Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

What do you call Marshmallow in your native language?

In German it's Mäusespeck = Mouse Bacon

175 comments

In English we call it "Marshmallow".
- We call it the same in Canada! That's crazy!
  
  Same in American!
  
  Get oot. That can't be right.
- What a mysterious and beautiful language.
  
  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.
- TIL.

In Icelandic it’s sykurpúði = sugar cushion 😄
- This one I can really get behind
- I love this so much!

In Danish it's skumfidus which means foam thingie.
- Literally “foam thingie”? I love that!
  
  Am danish can confirm, it translates to "foam thingy". Never actually thought about it before lol, though a fun name indeed
  
  Danes love these explicit names. Poultry is “fjerkræ”. Literally beaked beasts.

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)
- It was absolutely called Mäusespeck when I was a kid, but that's 35+ years ago.
  
  OK that's the point maybe. I wasn't alive back then.
- Where do you live? Mäusespeck is even in the Wikipedia article:
  Im deutschsprachigen Raum ist die Süßware häufig unter der Produktbezeichnung Mausespeck oder Mäusespeck erhältlich.
  
  I lived in BaWü and Hessen for over 30 years. Never heard of it.
  
  Hessen, but people made me aware, that it was called this when I wasn't born and people where bad at English.
- I'm German too and we totally used Mäusespeck in the 80s/90s. I guess you're just younger, today people know what marshmallows are (and speak better English in general).
  
  Ghostbusters killed it with the Marshmallow Man.
  
  Not too unexpected for a pre 1990s thing IMO.
- Classic Germans discussing about their own language
- Mäusespeck exists, but it's something slightly different. It's the sugared rhombus of the fluffy stuff, and packed in those triangle clear bags.
  
  Reading about it, it seems they are in fact all the same. Even the white haribo mice. TIL.
- I google "mäusespeck" and I get a picture of marshmallows, and a wikipedia article talking about marshmallows https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/M%C3%A4usespeck

In Finnish it's 'vaahtokarkki' which translates to foamcandy.
- "Vahukomm" in Estonian with the same literal translation.
- What do you call cotton candy?
  
  Hattara. Just a made-up word.

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).
- Where are you from? I associate that word with cotton Candy but cannot for the life of me think of what a marshmallow is
  
  HK. Yeah, if you asked me out of the blue what 棉花糖 is I would've said cotton candy first but I also had a vague memory of calling marshmallow that too. I had to confirm it with Wikipedia lol.
- Same in Taiwan!
  
  Do you have a different name for the fluffy cotton candy?

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).
- Now you have me curious since this is the second language, why bacon?
  
  The original candy looked like this: https://cdn.webshopapp.com/shops/282420/files/297921342/890x820x1/confiserie-a-lancienne-spekjes-roze-wit-doos-2-kg.jpg
  Which with some imagination can be similar to bits of bacon. Marshmallows are somewhat similar candy so the name is used for that too at times.
  
  Just a guess... They are both made from bits of a pig.
- In our local dialect it's "nunnebiln" ~ nonnenbillen, which I'd translate to nuns buttocks.
  We also have nuns farts, but that's another sweet for another day 😆
  
  Can it please be another day already? I want to be initiated in the world of nun's farts.
- Julle Nederlanders is maar 'n vreemde volk :p
- In our local dialect it's "nunnebiln" ~ nonnenbillen, which I'd translate to nuns buttocks.
  We also have nuns farts, but that's another sweet for another day 😆

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.
- I live in NRW and have never heard anyone call them Mäusespeck either
  
  I guess you are born in this century. In the 80 it was what was written on the products in the supermarket.

Malvavisco (Spanish).
- True, but I would say that nube (cloud) is more common.
  
  Never seen them as Nubes, only malbabiscos o marshmallows. Which country calls them nubes?
- Bombón Spanish mexico

In Polish we call them pianka, diminutive for foam

Nein, davon weiß ich absolut nichts. Das ist regional allerhöchstens oder ein Synonym für Marshmallow.
- Google translate "No, I know absolutely nothing about that. That's regional at most or a synonym for marshmallow."
  You should name it sugar pillow or better we should all name it sugar pillow in our language.
  
  Zuckerkissen
- Ich kenne das auch so wie OP.
- Kenn ich auch nicht
- Doch
  
  Oohhh

Skumfidus 🇩🇰
"Foam trick" i guess, is the literal translation.
Fidus is a weird word.
- 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.

Schaumzucker (German), literally "foam sugar"
- Also "Mäusespeck", mouse bacon.
  
  I've read that somewhere, too.
- Couldn't that also describe cotton candy? Or would that be more like felt sugar?
  
  Cotton candy is Zuckerwatte, lit. sugar wool

Guimauve
- Ou mâche-mâlo en bon Québécois.
- That's what is on the French packaging in Canada. In France I've seen Chamallows.
- French gang
- Same cognate the Spanish but opposite. Hibiscus-mallow

We didn't bother translating, so it's marshmallow. Sometimes written phonetically, maršmelou.
- What language?
  
  Czech.
- Is this Czech?
  
  Yep.

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
- "bonbon" in French means candy

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
- Yep så etr denn kommentsrn å vurderte zkrive an sjøl.

Never heard of that in German. It's just marshmallows with a generic German accent instead. But it's cool to learn something new. Which region says that, OP?
- All the regions, just lost in time. It was sold by Haribo under that name in the 80s, it's why you can still get "süße Mäuse" or "weiße Mäuse" from Haribo and why it's generally often presented in mouse-form.
  Marshmallow only became more popular when younger generations spoke English more often.
  
  Omg, really ? That makes sense ! I just accepted the mouse thing as a willy wonka side effect. Didn't realize this could be a part of the history

Guimauve or Purple mistletoe for whatever reason.
- Because of the plant it used to be made of. It' a Gui Mauve plant in french, or a Marsh Mallow in english. Scientific name: Althaea officinalis
- So it's not using the idea of "mauve" as in the color in the name but instead the idea of "mallow/malva" as in the plant. In english those ended up being two different words with the same root. The mistletoe actually was originally refering to hibiscus in the latin, but changed. Origin of the confectuary from the marsh mallow plant comes from Ancient Egypt, so this is actually all descended from Latin/Greek

Malvaviscos. En español.
- Cognate with "Mallow hibiscus". It's all the swamp flower in the end. The marshmallow plant sap was originally used to make them.
  
  🤯 marsh mallow, a plant
- Also bonbon
  
  Maybe in your country, but I think in most of hispanic would a Bombom or bonbon or whatever, is a chocolate ball.

מרשמלו
- Mrshmlo for those wondering. Hebrew is a "work out the remaining vowels yourself" language

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

žužu in Czech (ž as the first sound in Zhukov), but it's often called marshmallow as well (especially the iconic/most common form).

Mályvacukor (hungarian) - translates to mallow candy / mallow sugar
- We called it 'pillecukor'.
  
  Yepp. And for the non-hungarian speakers: "pille" is a synonym for "pehely" which is the flake part from e.g. snowflake.
  So basically sugarflake.
- Mályva is closer to the original latin Malva than even most romance languages do.

Just marshmallow in Brazilian Portuguese. Natives tend to pronounce it closer to something more like mah-she-mello, in my experience.

Malvavisco in Spanish as others mentioned, but in Chile we also call some varieties "guagüitas" (little babies) for some reason

There isn’t a word for it.

Vahukomm in estonian
Foam candy

I Italian they are just "marshmallows", but interesting enough, in the Ghostbuster film Italian's dub it was translated with "gnocchi di lichene".
- I'm Italian and I don't have the minimum idea of what the hell is a lichene.

Marshmallow (Swedish)
- Yea I'm Swedish-speaking, and couldn't figure out what we call it, if not marshmallow

マシュマロ
Japanese
- Mashumaro? I guess that works.
- Nice username. I'm seeing them in concert next month!
- That looks like an ascii emoji.

marshmallow or just shmalo
- Smello 👃

Esponjitas in spanish (Little sponges)
Some people also call them Nubes (clouds)
- I love esponjitas! May I ask which country this is used in??
  
  I live in spain and that's the most common term for it, at least around the south

chamallo in french sometimes. otherwise marshmallow

In Mexican Spanish they're known as "bombones".
- Like bonbons?
  
  Yeah I wonder which word was used first.

Pianka

"Spekje" in Dutch

Pianki (which is literally just foam in english)

"зефир" in Russian, sounds like "zefir"
- Is it, really? Зефир is quite different in taste and texture, imo, I would't eat it if I would crave marshmallows and vice versa.
  
  It is sometimes called that, other times it is 'маршмеллоу", which sounds just like marshmallows ("marshmallow").