I see it spelled both “omelet” (male) or “omelette” (female), but which one is correct?
Did a quick search and it looks like both spellings are valid with omelet being more common in American English and omelette more common in British English. Dunno if English is your native language, but if it isn’t it doesn’t really have gendered nouns like some other languages (French, German, and Spanish for example). Referring to something like a food as male or female sounds odd in English. If you are a native speaker of English, sorry!
Omelet and Omelette both have the same French root and were adopted into the English language back in the 1600s or so.
After this period, the English were quite enamoured with the French for a little while there and so the language then borrowed a lot of French words (see: enamoured), and colourised a bunch of others with French spelling (see: colour/color).
The US , on the other hand, had a bit of a beef going on with the English during that time, so “US English” resisted the French influence of their colonial overlords and remained with omelet.
I’m a native English speaker but I also speak Spanish and studied Latin, so I’m pretty used to thinking of words as gendered. Maybe I should have asked just Francophones, but I didn’t want to limit the question in that way.
Perhaps the answer is just that American half-moon omelets are masculine and French trifold omelettes are feminine. The world is a strange place like that sometimes.
Maybe I’m the odd one out but ime here in the States “omelette” is way more common. I would have assumed that the other is a typo.
Same, but I wanted to double check before I stated my anecdotal evidence as fact. I imagine it’s also regional in America since there’s some dialectal differences as well.
I have never seen “omelet” as a Canadian. We use the British spelling on this one (as we often do).
We use the Canadian spelling, which is close but not the same as the British one.
In case you’re wondering, “omelette” is feminine in French, “une omelette”.
That IS a significant part of what I was wondering, yes.
It’s neutral in German. Das Omelett.
I am loving this as a datum.
Also in Spanish (la tortilla)
La tortilla. Female.
Omelette du fromage.
In Portuguese, “omelete” is masculine-gendered noun ("fiz um omelete”, “I made an omelette” with the “um” being the undefined masculine article / “fez o omelete?”, “did you make the omelette” with the “o” being the defined masculine article). Similarly, “ovo” (egg) is masculine-gendered noun (“um ovo” / “o ovo”). On the other hand, “crepioca” (which is quite similar to an omelette but made with “tapioca” flour) is feminine-gendered (“uma crepioca” / “a crepioca”). “Tapioca” is also a feminine-gendered noun.
I can’t tell if this is a serious question, or a set up for a joke.
Two eggs went down the wrong alley in Toulouse and were badly beaten.
Sorry, that joke was cheesey. I suppose omelet jokes often are.
But hey, two win some, Toulouse some.
Some countries use male and female versions of some of their words.
s/countries/languages/
And here I always thought it was spelt umlaut
it’s only an umlaut if it’s from the Germany region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling diaeresis
Interesting! I’ve only ever had explosive diaeresis, never sparkling! TIL!
Ironically, the point of a diaeresis is to prevent things running together!
Germany region of France
*deeply offended German noises* Ä
aren’t those just the default German noises?
… *decidedly unamused German noises* :ß
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Omoletto
my favorite pokémon
Domo arigato mr. Omoletto.
