Language topic

Ariana said:
A question targeted at native speakers of English, but everyone else is welcome to throw in their two cents. Would you ask "How many mashed potatoes do we have left?" or "How much mashed potatoes do we have left?" We have a domestic argument.
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Neither. I'd refer to it as mashed potato i.e. "How much mashed potato do we have left?"
 
I guess it depends on how much mashed potato was intimidated by Stalin and how much by Hitler.
 
Black Wizard said:
I've never heard anyone referred to a quantity of mashed potatoes.
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All non native speakers of English do that in their own language (hence Ariana's question).
There's no such absurdity as one single potato in a dish, or on a plate (the extremely poor excluded).;)
 
Forostar said:
All non native speakers of English do that in their own language (hence Ariana's question).
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Not really. In German, you turn around the adjective-noun relation and say something to the equivalent of "potato mash", hence my question above.
 
Wait a minute... We do that too. Aardappelpuree.

Reading the verb mashed (past participle) made me automatically think of the synonym (or meaning) of the dish: gestampte aardappelen (literally: mashed potatoes): plural.
 
You can say "Stampfkartoffeln" in German, but that sounds like something exclusively made by an old Berlin housewife in 1953.
 
Perun said:
You can say "Stampfkartoffeln" in German, but that sounds like something exclusively made by an old Berlin housewife in 1953.
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The housewives of Old Berlin
available now on HBO(TM)
 
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