes with “Herbert”? Maybe it’s just another Americanism. Or maybe it’s just the people I eat dessert with. How do you say it? When someone in my family asks for “sherbert” I tell them “There’s only one ‘R’ in the stuff.” But nobody listens to me.

Speaking of sherbet, I wonder how they make it in Johannesburg. Whenever I’m in the company of a South African who is too polite to say “shit” – even when the situation calls for it – they use the word “sherbet” as a euphemism. It took me by surprise the first time I heard it. I had a secretary once who, every time she mistyped something, said “Oh, Sherbet.” Then again, I used to hear Americans use the word “Fudge” in the same way. Is it an attempt to sweeten our profanity?

I could go on about the letter “R” and perhaps in the future I will. But, oh fudge, I’m out of time.