When you order a tuna fish sandwich, do you say "tuna" or "tuna fish"?
Please vote on respective comments for results so we can see the results
Please vote on respective comments for results so we can see the results
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?
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
"tunafish" sounds weird but "nth American" (not first or second or thirteenth but nth) sounds fine?
‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language’ - Oscar Wilde
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?
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.
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.
There's a few other redundant versions, like how they say "horse-back riding". Why not bikeseat riding or plane cockpit flying?
I was kinda drunk when I saw a comment chain in another thread and decided to have a bit of fun ;)
:P
I was drunk and saw a comment chain in another thread so I decided to have a bit of fun ;)
:P
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.
I consider “tuna fish” to be outdated and regional to the South and maybe Midwest US.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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
From some reason I feel like I'm playing The Outer Worlds while reading this discussion.
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.
Nah. cow and beef came about due to the Norman conquest of England.
The lords spoke French and so were served bœuf (which became beef overtime), while the peasants spoke English and tended cows in the field.
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.
No, I say "tuna salad" and then get disappointed when it's just chunked tuna with no vegetables or dressing.
I ask for Tuna and am disappointed when I get Tuna Salad, which is tuna, mayo (I assume) and onion. Like... did I ask for that extra shit? No!
I hate celery, but don't add onion either.
Mayo, mustard, & relish (preferably sweet, but dill works if that's what's on hand). Then boiled egg or tuna, depending on which kind of salad you want.
Tuna salad is objectively better though. Tuna (the fish) tastes good. It has lots of flavour but it is inherently dry, 100% solved by tuna salad.
Today I learned that there are people out that who do not share that position. Never met one before. Hello, dryfish eater.
Tuna. I'm in the midwest. I've lived on the west coast. I just assumed "tuna fish" was an east coast thing.
Id never order a tuna fish sandwich but I'd make them. I'm from pnw USA. When I say tuna sandwich I feel like it would be different than something out of a can. Tuna salad probably makes more sense but ive never had any confusion when saying tuna fish. Doing some googling, "tuna" is also Spanish for "prickly pear". So tuna could be used to describe a cactus fruit. In Cali there is a restaurant called "La tuna canyon". Not cause of the fish.
Yeah, I did a bit of poking around, check this out. Till the tuna canneries started showing up in the early 1900s in California, "tuna" was just as likely to prefix "cactus" as "fish".
Mystery solved I think