# 胡椒と唐辛子はなぜ両方ペッパーなのか？ - Show: ゆる言語学ラジオ - Published: 2026-10-06 - Canonical: https://podc.club/en/episode/1550243290_76fa6b3c663b.html - Audio: https://api.robotstart.jp/api/for-media/v1/articles/35d00481/permanent/with-advertise/podcast/df39b1b3ffc4b0b4e331246efacb6ed4.mp3 - Source: Edited from a machine transcript of the first 30 minutes of the episode. Not an official summary. In this quiz-format episode of Yuru Gengo-gaku Radio (ゆる言語学ラジオ), five trivia questions span linguistics, history, and science. Topics range from why Columbus gave chili peppers the same name as black pepper, to a Magic: The Gathering card translation that doubles as an iroha poem, to a 2016 dog fMRI study whose conclusions were invalidated by whether the animal was lying on its back or its stomach. ## What this episode answers ### Why are black pepper and chili pepper—two botanically unrelated plants—both called 'pepper' in English? Columbus, who was sailing toward India partly to find a new spice route for black pepper, landed in the Americas and mistook chili peppers—which share a similar pungency—for the same plant, calling them 'pepper' and bringing them back to Europe. Black pepper is native to Asia and chili pepper to Central and South America, but Columbus's misidentification locked in the shared name. ### Why did Canon's home inkjet printer IP2700, released in 2010, earn a nickname meaning something like 'throwaway printer'? The price of the replacement ink set for the IP2700 exceeded the price of the printer itself, making it cheaper to buy a whole new unit whenever ink ran out rather than replace the cartridges. ### What hidden feat in the Japanese translation of a Magic: The Gathering card text made translators say it was 'something you'd want to try once in a lifetime'? The original English card text, 'The quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf,' is a pangram containing all 26 letters of the alphabet; the Japanese translation rendered it as an iroha poem (色葉歌) that uses every kana in the Japanese syllabary, with extra words added to complete the set while preserving the overall atmosphere. The card's win condition—requiring that all 26 letters of the alphabet appear across permanent names you control—is also consistent with this design. ### What caused the 2016 dog-brain fMRI study to accidentally swap images of the brain with images of a different body part? Humans lie on their backs inside an MRI machine, but dogs sit upright in a posture closer to prone, so the front-to-back orientation of the images was reversed, causing brain images to be swapped with images of a different region. ### Why was 'Kame' a common name for dogs in Meiji-era Japan? Foreign visitors to Japan during the Meiji era would call out 'Come!' (pronounced roughly 'kamu') to dogs; Japanese people interpreted this as a proper name and 'Kame' became established as a common dog name. ## Article ## Why Columbus Gave Us 'Pepper' The first quiz question asks why hot peppers and chili peppers share the name 'pepper' with black pepper despite being completely different plants. Black pepper is native to Asia; chili pepper is native to Central and South America. What linked them was Columbus's voyage. One of Columbus's goals was to find a new shipping route for the expensive spice black pepper by sailing to India. He reached the Americas instead, and when he encountered chili peppers there he concluded they were the same kind of pungent plant. He called them 'pepper' and brought them back to Europe, and the shared name stuck. The episode uses this as a jumping-off point for the origins of spiciness more broadly. Spices were originally used to preserve meat, and the argument—drawn from the book *The Secret of Our Success* (*Bunka ga Hito wo Shinka Saseta*)—is that accumulated selection pressure toward 'spiced food equals safe food' is what gave humans their taste for heat. ## The 'Throwaway Printer' and Epson's Aquarium The second question concerns the nickname for Canon's IP2700 home inkjet printer, released in 2010. The answer: buying a full set of replacement ink cartridges cost more than buying a brand-new printer, so whenever ink ran out it was cheaper to throw away the old unit and buy another one than to replace the cartridges. That dynamic earned the model its 'throwaway printer' reputation. Printer ink is a recurring internet meme for extreme liquid pricing—it's said to cost more per milliliter than human blood. The hosts also note that Epson operates an aquarium called Aqua Park Shinagawa inside the Shinagawa Prince Hotel, and offered the half-joking consolation that profits extracted from ink sales were at least being returned to the public in the form of marine life exhibits. ## A Pangram Meets an Iroha Poem The third question involves a Magic: The Gathering card translation. The English card text reads: 'The quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf.' The Japanese translation is: 歴戦ヘル、素早い黒コウに、生けドワーフたちをひらり、噛み下ろぬえ、胸褒めて、よつゆさそう. The English original is a pangram—it contains all 26 letters of the alphabet. The Japanese translation mirrors that feat by being composed as an iroha poem (色葉歌), a form that uses every kana in the Japanese syllabary exactly once. To complete the full kana set, phrases not present in the original English were added, but the overall atmosphere of the text was preserved. The card's name is 'Now I Know My ABCs,' and its win condition—you win the game if the combined card names of permanents you control contain all 26 letters of the alphabet—locks in the coherence of the whole translation scheme. The hosts describe it as something a translator could spend a career hoping for the chance to attempt. ## Dogs, fMRI, and the Prone Problem The fourth question examines a 2016 study of dog brains using fMRI. The reported finding was that dogs process the logical content of words in the left hemisphere and emotional intonation in the right—a result that attracted considerable attention. The finding later turned out to be invalidated by a basic methodological error rooted in body position. Humans lie on their backs inside an fMRI scanner, so brain images are oriented with the front of the brain pointing in one direction. Dogs, however, enter the scanner in a sitting posture that is closer to prone. This reversed the front-to-back orientation of the images, causing the brain to be mapped onto a different body region and vice versa. The study's conclusions could not stand once the swap was identified. ## 'Kame' the Dog and Place Names That Drift The fifth question asks why 'Kame' was a common dog name in Meiji-era Japan, on a par with Pochi and Kuro. The answer: foreign visitors arriving in Japan during the Meiji period would call out 'Come!' to dogs; Japanese observers heard the word 'kamu' as a proper name rather than a command, and 'Kame' gradually became established. The episode extends this into a discussion of instability in Japanese place-name readings. In Aichi Prefecture, the area written 鶴舞 is read 'Tsurumai' for the train station name but 'Tsuruma' for the adjacent park—the same written name with two accepted readings in the same location. 'Akihabara' (秋葉原) is described as having historically been pronounced 'Akihabara' before metathesis—a phonological process where adjacent sounds switch positions—and the entrenchment of the station name combined to spread the current pronunciation. The hosts mention approvingly that the NHK Accent Dictionary records both the Tokyo-standard accent and local accents for place names, calling it 'a thoughtful touch.' ## Takeaways - Black pepper and chili pepper share the name 'pepper' because Columbus misidentified chili peppers as the same pungent plant he was originally seeking, and the error became permanent. - The Japanese translation of a Magic: The Gathering pangram sentence was itself constructed as an iroha poem using every kana—a linguistic feat that aligns with the card's own alphabet-based win condition. - A 2016 dog fMRI study's conclusions were undermined by the fact that dogs lie prone rather than supine in the scanner, reversing the image orientation and swapping the brain with a different body region.