Talk:水果

RFV discussion: March–July 2022

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水果

Chinese. Rfv-sense: "(Cantonese) edible aquatic plants". RcAlex36 (talk) 15:10, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Pinging @Vc06697, who added the sense. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 07:35, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

This sense is rare in modern Cantonese in 21st century, cuz most adopts the "fruit" meaning from Mandarin. In proper Cantonese (or, rather, "oldschool" to people nowadays), 生果 and 水果 are two different terms. 生果 refers to fruits growing out of trees or on soil, like oranges, while 水果 refers to "fruits" that grows on water, like lotus rhizomes (蓮藕). For reference you can also check the Cantonese version of the page, which quotes a 1963 book titled "粵菜存真" (roughly means "preserving real Cantonese cuisine")written by 許衡. In the quote, 3 types of 生果 and 3 types of 水果 are mentioned respectively in contrast.

Therefore, it's definitely a Cantonese thing. I'm not sure if one should add "dated" or "archaic" or "obsolete" after "Cantonese". Vc06697 (talk) 08:37, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@Vc06697: I think it's unclear whether this is the common meaning of the term in Cantonese at the time or whether this is a particular "one-off" usage specific to the 三十二圍碟 (which would mean it probably shouldn't be here in the entry). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 10:29, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

It might not be a one-off usage. More likely it's a cuisine-specific term. This was in Cantonese, possibly late-19th-century at least. In Ming Dynasty, a book titled "汝南圃史" also mentions "水果", yet it's meaning seems to be different both to the modern meaning and to the Cantonese one as well.

I think we can also look at the example sentence and note usage from the French version page as reference. It uses "西瓜係生果，馬蹄先係水果。" as the example. This implies that aquatic plants like 馬蹄 cannot be referred to as a 生果. Vc06697 (talk) 11:40, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@Vc06697: The French Wiktionary entry seems awfully prescriptive to me. The example is not a quote from any source from the 19th century (or even early 20th century), so I don't think we should take it seriously. (It in fact seems like an attempt to de-Mandarinize Cantonese, which seems like a prescriptive move.) If there isn't any proof of usage outside of 粵菜存真 (is it even written in Cantonese?), then I don't think there's any other evidence that can tell us whether it's cuisine-specific, Cantonese-specific, or one-off. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:13, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Well, 水果=fruit is not really a Mandarin-only thing either. When it comes to dialects and subdialects today, there are many non-Mandarin speaks that only has 水果=fruit, as shown in the dialectal synonyms table below the definitions.

Unfortunately, this "粵菜存真" seems very hard to come by, even in pdf form. Libraries around where I live also don't have this book, so for now we can't really be sure about the way it's written. However, almost every source I've found on the web - articles and videos - indicates that these 四水果, 四生果 terms are a part of the Cantonese variant of the Manchu–Han Imperial Feast/滿漢全席. Other than these two terms, there are also terms like 四京果, 四糖果, 四看果. In 四京果, there are 奶提子 (probably grapes) and 荔枝乾 (dried lychee). Yet, grapes and lychees all grow on trees.

Among all the sites, this one below may be the only one that is worth a look, cuz it's made by a Fat-shan television channel (FSTV) based in the PRC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJWTPdlUJcM

I do have the "實用廣州話分類詞典", but it only defines 生果 as "水果的總稱。水果一般生食，故稱". 水果 is not an established term in the book.

Finally, I stumbled upon 本草綱目. Surprisingly, it may answer our question. Under the 果 section are several subsections. There are no 生果類 subsection, but there is a 水果類 subsection, which mostly mentions aquatic plants. Among these includes lotus rhizomes, lin kok(菱角) and 烏芋(=馬蹄), which are three out of the four 水果 mentioned in 粵菜存真. The rest of the subsection are fruits that belong to none of the other subsections (placed there for convenience), and fruits that are poisonous.

If we take 本草綱目 as a credible source, then "水果=edible aquatic plants" is not a "Cantonese term". Rather, it's written Classical Chinese from Ming Dynasty. That may also mean 粵菜存真 was using a very old term. So maybe we should change it from (Cantonese) to either (classical), (dated), or (obsolete)? Vc06697 (talk) 09:00, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@Vc06697: Sorry for the late reply. I completely agree that 水果=fruit is not a Mandarin-only thing but some Cantonese purists seem to be making it out to be like that (and the websites that talk about it like to frame it this way because it is seen as a way to somehow make Cantonese unique... and I suspect the show is either taking their information from these websites and/or a propagator of this kind of view). And thanks for finding the 本草綱目 passage. I would say this points to this being an archaic sense, where it refers to some edible part of a plant that grows in water. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 22:30, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Cited for a modified "(archaic) edible part of an aquatic plant". — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 02:07, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

• RFV passed. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 15:43, 4 July 2022 (UTC)