In German it’s Mäusespeck = Mouse Bacon

      • burningmatches@feddit.ukEnglish
        17·
        1 year ago

        I mean, “marshmallow” has a more interesting derivation than most of the other words I’ve seen so far.

        Althaea officinalis, the marsh mallow or marshmallow, is a species of flowering plant indigenous to Europe, Western Asia and North Africa, which is used in herbalism and as an ornamental plant. A confection made from the root since ancient Egyptian times evolved into today’s marshmallow treat.

        • CmdrShepard@lemmy.oneEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          I find this really interesting especially considered I never gave much thought to how they were produced. I guess I assumed they were just sugar and some other common ingredients.

          • EmoDuck@sh.itjust.works
            7·
            1 year ago

            I don’t think modern marshmellows contain any marsh mellow. They are usually just water, sugar and gelatine. They are easy to make at home, fun project if you have kids

            • roguetrick@kbin.social
              3·
              1 year ago

              I dunno man, that word has some fun archaic meanings based on something being “tatters” or “clouds”. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hattara I particularly like “A female forest troll or race of trolls associated with screaming.” I think it’s called that for the “cloud” meaning.

              • brewbellyblueberry@sopuli.xyz
                4·
                1 year ago

                You’re more right than you realize, and not so archaic really. The texture of clouds, or even clouds themselves, mostly smaller, frizzy kind of clouds are called “pilvenhattara” where pilven is a possesive form of ‘pilvi’ - ‘cloud’ and hattara is kind of an abstract descriptive word, at least today. The translation of ‘rag, tatter’ is a bit more complex and at least a little unrelated. There might be some historic connection, since ‘hattara’ is kind of a descriptive word that describes (at least for quite a long time) a kind of specific type of clouds appearance, more so a small cloud that kind of just falls apart. It’s more like a frayed rag and the ‘hattara’ specifically pertains to the raggedness/frayed part - like the actual physical/visual quality of it being kind of frailed or jagged, like a cloud and so it does relate to clouds.

                Hattara as a mythological thing is a different thing itself and again, might have some historic connection - my best guess would be that the kind of creature it means is something that is kind of ‘frayed’ like a vision or a fog ora cloud or something and is only seen for a moment. I’m unfamiliar with that one, though I’ve read a ton about folk beliefs and mythlogy here.

        • Dandroid@dandroid.app
          2·
          1 year ago

          I watch a lot of hockey, so I hear a lot of Finnish names. I find it fun that you can so easily guess that a name or word is Finnish, and hattara is no exception.

          It actually sounds similar to “Hatakka”, the last name of a Finnish player.

  • berkeleyblue@lemmy.world
    23·
    1 year ago

    I’m pretty sure alot of languages just imported marshmallow.

    I come from the german speaking part of Switzerland and I don’t think I ever heard someone actually use the word “Mäusespeck” although it certainly would he understood I think. Everybody around me calls them marshmallows.

      • Kaktus@lemmy.loomy.li
        8·
        1 year ago

        I guess you are born in this century. In the 80 it was what was written on the products in the supermarket.

        • qtj@feddit.de
          13·
          1 year ago

          For me “Mäusespeck” are smaller marshmallows that usually come in white and pink and in different shapes. Sometimes the shape of a mouse. Marshmallows are the larger white and cylindrical or cube ones that you put on a stick to roast on a campfire before eating.

  • RandomStickman@kbin.social
    21·
    1 year ago

    We call it 棉花糖 in Chinese, which translates to cotton candy… Which gets confusing if we’re also talking about cotton candy (the fluffy kind).

  • SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
    2813·
    1 year ago

    I’m German and that is bullshit. Never heard of mäusespeck, everyone just calls them marshmallows and they are labeled as marshmallows in the store

    EDIT: I was made aware that the Problem seems be that im not a boomer. 30 years ago, when i wasnt alive, they seemed to be called this. In my WG there are people over 30 though and they also never heard of this (hessen)

  • Nioxic@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    15·
    1 year ago

    Skumfidus 🇩🇰

    “Foam trick” i guess, is the literal translation.

    Fidus is a weird word.

    • VonReposti@feddit.dk
      3·
      1 year ago

      Fidus also means dims/dingenot which seems like the more correct use of the word in this context. The translation for that would be thingamajig.

  • ZeekMacard@feddit.cl
    13·
    1 year ago

    Here in Mexico (Spanish) is known as Bombón. A quick Google search says that apparently comes from the repetition of the french word ‘bon’

    It is worth to mention that, despite most of the countries in Latin America speak Spanish, things have different names in different countries, even if it’s the same language.

    According to Wikipedia, marshmallows are also known as

    nube,​ esponjita, malvavisco, fringuel, jamón o suncho

  • Lewistrick@feddit.nl
    13·
    1 year ago

    In Dutch it’s also marshmallows, but also commonly spek (bacon), spekjes (bacon pieces) or spekkies (in this case it’s clear you’re not talking about bacon).

  • Squids@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    12·
    1 year ago

    In Norwegian marshmallow is just marshmallow, but if something has marshmallow bits or marshmallow like properties (like say the white stuff in a bag of Haribos) it’s called “skum”, which means foam

    • looeee@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      Mrshmlo for those wondering. Hebrew is a “work out the remaining vowels yourself” language

  • slabber@lemmy.ml
    10·
    1 year ago

    My native language is German but I lived in Spain for a long time and there they call them “nubes”, clouds.