Vegetable Photo: Habañero Hot Peppers

Habañero

The habanero is a variety of chili pepper. When used in English, it is sometimes spelled (and pronounced) habañero, the tilde being added as a hyperforeignism (patterned after jalapeño). Unripe habaneros are green, and they color as they mature. Common colors are orange and red, but white, brown, yellow, and pink are also seen. Typically, a ripe habanero chili is 2–6 cm (0.8–2.4 in) long. Habanero chilis are very hot, rated 100,000–350,000 on the Scoville scale.

The name means “someone or something from La Habana”, or as it is known in English, Havana (“b” and “v” being interchangeable phonetically in Spanish). As the Spanish name “La Habana” contains a normal “n” instead of an “ñ”, the pepper’s name contains an “n” as well. (The suffix here is “-ero”.) This is different from other Spanish demonyms, such as jalapeños (which come from Jalapa), where the suffix itself (“-eño”) contains an “ñ”.

During the process of importing “jalapeño” and “habanero” into English, the similarity of the words and their subject matter have led to a hyperforeignism in which the tilde is sometimes added to "habanero" resulting in habañero. While this spelling (and pronunciation) would be incorrect in the original Spanish language, spelling and pronunciation changes are quite common when importing foreign language words into English.

(Source: Wikipedia.org)

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