[Tagging] Differences between crop and produce?

John F. Eldredge john at jfeldredge.com
Mon Nov 19 15:17:29 GMT 2012


Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2012/11/19 Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl>:
> > From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_(disambiguation) :
> > Corn is the name used in the United States, Canada, and Australia
> for the
> > grain maize. In much of the English-speaking world, the term "corn"
> is a
> > generic term for cereal crops, such as:
> > Barley
> > Oats
> > Rye
> > Wheat
> >
> > This certainly corresponds to my understanding, and my brother's
> (he's a
> > farmer).
> > Looking at other European languages, I think "maize" is less likely
> to be
> > misunderstood; in many languages the native word is clearly a
> variant of
> > "maize":
> > So I would vote for using "maize" and not "corn" as maize is hyponym
> of corn.
> 
> 
> +1, this is what it is like in German as well (Maize=Mais, Corn=Korn
> (where it is a generic term, btw. also used for certain hard spirits
> deriving from cereals)). The Italians use generally "turkish grain"
> (granturco), but there is also "mais" in botanic context.
> Looking at the actual values:
> http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/crop#values
> http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=produce%3Dcorn
> there is 9 corn vs. 6 maize and 1 corn vs. 0 maize (so it doesn't
> really matter)
> 
> As crops tend to change I am not sure how well we will be able to
> maintain this kind of data, but at least we could have uniform
> suggestions how to tag if someone wants to do it anyway.
> 
> cheers,
> Martin
> 
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I am an American, and would vote for "maize", as it is less ambiguous.  The term "maize" is known in American English, it just isn't as common a usage as "corn".  Incidentally, the Spanish term for the grain is "masa", and they would have been the first Europeans to encounter the plant.

-- 
John F. Eldredge --  john at jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria



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