Peanut Leg

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, I’m Corinne, and I’m joined by my student Mara.

And we are calling from the University of North Alabama.

Oh, excellent. Well, welcome to the show.

So you’re here with a student. What are you teaching?

Well, I teach in the academic English program. We help international students develop their English language skills as they prepare to enter a degree program here at the university.

Oh, lovely.

Well, what’s on your mind today?

Well, recently in speaking class, Mara was demonstrating a recipe, and she referred to peanut butter, but she used a term that I had never heard before. She called it peanut leg.

And I asked her about that, and she immediately spelled it for me, and it was, as I suspected, L-E-G.

And she explained that as far as she knows, it’s common usage in her home country, which is the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But I did a quick Internet search and just wasn’t able to find any easy answers to my questions. I’m curious about the origin of the expression and also how widespread it is.

So peanut butter as peanut leg, L-E-G.

All right. We’ve got to talk to Mara about this.

Okay.

Hello.

Hi, Mara. How are you?

Fine. How about you?

We are good.

Tell us about the expression peanut leg. Where did you learn that or where did you hear that?

Yes, I was translating from Google, and then I just saw the translation like that.

So you were translating from French.

Yes, because in French we say pat d’achide, which means peanut leg. Like, it’s the same meaning.

Oh, Google tricked you, Mara. Google has let you down. Google failed you.

Because what you’re saying in French is pat d’achide, which means peanut paste.

And it’s spelled P-A-T-E.

And there’s a circumflex, a little hat on the A.

And in French words, that means it used to be spelled with an S.

So it used to be spelled P-A-S-T, but now it’s spelled P-A-T-E.

But you translated the word P-A-T-T-E, which means paw or leg of an animal.

So you translated, so they sound almost the same, pot and pat.

So Google failed you. Google let you down on this. Not quite the same.

Mara, this is a great warning to other people who use Google Translate. Sometimes it lets you down.

Sometimes, yes. I have experienced it many times. When I translate something, it gives me the wrong, I mean, the meaning that it’s not the same. It’s different from the context that I’m trying to use.

Right, right. Well, you’re smart to be skeptical about that.

Yeah. It’s better to use a bilingual dictionary because that has been carefully checked. Each entry has been carefully checked by a human being, whereas the Google Translate is programmatically done where every translation is not checked. It’s just assumed to be correct by the computer.

Okay.

Thank you.

You’re welcome. Thank you so much.

And good luck with your studies.

Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

I’ve done that. I was a young French learner once. I made those mistakes, Martha. It’s all part of the process, isn’t it?

Yeah, it sure is.

I should note that even though pat, P-A-T-T-E, can mean leg or foot in French, it’s used for animals. It’s not used for humans.

The jambe, J-A-M-B-E, is used for the leg in humans.

We welcome calls from folks who are learning English as a second language or maybe a third or fourth.

And we love calls from teachers as well.

Also, if you have a question about language, call 877-929-9673 or send the story in email to words@waywordradio.org.