Talk:Sugarcane

forced population movement

I'm no scholar, but the terminology here is vague. I suspect someone is trying to whitewash the word 'slave' from as many places as possible in using a less concrete term that could also mean using weapons to force natives off their land, starving out settlers to repopulate with other persons, or even introducing pathogens to create a hostile living environment. SLAVERY is what happened here, the buying or hunting of people and treating them like property. I'm really unhappy seeing this kind of conservative bias of facts creep into Wiki. I have never entered into any Wiki before and hope senior editors will review ALL such references. I999shadow (talk) 18:37, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Hebrew origin of the word via Sephardic Jews

According to this reference from The Times of Israel the word sugarcane has its origins in Judeo-Spanish of Sephardic Jews who owned sugarcane slave plantations in the French West Indies until they were expelled under the Code Noir (specifically mentioned in the reference is its origin in Guadeloupe). The Times of Isarael says its derives from the Hebrew word KaNeH ( קנה ) for cane. This was removed from the article some time ago by User:Zefr with a diff simply saying it was "verbose" and attributed the origin of the term instead, without reference, to merely "Spanish" (which is inaccurate) with no further explanation of its origin. Torchist (talk) 10:59, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

The Oxford English Dictionary (2000) vol II, p. 829 suggests a Latin source: canna="reed", perhaps of Semitic origin. Caxton in 1481 wrote of "canes . . . full of sugre"; and (from OED vol XVII p.135) "sugar" may have come from from Medieval Latin succarum perhaps from Arab "sukkar". The first instance of the combination "sugar-canes" found by OED was in 1568 (op. cit. p.140), so it's not as simple as your source suggests. Doug butler (talk) 11:42, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I have removed this claim (and the earlier one from Mozeson saying that "cane" itself derives from Hebrew). The Mozeson source is not reliable on this topic (a quick look at the article for Isaac Mozeson ought to make it clear that his claims are regarded as pseudoscientific) and cannot be accepted. The exact origin is indeed unclear, it may be originally Semitic (though other options, particularly Sumerian are just as likely), potentially even Northwest Semitic (thoughthis is not especially likely), but as the word is attested extremely early in Sumerian and Akkadian, at a time when Hebrew was not yet distinct from its Canaanite cousins a specifically Hebrew origin is untenable. The Times of Israel also cannot be taken as reliable on matters of etymology. The fact the word "cane" is attested in Middle English also rules out their claim of an origin from 17th century Sephardi Jews as they would postdate its earliest attestations. There may be evidence that Sephardi Jews are responsible for associating the existing word "cane" with sugarcane, but that is not the claim in the Times of Israel article, or that was included in the section I removed. Tristanjlroberts (talk) 16:48, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Example Spirits

Rum and cachaca make sense to include here but falernum is made out of many ingredients including rum so seems redundant? It's like saying silicon is used in glass, microchips and also computers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.191.164 (talk) 21:34, 2 June 2023 (UTC)