[dekobon]

Well, it is kind of like using the word ketchup to refer to only premium ketchups in some other language. Whenever a person who speaks that language says they enjoy ketchup, you wonder - what are they talking about.

As for artisanal, if there isn't an apprentice program for producing the good, then it probably isn't artisanal. Interestingly, by this definition there are artisanal soy sauces.

[jacobolus]

Funny enough, the word ketchup comes from Southeast Asian/southern Chinese fermented fish sauce. After it became popular among European sailors after 1600, the word was coopted to refer to a wide variety of different sauces, because Europeans didn’t have any idea how to make the original sauce. The modern American ketchup is a descendent of a descendent of a cheap European knockoff of expensive imported Chinese fish sauce. :-)

This lecture is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iYwUh1Hdho

[jnordwick]

OMG! He speaks the truth!

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24530/what-is-the...