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Comment by InCityDreams | Hacker News Reader

>a pizza delivery bag (holds two large pies in boxes)

It took me a few seconds, but i guess where you're from they (pizzas) are called 'pies'.

Pie and slice are units of measurement for the concept pizza. Much like you don’t order “two pastas” saying “two pizzas” sounds stupid to people in the parts of US famous for pizza. Bread works the same way, it comes in loaves and slices. You don’t buy “two breads” without sounding stupid.

> saying “two pizzas” sounds stupid to people in the parts of US famous for pizza.

This definitely isn't true. Pizza pies are what they are, but it's fine to call it a pie (in obvious context), and most people call them pizzas. You wouldn't dare accuse My Very Educated Mother of being stupid for Just Serving Us Nine Pizzas.

And I'm a Chicago pizza guy, where pizza looks like a pie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCgYMFtxUUw

Sir, you are in violation of the ontology. Chicago pizza, while erroneously linguistically linked to the categorical foodstuff, is not, in fact, pizza.

The correct conclusion is that Chicago is not among the cited "parts".

US English speakers consider pizza to be a kind of pie, yes.

It"s quite confusing for the rest of us (or at least to me) but that's how they talk. :)

I wouldn’t say that American English speakers actually consider pizza to be a member of the same pie family as apple pie. We will refer to pizzas as “pies,” but without a very clear context of pizza, “pie” is almost always going to be interpreted as the family of sweet round desserts.

Aha, thanks, that's even more confusing! :) Also interesting (from a sibling comment) to learn that it's regional; I guess I'm suffering from some kind of confirmation bias; whenever US folks who do not call pizzas pies write about pizza online, I don't notice. :)

I think in practice any English speaker even at like an A2 level wouldn’t get confused, because the context has to be extremely clear in order for “pie” to be used in reference to a pizza. In any conceivable case I can think of, pizza is either going to be explicitly named immediately before saying “pie,” or the context will be undeniable (like when you’re ordering from a pizza restaurant). There would never be a case where someone would ask “what do you want to eat?” and someone would respond with “pie” when they mean pizza.

> "There would never be a case where someone would ask “what do you want to eat?” and someone would respond with “pie” when they mean pizza."

Friends or colleagues who are used to eating a pizza together excepted. Maybe rarely someone could say "pepperoni pie" or "cheese pie" without being confused, but as you said the context makes the case in these examples.

It's regional. Most of the country does _not_ call pizza a pie.

I once volunteered for a political campaign in rural Kansas (Senate campaign, IIRC, this was just a local campaign office) and they brought in some young New York political consultant and he called pizza "pie" (it came up because he was ordering some "pies" for the volunteers). The first time he did it everyone looked at one another and started laughing—not to be mean, it was just so unexpected that no-one could help it. I felt kinda bad for him, seemed really taken aback. NOBODY says that in rural Kansas. You don't order a pie, or a pizza pie, you order a pizza.

For most of us in the room it was the first time we'd heard someone in real life call a pizza a pie, except when doing a bad Italian accent and talking about "a pizza-a pie-a" as a joke.

A unit of pizza is a pie. It's not actually a pie.

They're called pies everywhere (pizza pies), but as with many things, the pie part is now unspoken.

Such as gas for gasoline, and so on.

EG, it's not an alias, but the dropped, rest of the name.

"soda pop" is an interesting one. Some regions dropped the soda, others dropped the pop. Some dropped neither and still use "soda pop".

And then some Neanderthal regions decided to drop both and use "Coke" as a generic term for carbonated soft drinks.

“I’ll have an orange Coke.” is a valid order in those latter areas. It sounds crazy to me.

I would assume you meant something like "vanilla Coke" and wonder if you found an interesting combo on one of those fancy pick your flavour to add to your drink fountain dispensers.

No, they are giving an example of ordering an orange soda by using the word coke for something that is not Coca-Cola which is what the upstream comment is talking about.

I have never heard that usage in the wild here on the West Coast of the United States. I do know it’s common back east.

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