Food / Marjoram - Majeranek - Maryjanka [3]

My grandparents were all Polish speakers but my parents were/are not. Some vocabulary, mostly food related, was passed on to my parents and then to my generation.

One word passed down is the word for marjoram, pronounced phonetically - mariunka. I did some research and found maryjanka listed in a couple dictionaries for the Poznań dialect as their word for the standard Polish majeranek. This came from my mom's side, whose origins are a little northeast of Poznań. One mystery is the difference in the -a- and -u- sounds. Curious as to how that difference came to be. I read an article about some regions of Poland historically pronouncing ą like ó/u, wonder if that has anything to do with it.

I'm from Buffalo in Upstate NY, and I've met multiple people here who use the term mariunka/maryjanka. I was so excited, "you say it like that too!" Also read that marjoram is particularly popular in Wielkopolskan and Kujawian cooking, so it makes sense that it's a prominent feature of my mom's pea soup and a lot of the kiełbasa made locally.

It was pretty cool to connect the dots with all of this.