In serbian, there are trešnje (cherries) and višnje (cherries). For a while I was under an illusion that I should translate them as sweet cherries and sour cherries.
This is wrong:
- sweet cherries actually have less sugar then sour cherries. They just contain far less acid, hence the perceived feeling.
- most of the automatic translators (google, yandex) translate „trešnje i višnje“ as „cherries and sour cherries“ and „višnje i trešnje“ as „cherries and sour cherries“. There you go.
So after finding this I decided to stop pretending that it's possible to explain the difference to an anglophone reader. They are completely unaware that these are separate species, they never crosspolinate. But they never saw them one next to the other. Fresh, they can buy only trešnje ('sweet') because višnje they may find too sour, sometimes even face-twisting sour, impossible to sell. In jars or as a juice, only višnje ('sour'), nobody bothers to make jam (they don't know about pekmez anyway) of trešnje. So the two are never next to each other on the shelf. And about 99% of them never ate either straight off a tree.
Most european languages (all slavic, but also hungarian and some roman) have separate words for them. Most of the others add the „sour“ to distinguish them. It's the english that's the oddball blind spot.
I decided not to insert too many links to this article. Those who spot it in the navigation will find it. For others, if I linked them every time when I mention both kinds in the same article, it would be overdone. So I'll link this just sometimes.
They're like sex, no way to explain to those who never tried, and no need to explain to those who did.
30-VI-2026 - 13-VII-2026