A mailing from Joe and the Juice today, with the header
(#1)
(#2) The pronunciation (or pronuciation) given is, in full, ॑AH – SAH – EE॑
The typo: PRONOUCE for PRONOUNCE. Fairly common; three more examples:
Photo: “Some great signs to help you pronouce the name!” (link)
How to pronouce or say Elizabeth Arden (link)
BALAYAGE – THE SERVICE YOU CAN’T PRONOUCE (link)
The typo is probably the result of two effects working together. First, the letters M and N are sometimes omitted after a vowel letter, presumably because in pronunciation the nasal is realized merely as nasalization of the vowel, so might not require spelling; the fairly common misspelling ATTEPT for ATTEMPT arises this way:
There was an attept to flip this syrup bottle (link)
Then, the spelling of words with two Ns in them, especially in successive syllables, can be simplified by omitting the second (intuitively, because you’ve already written or typed the N): OPPONET for OPPONENT:
Robert Guerrero and his opponet Selcuk Aydin will square off Saturday July 28 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose for the WBC interim welterweight world championship. (link)
(The very common typo PROUNCE for PRONOUNCE seems to represent a different phenomenon, of telescoping, or jumping ahead in the spelling of the word.)
The store. The Joe and the Juice shop this came from is the one just up the street from me in Palo Alto, at 240 Hamilton Ave. (at Ramona St.).
(#3)
The company has outlets all over the world, and manages its on-line presence centrally, so that it’s typically hard to figure what’s currently on offer at any particular store and what it costs there. It projects young and trendy, not to mention pricey. (It’s hard to see how it’s going to survive in downtown Palo Alto, where there are already cafes and coffee shops (offering various sorts of light food) every few feet along the major streets.)
Açaí bowls. (In English spelling, simplified to acai.) From Wikipedia:
(#4) From Chelsea’s Messy Apron site, with recipes for four different acai bowlsAçaí na tigela (“açaí in the bowl”) is a typical Brazilian dish made of frozen and mashed açaí palm fruit. It is served as a smoothie in a bowl or glass, and is commonly topped with granola and banana, and then mixed with other fruits and guaraná syrup. Açaí na tigela is popular all over Brazil, but mainly in Pará, Rio de Janeiro, Florianópolis, São Paulo, Goiás and along the northeastern coast, where it is sold in kiosks lining the beach promenade and in juice bars throughout the cities.
Two ingredients here: the principal ingredient, the palm fruit; and the flavoring syrup. On the palm, from Wikipedia:
(#4)The açaí palm, Euterpe oleracea, is a species of palm tree (Arecaceae) cultivated for its fruit (açaí berries, or simply açaí), hearts of palm (a vegetable), leaves, and trunk wood. Global demand for the fruit expanded rapidly in the 21st century and so the tree is cultivated for that purpose primarily.
The species is native to Brazil, Peru, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, mainly in swamps and floodplains. Açaí palms are tall, slender trees growing to more than 25 m (82 ft) tall, with pinnate leaves up to 3 m (9.8 ft) long. The fruit is small, round, and black-purple in color, and may be sold as a frozen fruit pulp or bottled juice drink with added sugar or other sweeteners. The fruit is a staple food in the tree’s native range, but was only introduced to international markets in the 1980s.
… In the 1980s, the Brazilian Gracie family marketed açaí as an energy drink or as crushed fruit served with granola and bananas; this demand led to the building of cottage industries and processing plants to pulp and freeze açaí for export. … Açaí was promoted heavily for its antioxidants, and many false claims were and are made
And the syrup, made from guarana fruits. From Wikipedia:
Guarana, Paullinia cupana, is a climbing plant in the family Sapindaceae, native to the Amazon basin and especially common in Brazil. Guarana has large leaves and clusters of flowers and is best known for the seeds from its fruit, which are about the size of a coffee bean.
As a dietary supplement or herb, guarana seed is an effective stimulant: it contains about twice the concentration of caffeine found in coffee seeds … The additive has gained notoriety for being used in energy drinks.
Now we have stumbled on two significant plant families that have been mentioned in passing a number of times on this blog but haven’t been officially recognized: the Arecaceae, the palm family (#93), to which the acai palm belongs; and the Sapindaceae, the soapberry family (#94), to which the guarana vine belongs.
From Wikipedia on the first:
The Arecaceae [#93] are a botanical family of perennial plants. Their growth form can be climbers, shrubs, trees and stemless plants, all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree form are colloquially called palm trees. … Currently 181 genera with around 2600 species are known, most of them restricted to tropical and subtropical climates. Most palms are distinguished by their large, compound, evergreen leaves, known as fronds, arranged at the top of an unbranched stem. However, palms exhibit an enormous diversity in physical characteristics and inhabit nearly every type of habitat within their range, from rainforests to deserts.
And also from Wikipedia on the second:
The Sapindaceae [#94] is a family of flowering plants in the order Sapindales known as the soapberry family. It contains 138 genera and 1858 accepted species, including maple, ackee, horse chestnut and lychee.
… Sapindaceae includes many species of economically valuable tropical fruit, including the lychee, longan, pitomba, guinip/mamoncillo, korlan, rambutan, pulasan and ackee. Other products include guarana, soapberries and maple syrup.
Some species of Maple and Buckeye are valued for their wood, while several other genera, such as Koelreuteria, Cardiospermum and Ungnadia, are popular ornamentals. Schleichera trijugais the source of Indian macassar oil. Saponins extracted from the drupe of Sapindus species are effective surfactants and are used commercially in cosmetics and detergents.
Among earlier postings on plants in this family, from 2/5/15, “Signs of spring”, with an extensive section on buckeyes.
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