Talk:Yam

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Plants

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Making yam (vegetable) the primary topic

It seems that yam (vegetable) is easily the primary topic for all meanings of the term "yam". Is there any disagreement to moving "yam (vegetable)" to "yam", and moving this disambiguation page to "yam (disambiguation)"? Providing there is not, I will go ahead and move it. Not only will it aid in searching, but there will be fewer to no links to the disambiguation page. -- Nataly a 18:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that in the US, "yam" officially refers to I. Batatus, not Dioscorea. It's a US vs. UK difference. (No, I don't know where Canada and Australia fall. It's really kind of irrelevant.) (I would also say this isn't the same as "color" vs. "colour," since this is a disambguation page, and the entire point is not to settle on a single usage.) Twin Bird (talk) 05:40, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Erroneously?"

I don't believe the use of "yam" to refer to the sweet potato to be erroneous, except to this strictest of UK prescriptivists. It's not even like "American," where there are political reasons for the argument; it's just that government usage in the US considers "yam" and "sweet potato" to be synonyms, referring to the tuber of the plant Ipomoea Batatus. Twin Bird (talk) 05:41, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]