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kakeToday's character is a good example of how it can be helpful to look at the Chinese names of dishes alongside the English ones! 芋 (yù) is the Chinese character for taro; strictly speaking, I believe the full word is 芋頭 (yù tóu; or, as pne points out in a comment, possibly yù tou), but it's often abbreviated on menus to simply 芋.
Taro, as a vegetable, confused me for ages. It's often referred to as "yam"; however, yam and taro are not the same thing. Taro is also not the same thing as sweet potato, even though the latter is also sometimes referred to as "yam". According to Wikipedia, taro is in the Araceae family, yam is in the Dioscoreaceae family, and sweet potato is in the Convolvulaceae family.
This naming confusion extends to menus, too, with dishes that are actually made out of taro referred to as, for example, "yam croquettes" or "stewed yam with chicken". So if you want to be sure, look for 芋 in the Chinese name — this pretty much always indicates taro. One possible exception is when the name includes 香芋 (xiāng yù), which usually means taro but seems to sometimes mean purple yam (which is in fact a type of yam). I don't know the general Chinese word for yam, but sweet potatoes are 番薯 or 蕃薯, both of which pinyinise as fān shǔ.
Here are some dishes with 芋 in the name:
| 蜂巢炸芋角 | fēng cháo zhà yù jiǎo | deep-fried taro croquettes (more on these later this week) |
| 芋頭糕 | yù tóu gāo | pan-fried taro cake (similar to pan-fried turnip cake/蘿蔔糕/luó bo gāo) |
| 芋香排骨煲 | xiāng yù pái gǔ bāo | taro [香芋] and spare rib [排骨] claypot [煲] |
| 剁椒蒸芋頭 | duò jiāo zhēng yù tóu | steamed [蒸] taro [芋頭] with Hunanese chopped salted chillies [剁椒] |
| 香芋西米露 | xiāng yù xī mǐ lù | sago dew [西米露] with taro [香芋] (a sweet pudding made from sago, served hot or cold) |
| 芋: | yù | radical 140 (艸/艹) | Cantodict | MandarinTools | YellowBridge | Zhongwen |
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-09 07:33 am (UTC)I wonder whether it's actually "yùtou" with a neutral tone on the second syllable - whether the 頭 doesn't mean "head" but is merely a noun marker as in 石頭 shítou "stone", or like 子 which is often neutral-tone as the second character of a two-character word such as 鼻子 bízi "nose".
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Date: 2011-08-16 09:31 am (UTC)Thanks — I've added a note to the post about this.
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Date: 2011-08-10 11:00 am (UTC)Your last example is translated as Taro with Tapioca here.
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Date: 2011-08-16 09:34 am (UTC)I thought 荔 meant lychee — where did you find the "small onion" translation?
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Date: 2011-08-16 10:02 am (UTC)http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=chardict&cdcanoce=0&cdqchi=%E8%8C%98%E8%8D%94
茘 is the onion, 荔 lychee. Both are lì in pinyin.
The first uses the 刀 character and the second 力.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-22 05:26 pm (UTC)I went back to check the original photos of the menus in my collection, and they seem to use 荔/lychee: Dragon Castle, Golden Dragon, Lido, Top of the Town. Also, Google suggests that 茘/onion is mainly used in Japanese. Now where's