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Re:A Proto-Pizza Emerges from a Fresco on a Pompeii Wall by anonu on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @06:29AM (#36504582)
If pitta refers to pita bread, as in the round flatbread originating in the middle east, I can tell you the word is not used in Arabic.
Re:A Proto-Pizza Emerges from a Fresco on a Pompeii Wall by detourdog on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @07:13AM (#36504836)
That is pretty interesting. Khobz appears to be the word in the Arab speaking world. (can't think of a good name for this group).

A thing as basic as a bread staple to have different names in the same region seems very significant.

Does anyone have any insight into this? I'm definitely going to try to dig deeper.

I used to go to a "pizza" restaurant in Jaffa. It claimed to be the oldest pizza restaurant. It has high lip edges and eggs... I think it was like shakuka on a type of pita. I wish I could remember what they called it.

Re:A Proto-Pizza Emerges from a Fresco on a Pompeii Wall by toyg on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @11:00AM (#36507451)
> A thing as basic as a bread staple to have different names in the same region seems very significant.

Nah. It's just the result of a long history. In Italy, different towns can call the same specialties with completely different names (crescentina / gnocco fritto, etc...), often simply out of spite or because of some long-forgotten feud.

40 years ago, in Rome a pizza was often called a "torta", which is the word the rest of Italy uses for sweet cakes.

Re:A Proto-Pizza Emerges from a Fresco on a Pompeii Wall by detourdog on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @02:07PM (#36510265)
I would think that also but I'm hung up on some details.

Pita is a pretty basic word for a human staple. Large regional areas use a very similar word for millenniums. One culture doesn't and is just as interspersed as through time and space as the others.

In fact they share many texts.

I think this is different than the examples you provided.

I would describe some pizza's in Berkshire Country as a Torte.

Re:A Proto-Pizza Emerges from a Fresco on a Pompeii Wall by boulos on Wednesday June 28, 2023 @03:42PM (#36511571)
Right, the closest word is the turkic "pide" which isn't Arabic but is from the Aramaic for bread (https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/pide)