'yarn'--North Americanism?
Disclaimer: These comments are based on my impressions. Comments specifically about English are my own intuitions and thoughts. Other English speakers (even other Americans, Southerners or Augustans) may totally disagree with my assessment. I'd love to hear about it if you do! ^^
As I am living in the Netherlands and Dutch is the language I use most often, I've had to learn the Dutch terminology for various knitting supplies (still working on it...). One day, before meeting colleagues for drinks, I went by a yarn shop (like a one-minute walk from my office. woohoo!) to buy some yarn. Afterwards, I met up with my colleagues and of course informed them that I had bought some garen, the Dutch cognate to English 'yarn'. Well, one of my colleagues was surprised that I knew the word (nevermind that she was the one who taught it to me ^^). When I pulled it out the bag to show her, she, admiring the recent purchase, informed me that garen is more usually used to refer to thread (as in, the stuff you sew with). You do come across breigaren 'knitting thread', but this is something that appears on labels and not really what people say to each other. So, I naturally asked what the normal word for this bag of stuff that I bought was. She said that they just call it (de) wol 'wool'. The stuff I happened to have was pure wool, but I asked, "What if it's not wool?" "Then you just say wol van ___ 'wool of __'." My German colleague confirmed that this was more or less the same in German, where it is (die) Wolle instead of (das) Garn. It took me a while to get a handle on this shocking news....
Having come across knitters of various language backgrounds, I was rather surprised to find out that in a lot of languages, the normal word for what I would call 'yarn' is that language's equivalent to 'wool'. While this makes some sense since 'wool' was the main material in yarn for a loooong time, I still find it a bit odd to say "I bought some bamboo wool yesterday". For me, that would refer to a bamboo-wool blend rather than a pure bamboo yarn. And, before this discovery, "I bought some wool" would have indicated to me that the purchaser was perhaps a spinner, having bought some luscious fiber from which s/he planned to spin fabulous yarn. It seems that in a lot of these languages, there is an equivalent to the 'yarn' word, but it is not the normal way to refer to it... Go figure.
What shocked me even more was to find out that this was also the practice in England (I assume in the rest of the United Kingdom and in Ireland as well, but since I've only spoken with people from England, I'll be safe). When I asked a friend of mine in York where the nearest yarn shop was, she didn't quite know what I was talking about. I had some knitting with me and showed her. Her reply was, "We don't call it that. We call it wool," to which I said, "But it's cotton..." Having met another Brit at a Stitch 'n Bitch in Prague, I was relieved to find out that she did know what 'yarn' referred to but dumbfounded to hear that she considered it a North Americanism. A Canadian member informed us, to my relief, that 'yarn' was the normal word in Canada, but that to say "I bought some wool" was also possible.
For me, it seems important to make a distinction between the product (the yarn) and the material from which it is made (wool, alpaca, bamboo, cotton, silk, acrylic, polyamide, et cetera et cetera). But perhaps that's because I was raised with this distinction. Perhaps it is just a fairly modern innovation. Afterall, how long have alpaca and angora yarns been readily available to the knitting public? And even now, a lot of these types of yarn are still not available to a lot of people. I do agree that even in the US, we can use the name of the material to refer to the yarn itself, but I think that it is limited to specific contexts, for example, "I finally bought that merino I had been eyeing for the past year!" But even then, I don't think 'wool' would cut it...
I would love to hear about the practice in other languages (for example, I found out that Czech, apparently, has a word příze 'yarn' and uses it, too, while the Russian cognate пряжа [pryazha] is considered old-fashioned).
And remember, when you come to the Netherlands, ask for a local wolwinkel 'yarn shop'!
As I am living in the Netherlands and Dutch is the language I use most often, I've had to learn the Dutch terminology for various knitting supplies (still working on it...). One day, before meeting colleagues for drinks, I went by a yarn shop (like a one-minute walk from my office. woohoo!) to buy some yarn. Afterwards, I met up with my colleagues and of course informed them that I had bought some garen, the Dutch cognate to English 'yarn'. Well, one of my colleagues was surprised that I knew the word (nevermind that she was the one who taught it to me ^^). When I pulled it out the bag to show her, she, admiring the recent purchase, informed me that garen is more usually used to refer to thread (as in, the stuff you sew with). You do come across breigaren 'knitting thread', but this is something that appears on labels and not really what people say to each other. So, I naturally asked what the normal word for this bag of stuff that I bought was. She said that they just call it (de) wol 'wool'. The stuff I happened to have was pure wool, but I asked, "What if it's not wool?" "Then you just say wol van ___ 'wool of __'." My German colleague confirmed that this was more or less the same in German, where it is (die) Wolle instead of (das) Garn. It took me a while to get a handle on this shocking news....
Having come across knitters of various language backgrounds, I was rather surprised to find out that in a lot of languages, the normal word for what I would call 'yarn' is that language's equivalent to 'wool'. While this makes some sense since 'wool' was the main material in yarn for a loooong time, I still find it a bit odd to say "I bought some bamboo wool yesterday". For me, that would refer to a bamboo-wool blend rather than a pure bamboo yarn. And, before this discovery, "I bought some wool" would have indicated to me that the purchaser was perhaps a spinner, having bought some luscious fiber from which s/he planned to spin fabulous yarn. It seems that in a lot of these languages, there is an equivalent to the 'yarn' word, but it is not the normal way to refer to it... Go figure.
What shocked me even more was to find out that this was also the practice in England (I assume in the rest of the United Kingdom and in Ireland as well, but since I've only spoken with people from England, I'll be safe). When I asked a friend of mine in York where the nearest yarn shop was, she didn't quite know what I was talking about. I had some knitting with me and showed her. Her reply was, "We don't call it that. We call it wool," to which I said, "But it's cotton..." Having met another Brit at a Stitch 'n Bitch in Prague, I was relieved to find out that she did know what 'yarn' referred to but dumbfounded to hear that she considered it a North Americanism. A Canadian member informed us, to my relief, that 'yarn' was the normal word in Canada, but that to say "I bought some wool" was also possible.
For me, it seems important to make a distinction between the product (the yarn) and the material from which it is made (wool, alpaca, bamboo, cotton, silk, acrylic, polyamide, et cetera et cetera). But perhaps that's because I was raised with this distinction. Perhaps it is just a fairly modern innovation. Afterall, how long have alpaca and angora yarns been readily available to the knitting public? And even now, a lot of these types of yarn are still not available to a lot of people. I do agree that even in the US, we can use the name of the material to refer to the yarn itself, but I think that it is limited to specific contexts, for example, "I finally bought that merino I had been eyeing for the past year!" But even then, I don't think 'wool' would cut it...
I would love to hear about the practice in other languages (for example, I found out that Czech, apparently, has a word příze 'yarn' and uses it, too, while the Russian cognate пряжа [pryazha] is considered old-fashioned).
And remember, when you come to the Netherlands, ask for a local wolwinkel 'yarn shop'!
posted by gearncniht at 8:41 AM
1 Comments:
Yarn is certainly an Americanism. But if you were raised with the distinction of yarn vs wool, it can be hard to understand how people manage with just one word for both.
Consider this: English has only the word "snow". Even German knows several words describing different kinds of snow (not to mention eskimos!). You would happily go to the Alps and say Schnee to all snow you see, whether it is new or old, hard or soft, or melting.
What I am trying to say: Different languages experience the world in different ways, and there is no right, or wrong way to say things. There are different ways, and knowing a lot of languages lets you have a broader understanding of the world than just knowing one.
Post a Comment
<< Home