We all know salt as a simple white seasoning to add to our cooking, but it's much more than that.
In this episode, we'll be exploring salt's fascinating role throughout history – from how it served as a catalyst for revolutions to how it is featured in society.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about salt.
[00:00:26] You might look at it as a simple white seasoning, something to add to your cooking to give it some flavour.
[00:00:32] But, as we’ll see, salt has played a fascinating role throughout history.
[00:00:38] And that’s what we’ll be exploring today. We’ll talk about how salt has started revolutions, how it featured in society, language, and culture, and how this little rock changed the world in ways that you might find surprising…
[00:00:52] OK then, the history of salt.
[00:00:57] Let me start this episode by asking you what might seem like a simple question.
[00:01:04] What does salt taste like?
[00:01:08] It’s a taste that we all know; salt is a substance that is used in practically every cuisine worldwide, and it is now so cheap and plentiful that we all know what it tastes like.
[00:01:21] But if you had to describe it to an alien, or someone with no taste buds, what would you say?
[00:01:29] When I was thinking about this, my first thought was to say “salty”, but clearly that’s not much help to anyone.
[00:01:37] It is a strange thing, that a mineral that is so ubiquitous has a taste that is so hard to describe.
[00:01:45] But on the other hand, salt is elevated to a primary status where we describe things as “like salt”.
[00:01:54] Salt has a taste, an instantly recognisable one at that, but it serves a greater purpose than adding its own salty flavour. It intensifies other flavours, bringing out the taste of other ingredients in a meal.
[00:02:10] It can balance and soften flavours, helping a bitter dish taste less bitter or a sweet dish taste less sweet.
[00:02:19] It is a miracle ingredient, something that can be found in every kitchen, from Bogotà to Beijing, Stockholm to Samarkand.
[00:02:28] And it is also now astonishingly cheap, so cheap that it’s something most people will never think about reducing their use of because of its price.
[00:02:38] But, as you may well know, it has not always been this way.
[00:02:44] There is a popular legend that Moorish merchants in the sixth century would travel to subSaharan Africa where they could trade their salt for gold.
[00:02:55] The price was simple. One ounce of salt for one ounce of gold; a 1 to 1 trade, making salt as valuable as gold.
[00:03:07] There is some debate over whether that’s just an urban myth, whether salt was ever really on a par with gold, ounce for ounce, but what is undeniable is that salt’s magical and multi-use properties, combined with the difficulty of obtaining it in certain areas of the world, this made it significantly more expensive than it is today.
[00:03:31] Now, before we move any further with the history of salt, let’s just remind ourselves of what salt actually is.
[00:03:40] I mean, you know what it is and what it looks like; it is a white rock or crystal that can be ground down into a sort of powder.
[00:03:48] But to break it down even further, salt is a mineral made up of two chemical elements: Sodium and Chloride, and these two elements combine to form Sodium Chloride. What we know as salt will typically have some trace elements, some small amounts of other elements, but that is all it is.
[00:04:12] In terms of where salt comes from, it has two main sources:
[00:04:17] Firstly, the sea, of course. Seas and oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, and this water is salty. When the water evaporates, the salt doesn’t, so you are left with dry salt deposits. That’s one way of getting salt.
[00:04:35] Secondly, salt mines. Here, you don’t have the problem of having to separate the salt from water, but you do have the problem that these deposits are often deep underground, meaning that they are not particularly easy to reach.
[00:04:51] Yes, there are the above ground deposits of salt, but these are far from sufficient to meet global demand.
[00:04:59] And this was the case even going back thousands of years, which brings us nicely onto the story of the history of salt.
[00:05:07] Now, this isn’t going to be an exhaustive chronological history, nor are we going to try to cover every date in the history of salt, as there would simply be far too much.
[00:05:19] If you go back to the earliest archaeological discoveries, whether we are talking about Europe, Africa or Asia, there is usually some evidence of people processing salt.
[00:05:30] Going back to 5400 BC in Bulgaria, there was a salt mine.
[00:05:36] There’s evidence of a salt pan going back to at least 6000 BC in Shanxi province, in northern China.
[00:05:44] Now, the reason to use salt back then was more than solely as a flavouring for food. It had a much more important role than that: food preservation.
[00:05:57] If you cover meat and fish in salt, as you will know, it doesn’t go bad, as the bacteria that would otherwise grow can’t survive in a highly salty environment; they die, so salted meat or fish can remain good to eat for several months.
[00:06:14] Clearly, this made salt an incredibly valuable tool for society, as it meant that you didn’t have a window of only a few hours after catching or killing an animal before it went bad. It could be preserved with salt, taken on a trip, or simply stored for later use.
[00:06:33] But salt had another miraculous use. It was used as an antiseptic, to kill bacteria in a wound.
[00:06:42] For Roman soldiers who had suffered an injury in battle, a large cut to the leg, let’s say, salt could be applied directly onto the wound. It would sting, sure, it would be very painful, but the salt would kill the bacteria, preventing infection and helping the wound to heal.
[00:07:04] And, we’re not done quite yet; the uses of salt continue.
[00:07:07] We humans need salt in our diets to survive.
[00:07:13] Starting in the mid 20th century, there has been a bit of a backlash towards salt consumption, with doctors warning of the perils of a high salt diet, but there is one thing that’s just as bad, or perhaps worse, than a high-salt diet, and that’s a no salt diet.
[00:07:31] Salt, in small amounts, around 500 mg per day according to the Harvard School of Public Health, it is essential for human survival.
[00:07:41] Someone who found this out the hard way was Napoleon Bonaparte, as when his army was retreating from its ill-fated Russian campaign, it ran out of salt. Food couldn’t be preserved, and soldiers’ immune systems weakened due to their reduced salt intake.
[00:08:00] So, salt is a miracle mineral indeed.
[00:08:04] And as you might imagine, practically from the start of human civilization, salt was in high demand.
[00:08:11] Some of the earliest trade routes were based on the salt trade, with merchants travelling from areas where salt could be easily found to areas where salt was harder to come by.
[00:08:23] If you are an Italian and you’ve driven the Strada Statale 4, the highway number 4 you might know that this also goes by the name “Via Salaria”, the Salt Road, an ancient Roman trade route based on the transport of salt.
[00:08:40] Salt was the quintessential commodity; something that everyone wanted, was easy to value, because you could simply weigh it, didn’t go bad, and the only difficulty was transporting it from one place to another.
[00:08:56] Given its ubiquity and high demand, there are many instances of salt becoming the subject of high government taxes. After all, it was an easy target: easy to measure and something that people couldn’t live without.
[00:09:12] Perhaps the most famous example of a tax on salt will be well-known to a French listener, and that was something called La Gabelle. This started off in the Middle Ages as a tax on a collection of different agricultural products, but was changed to be a tax only on salt.
[00:09:34] Now, you might think that a tax on salt is nothing to write home about, it’s an unimportant part of history, but in the case of La Gabelle, nothing could be further from the truth.
[00:09:47] French people had to live with this tax from the 14th century.
[00:09:53] And it was loathed, it was hated. Different regions of France paid different levels of taxes on salt, leading to huge regional differences.
[00:10:06] According to one report, in 1790 the price of a large bag of salt could vary from 31 sous in Brittany, in Northern France, but if you went to Berry just a few hundred kilometres further south, you would pay 611 sou, 20 times as much, for exactly the same salt.
[00:10:31] What’s more, the richest in French society had all sorts of exemptions from this tax, leaving the peasants to pay these high prices.
[00:10:42] And in fact, dissatisfaction over La Gabelle is thought to have been one of the main catalysts for the French Revolution. Of course, the French Revolution didn’t happen only because French salt was too expensive, but the tax was so universally loathed and unfair that it certainly didn’t help with social unity and faith in the French monarchy.
[00:11:06] Salt would also come to play another important role across the Atlantic, in the American Revolution. As we heard earlier, salt was critical for preserving food and as a basic antiseptic. British forces tried to block off deliveries of salt to the American revolutionary forces, knowing full well that this would be as damaging to the Americans as a heavy military defeat.
[00:11:35] The result of this was an increase in salt smuggling, and an increase in domestic production, and of course the Americans proved victorious in their revolution, thankfully not completely running out of salt.
[00:11:49] Now, as you can see, salt throughout history has been much more than a mere seasoning; it dictated trade routes, played an important medical function, was a large source of revenue for nations, and had a hand in revolutions.
[00:12:07] Given its role in so many elements of life and history, it has left a lasting mark on language too. So given that this podcast is all about learning English, we are going to talk about some words and expressions related to salt in English. Several of these expressions might be exactly the same as in your language, but it is interesting to learn about them nonetheless.
[00:12:34] Salary is perhaps the best known word that comes from salt, and this comes from the Latin salarium, which was the allowance given to Roman soldiers to buy salt.
[00:12:47] Salad is a word that you might not have known comes from salt, but it does. It comes from the Latin word “sal”, meaning salt, and if you’re wondering why the two are linked, it was because salad was eaten salted.
[00:13:03] Now, moving on to expressions that you might hear in English, the first is to say that someone is “worth their salt”. This means that someone is good at their job in a way that is expected, so you might say, “any English teacher worth their salt would be able to explain the difference between it’s with an apostrophe and its without an apostrophe”.
[00:13:27] And if you are wondering where this comes from, it’s thought to come from Ancient Rome, where salt would be a part of your salary. So if you weren’t worth your salt, it meant that you weren’t good at your job, you weren’t deserving of your salary.
[00:13:43] Our next expression is “salt of the earth”, which means someone who is a very kind and good person, someone trustworthy and honourable, and someone who does not try to pretend to be anything other than what they are. You might know the origin of this already, as it’s an expression that exists in several other languages, but if you don’t, it actually comes from the Bible. In Jesus’s sermon on the mount, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, "You are the salt of the earth.”
[00:14:18] And you can use it in English in a completely non-religious way, you can refer to someone as “salt of the earth”, saying “Oh, Jim, he’s real salt of the Earth”, meaning that Jim is honest, trustworthy and not proud; he is a good, humble man.
[00:14:37] And finally, our third expression is one that you might know, but it’s a good one. And that is to “take it or take something with a pinch of salt”, or in the US it’s more common to hear “take it with a grain of salt”. A grain means a single piece of salt, and a “pinch” means a small amount. The two expressions mean the same thing, and if you take something with a pinch or a grain of salt, you do not take it seriously.
[00:15:08] So, you might say to a colleague, “the boss said that we would all be getting pay rises and extra holiday this year but I’d take that with a grain of salt”.
[00:15:16] In terms of where this expression comes from, its origins are slightly more murky and debated, but one theory has it going all the way back to Pliny the Elder in 77AD, who translated a recipe for an antidote to poison, which included a small amount of salt. In any case, the original meaning has changed significantly, and you can find people in English speaking countries using this expression in a decidedly non-medical setting.
[00:15:50] So, there we have it, a brief salty history of one of, if not the most important mineral in the history of the world.
[00:15:59] So next time you sit down for dinner, take your first mouthful, and think, “hmm, this dish needs a little salt”, and you reach for that little white container, well you’ll know a little bit more about the history of “The Most Precious Rock In The World”.
[00:16:16] OK then, that is it for today's episode on salt.
[00:16:20] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:16:24] As always, I'd love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:16:27] What words or expressions come from salt in your language? How would you describe salt? And here’s a trickier one to think about: how would the world be different were there no salt?
[00:16:39] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:16:42] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:16:50] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:16:55] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about salt.
[00:00:26] You might look at it as a simple white seasoning, something to add to your cooking to give it some flavour.
[00:00:32] But, as we’ll see, salt has played a fascinating role throughout history.
[00:00:38] And that’s what we’ll be exploring today. We’ll talk about how salt has started revolutions, how it featured in society, language, and culture, and how this little rock changed the world in ways that you might find surprising…
[00:00:52] OK then, the history of salt.
[00:00:57] Let me start this episode by asking you what might seem like a simple question.
[00:01:04] What does salt taste like?
[00:01:08] It’s a taste that we all know; salt is a substance that is used in practically every cuisine worldwide, and it is now so cheap and plentiful that we all know what it tastes like.
[00:01:21] But if you had to describe it to an alien, or someone with no taste buds, what would you say?
[00:01:29] When I was thinking about this, my first thought was to say “salty”, but clearly that’s not much help to anyone.
[00:01:37] It is a strange thing, that a mineral that is so ubiquitous has a taste that is so hard to describe.
[00:01:45] But on the other hand, salt is elevated to a primary status where we describe things as “like salt”.
[00:01:54] Salt has a taste, an instantly recognisable one at that, but it serves a greater purpose than adding its own salty flavour. It intensifies other flavours, bringing out the taste of other ingredients in a meal.
[00:02:10] It can balance and soften flavours, helping a bitter dish taste less bitter or a sweet dish taste less sweet.
[00:02:19] It is a miracle ingredient, something that can be found in every kitchen, from Bogotà to Beijing, Stockholm to Samarkand.
[00:02:28] And it is also now astonishingly cheap, so cheap that it’s something most people will never think about reducing their use of because of its price.
[00:02:38] But, as you may well know, it has not always been this way.
[00:02:44] There is a popular legend that Moorish merchants in the sixth century would travel to subSaharan Africa where they could trade their salt for gold.
[00:02:55] The price was simple. One ounce of salt for one ounce of gold; a 1 to 1 trade, making salt as valuable as gold.
[00:03:07] There is some debate over whether that’s just an urban myth, whether salt was ever really on a par with gold, ounce for ounce, but what is undeniable is that salt’s magical and multi-use properties, combined with the difficulty of obtaining it in certain areas of the world, this made it significantly more expensive than it is today.
[00:03:31] Now, before we move any further with the history of salt, let’s just remind ourselves of what salt actually is.
[00:03:40] I mean, you know what it is and what it looks like; it is a white rock or crystal that can be ground down into a sort of powder.
[00:03:48] But to break it down even further, salt is a mineral made up of two chemical elements: Sodium and Chloride, and these two elements combine to form Sodium Chloride. What we know as salt will typically have some trace elements, some small amounts of other elements, but that is all it is.
[00:04:12] In terms of where salt comes from, it has two main sources:
[00:04:17] Firstly, the sea, of course. Seas and oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, and this water is salty. When the water evaporates, the salt doesn’t, so you are left with dry salt deposits. That’s one way of getting salt.
[00:04:35] Secondly, salt mines. Here, you don’t have the problem of having to separate the salt from water, but you do have the problem that these deposits are often deep underground, meaning that they are not particularly easy to reach.
[00:04:51] Yes, there are the above ground deposits of salt, but these are far from sufficient to meet global demand.
[00:04:59] And this was the case even going back thousands of years, which brings us nicely onto the story of the history of salt.
[00:05:07] Now, this isn’t going to be an exhaustive chronological history, nor are we going to try to cover every date in the history of salt, as there would simply be far too much.
[00:05:19] If you go back to the earliest archaeological discoveries, whether we are talking about Europe, Africa or Asia, there is usually some evidence of people processing salt.
[00:05:30] Going back to 5400 BC in Bulgaria, there was a salt mine.
[00:05:36] There’s evidence of a salt pan going back to at least 6000 BC in Shanxi province, in northern China.
[00:05:44] Now, the reason to use salt back then was more than solely as a flavouring for food. It had a much more important role than that: food preservation.
[00:05:57] If you cover meat and fish in salt, as you will know, it doesn’t go bad, as the bacteria that would otherwise grow can’t survive in a highly salty environment; they die, so salted meat or fish can remain good to eat for several months.
[00:06:14] Clearly, this made salt an incredibly valuable tool for society, as it meant that you didn’t have a window of only a few hours after catching or killing an animal before it went bad. It could be preserved with salt, taken on a trip, or simply stored for later use.
[00:06:33] But salt had another miraculous use. It was used as an antiseptic, to kill bacteria in a wound.
[00:06:42] For Roman soldiers who had suffered an injury in battle, a large cut to the leg, let’s say, salt could be applied directly onto the wound. It would sting, sure, it would be very painful, but the salt would kill the bacteria, preventing infection and helping the wound to heal.
[00:07:04] And, we’re not done quite yet; the uses of salt continue.
[00:07:07] We humans need salt in our diets to survive.
[00:07:13] Starting in the mid 20th century, there has been a bit of a backlash towards salt consumption, with doctors warning of the perils of a high salt diet, but there is one thing that’s just as bad, or perhaps worse, than a high-salt diet, and that’s a no salt diet.
[00:07:31] Salt, in small amounts, around 500 mg per day according to the Harvard School of Public Health, it is essential for human survival.
[00:07:41] Someone who found this out the hard way was Napoleon Bonaparte, as when his army was retreating from its ill-fated Russian campaign, it ran out of salt. Food couldn’t be preserved, and soldiers’ immune systems weakened due to their reduced salt intake.
[00:08:00] So, salt is a miracle mineral indeed.
[00:08:04] And as you might imagine, practically from the start of human civilization, salt was in high demand.
[00:08:11] Some of the earliest trade routes were based on the salt trade, with merchants travelling from areas where salt could be easily found to areas where salt was harder to come by.
[00:08:23] If you are an Italian and you’ve driven the Strada Statale 4, the highway number 4 you might know that this also goes by the name “Via Salaria”, the Salt Road, an ancient Roman trade route based on the transport of salt.
[00:08:40] Salt was the quintessential commodity; something that everyone wanted, was easy to value, because you could simply weigh it, didn’t go bad, and the only difficulty was transporting it from one place to another.
[00:08:56] Given its ubiquity and high demand, there are many instances of salt becoming the subject of high government taxes. After all, it was an easy target: easy to measure and something that people couldn’t live without.
[00:09:12] Perhaps the most famous example of a tax on salt will be well-known to a French listener, and that was something called La Gabelle. This started off in the Middle Ages as a tax on a collection of different agricultural products, but was changed to be a tax only on salt.
[00:09:34] Now, you might think that a tax on salt is nothing to write home about, it’s an unimportant part of history, but in the case of La Gabelle, nothing could be further from the truth.
[00:09:47] French people had to live with this tax from the 14th century.
[00:09:53] And it was loathed, it was hated. Different regions of France paid different levels of taxes on salt, leading to huge regional differences.
[00:10:06] According to one report, in 1790 the price of a large bag of salt could vary from 31 sous in Brittany, in Northern France, but if you went to Berry just a few hundred kilometres further south, you would pay 611 sou, 20 times as much, for exactly the same salt.
[00:10:31] What’s more, the richest in French society had all sorts of exemptions from this tax, leaving the peasants to pay these high prices.
[00:10:42] And in fact, dissatisfaction over La Gabelle is thought to have been one of the main catalysts for the French Revolution. Of course, the French Revolution didn’t happen only because French salt was too expensive, but the tax was so universally loathed and unfair that it certainly didn’t help with social unity and faith in the French monarchy.
[00:11:06] Salt would also come to play another important role across the Atlantic, in the American Revolution. As we heard earlier, salt was critical for preserving food and as a basic antiseptic. British forces tried to block off deliveries of salt to the American revolutionary forces, knowing full well that this would be as damaging to the Americans as a heavy military defeat.
[00:11:35] The result of this was an increase in salt smuggling, and an increase in domestic production, and of course the Americans proved victorious in their revolution, thankfully not completely running out of salt.
[00:11:49] Now, as you can see, salt throughout history has been much more than a mere seasoning; it dictated trade routes, played an important medical function, was a large source of revenue for nations, and had a hand in revolutions.
[00:12:07] Given its role in so many elements of life and history, it has left a lasting mark on language too. So given that this podcast is all about learning English, we are going to talk about some words and expressions related to salt in English. Several of these expressions might be exactly the same as in your language, but it is interesting to learn about them nonetheless.
[00:12:34] Salary is perhaps the best known word that comes from salt, and this comes from the Latin salarium, which was the allowance given to Roman soldiers to buy salt.
[00:12:47] Salad is a word that you might not have known comes from salt, but it does. It comes from the Latin word “sal”, meaning salt, and if you’re wondering why the two are linked, it was because salad was eaten salted.
[00:13:03] Now, moving on to expressions that you might hear in English, the first is to say that someone is “worth their salt”. This means that someone is good at their job in a way that is expected, so you might say, “any English teacher worth their salt would be able to explain the difference between it’s with an apostrophe and its without an apostrophe”.
[00:13:27] And if you are wondering where this comes from, it’s thought to come from Ancient Rome, where salt would be a part of your salary. So if you weren’t worth your salt, it meant that you weren’t good at your job, you weren’t deserving of your salary.
[00:13:43] Our next expression is “salt of the earth”, which means someone who is a very kind and good person, someone trustworthy and honourable, and someone who does not try to pretend to be anything other than what they are. You might know the origin of this already, as it’s an expression that exists in several other languages, but if you don’t, it actually comes from the Bible. In Jesus’s sermon on the mount, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, "You are the salt of the earth.”
[00:14:18] And you can use it in English in a completely non-religious way, you can refer to someone as “salt of the earth”, saying “Oh, Jim, he’s real salt of the Earth”, meaning that Jim is honest, trustworthy and not proud; he is a good, humble man.
[00:14:37] And finally, our third expression is one that you might know, but it’s a good one. And that is to “take it or take something with a pinch of salt”, or in the US it’s more common to hear “take it with a grain of salt”. A grain means a single piece of salt, and a “pinch” means a small amount. The two expressions mean the same thing, and if you take something with a pinch or a grain of salt, you do not take it seriously.
[00:15:08] So, you might say to a colleague, “the boss said that we would all be getting pay rises and extra holiday this year but I’d take that with a grain of salt”.
[00:15:16] In terms of where this expression comes from, its origins are slightly more murky and debated, but one theory has it going all the way back to Pliny the Elder in 77AD, who translated a recipe for an antidote to poison, which included a small amount of salt. In any case, the original meaning has changed significantly, and you can find people in English speaking countries using this expression in a decidedly non-medical setting.
[00:15:50] So, there we have it, a brief salty history of one of, if not the most important mineral in the history of the world.
[00:15:59] So next time you sit down for dinner, take your first mouthful, and think, “hmm, this dish needs a little salt”, and you reach for that little white container, well you’ll know a little bit more about the history of “The Most Precious Rock In The World”.
[00:16:16] OK then, that is it for today's episode on salt.
[00:16:20] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:16:24] As always, I'd love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:16:27] What words or expressions come from salt in your language? How would you describe salt? And here’s a trickier one to think about: how would the world be different were there no salt?
[00:16:39] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:16:42] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:16:50] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:16:55] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about salt.
[00:00:26] You might look at it as a simple white seasoning, something to add to your cooking to give it some flavour.
[00:00:32] But, as we’ll see, salt has played a fascinating role throughout history.
[00:00:38] And that’s what we’ll be exploring today. We’ll talk about how salt has started revolutions, how it featured in society, language, and culture, and how this little rock changed the world in ways that you might find surprising…
[00:00:52] OK then, the history of salt.
[00:00:57] Let me start this episode by asking you what might seem like a simple question.
[00:01:04] What does salt taste like?
[00:01:08] It’s a taste that we all know; salt is a substance that is used in practically every cuisine worldwide, and it is now so cheap and plentiful that we all know what it tastes like.
[00:01:21] But if you had to describe it to an alien, or someone with no taste buds, what would you say?
[00:01:29] When I was thinking about this, my first thought was to say “salty”, but clearly that’s not much help to anyone.
[00:01:37] It is a strange thing, that a mineral that is so ubiquitous has a taste that is so hard to describe.
[00:01:45] But on the other hand, salt is elevated to a primary status where we describe things as “like salt”.
[00:01:54] Salt has a taste, an instantly recognisable one at that, but it serves a greater purpose than adding its own salty flavour. It intensifies other flavours, bringing out the taste of other ingredients in a meal.
[00:02:10] It can balance and soften flavours, helping a bitter dish taste less bitter or a sweet dish taste less sweet.
[00:02:19] It is a miracle ingredient, something that can be found in every kitchen, from Bogotà to Beijing, Stockholm to Samarkand.
[00:02:28] And it is also now astonishingly cheap, so cheap that it’s something most people will never think about reducing their use of because of its price.
[00:02:38] But, as you may well know, it has not always been this way.
[00:02:44] There is a popular legend that Moorish merchants in the sixth century would travel to subSaharan Africa where they could trade their salt for gold.
[00:02:55] The price was simple. One ounce of salt for one ounce of gold; a 1 to 1 trade, making salt as valuable as gold.
[00:03:07] There is some debate over whether that’s just an urban myth, whether salt was ever really on a par with gold, ounce for ounce, but what is undeniable is that salt’s magical and multi-use properties, combined with the difficulty of obtaining it in certain areas of the world, this made it significantly more expensive than it is today.
[00:03:31] Now, before we move any further with the history of salt, let’s just remind ourselves of what salt actually is.
[00:03:40] I mean, you know what it is and what it looks like; it is a white rock or crystal that can be ground down into a sort of powder.
[00:03:48] But to break it down even further, salt is a mineral made up of two chemical elements: Sodium and Chloride, and these two elements combine to form Sodium Chloride. What we know as salt will typically have some trace elements, some small amounts of other elements, but that is all it is.
[00:04:12] In terms of where salt comes from, it has two main sources:
[00:04:17] Firstly, the sea, of course. Seas and oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, and this water is salty. When the water evaporates, the salt doesn’t, so you are left with dry salt deposits. That’s one way of getting salt.
[00:04:35] Secondly, salt mines. Here, you don’t have the problem of having to separate the salt from water, but you do have the problem that these deposits are often deep underground, meaning that they are not particularly easy to reach.
[00:04:51] Yes, there are the above ground deposits of salt, but these are far from sufficient to meet global demand.
[00:04:59] And this was the case even going back thousands of years, which brings us nicely onto the story of the history of salt.
[00:05:07] Now, this isn’t going to be an exhaustive chronological history, nor are we going to try to cover every date in the history of salt, as there would simply be far too much.
[00:05:19] If you go back to the earliest archaeological discoveries, whether we are talking about Europe, Africa or Asia, there is usually some evidence of people processing salt.
[00:05:30] Going back to 5400 BC in Bulgaria, there was a salt mine.
[00:05:36] There’s evidence of a salt pan going back to at least 6000 BC in Shanxi province, in northern China.
[00:05:44] Now, the reason to use salt back then was more than solely as a flavouring for food. It had a much more important role than that: food preservation.
[00:05:57] If you cover meat and fish in salt, as you will know, it doesn’t go bad, as the bacteria that would otherwise grow can’t survive in a highly salty environment; they die, so salted meat or fish can remain good to eat for several months.
[00:06:14] Clearly, this made salt an incredibly valuable tool for society, as it meant that you didn’t have a window of only a few hours after catching or killing an animal before it went bad. It could be preserved with salt, taken on a trip, or simply stored for later use.
[00:06:33] But salt had another miraculous use. It was used as an antiseptic, to kill bacteria in a wound.
[00:06:42] For Roman soldiers who had suffered an injury in battle, a large cut to the leg, let’s say, salt could be applied directly onto the wound. It would sting, sure, it would be very painful, but the salt would kill the bacteria, preventing infection and helping the wound to heal.
[00:07:04] And, we’re not done quite yet; the uses of salt continue.
[00:07:07] We humans need salt in our diets to survive.
[00:07:13] Starting in the mid 20th century, there has been a bit of a backlash towards salt consumption, with doctors warning of the perils of a high salt diet, but there is one thing that’s just as bad, or perhaps worse, than a high-salt diet, and that’s a no salt diet.
[00:07:31] Salt, in small amounts, around 500 mg per day according to the Harvard School of Public Health, it is essential for human survival.
[00:07:41] Someone who found this out the hard way was Napoleon Bonaparte, as when his army was retreating from its ill-fated Russian campaign, it ran out of salt. Food couldn’t be preserved, and soldiers’ immune systems weakened due to their reduced salt intake.
[00:08:00] So, salt is a miracle mineral indeed.
[00:08:04] And as you might imagine, practically from the start of human civilization, salt was in high demand.
[00:08:11] Some of the earliest trade routes were based on the salt trade, with merchants travelling from areas where salt could be easily found to areas where salt was harder to come by.
[00:08:23] If you are an Italian and you’ve driven the Strada Statale 4, the highway number 4 you might know that this also goes by the name “Via Salaria”, the Salt Road, an ancient Roman trade route based on the transport of salt.
[00:08:40] Salt was the quintessential commodity; something that everyone wanted, was easy to value, because you could simply weigh it, didn’t go bad, and the only difficulty was transporting it from one place to another.
[00:08:56] Given its ubiquity and high demand, there are many instances of salt becoming the subject of high government taxes. After all, it was an easy target: easy to measure and something that people couldn’t live without.
[00:09:12] Perhaps the most famous example of a tax on salt will be well-known to a French listener, and that was something called La Gabelle. This started off in the Middle Ages as a tax on a collection of different agricultural products, but was changed to be a tax only on salt.
[00:09:34] Now, you might think that a tax on salt is nothing to write home about, it’s an unimportant part of history, but in the case of La Gabelle, nothing could be further from the truth.
[00:09:47] French people had to live with this tax from the 14th century.
[00:09:53] And it was loathed, it was hated. Different regions of France paid different levels of taxes on salt, leading to huge regional differences.
[00:10:06] According to one report, in 1790 the price of a large bag of salt could vary from 31 sous in Brittany, in Northern France, but if you went to Berry just a few hundred kilometres further south, you would pay 611 sou, 20 times as much, for exactly the same salt.
[00:10:31] What’s more, the richest in French society had all sorts of exemptions from this tax, leaving the peasants to pay these high prices.
[00:10:42] And in fact, dissatisfaction over La Gabelle is thought to have been one of the main catalysts for the French Revolution. Of course, the French Revolution didn’t happen only because French salt was too expensive, but the tax was so universally loathed and unfair that it certainly didn’t help with social unity and faith in the French monarchy.
[00:11:06] Salt would also come to play another important role across the Atlantic, in the American Revolution. As we heard earlier, salt was critical for preserving food and as a basic antiseptic. British forces tried to block off deliveries of salt to the American revolutionary forces, knowing full well that this would be as damaging to the Americans as a heavy military defeat.
[00:11:35] The result of this was an increase in salt smuggling, and an increase in domestic production, and of course the Americans proved victorious in their revolution, thankfully not completely running out of salt.
[00:11:49] Now, as you can see, salt throughout history has been much more than a mere seasoning; it dictated trade routes, played an important medical function, was a large source of revenue for nations, and had a hand in revolutions.
[00:12:07] Given its role in so many elements of life and history, it has left a lasting mark on language too. So given that this podcast is all about learning English, we are going to talk about some words and expressions related to salt in English. Several of these expressions might be exactly the same as in your language, but it is interesting to learn about them nonetheless.
[00:12:34] Salary is perhaps the best known word that comes from salt, and this comes from the Latin salarium, which was the allowance given to Roman soldiers to buy salt.
[00:12:47] Salad is a word that you might not have known comes from salt, but it does. It comes from the Latin word “sal”, meaning salt, and if you’re wondering why the two are linked, it was because salad was eaten salted.
[00:13:03] Now, moving on to expressions that you might hear in English, the first is to say that someone is “worth their salt”. This means that someone is good at their job in a way that is expected, so you might say, “any English teacher worth their salt would be able to explain the difference between it’s with an apostrophe and its without an apostrophe”.
[00:13:27] And if you are wondering where this comes from, it’s thought to come from Ancient Rome, where salt would be a part of your salary. So if you weren’t worth your salt, it meant that you weren’t good at your job, you weren’t deserving of your salary.
[00:13:43] Our next expression is “salt of the earth”, which means someone who is a very kind and good person, someone trustworthy and honourable, and someone who does not try to pretend to be anything other than what they are. You might know the origin of this already, as it’s an expression that exists in several other languages, but if you don’t, it actually comes from the Bible. In Jesus’s sermon on the mount, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples, "You are the salt of the earth.”
[00:14:18] And you can use it in English in a completely non-religious way, you can refer to someone as “salt of the earth”, saying “Oh, Jim, he’s real salt of the Earth”, meaning that Jim is honest, trustworthy and not proud; he is a good, humble man.
[00:14:37] And finally, our third expression is one that you might know, but it’s a good one. And that is to “take it or take something with a pinch of salt”, or in the US it’s more common to hear “take it with a grain of salt”. A grain means a single piece of salt, and a “pinch” means a small amount. The two expressions mean the same thing, and if you take something with a pinch or a grain of salt, you do not take it seriously.
[00:15:08] So, you might say to a colleague, “the boss said that we would all be getting pay rises and extra holiday this year but I’d take that with a grain of salt”.
[00:15:16] In terms of where this expression comes from, its origins are slightly more murky and debated, but one theory has it going all the way back to Pliny the Elder in 77AD, who translated a recipe for an antidote to poison, which included a small amount of salt. In any case, the original meaning has changed significantly, and you can find people in English speaking countries using this expression in a decidedly non-medical setting.
[00:15:50] So, there we have it, a brief salty history of one of, if not the most important mineral in the history of the world.
[00:15:59] So next time you sit down for dinner, take your first mouthful, and think, “hmm, this dish needs a little salt”, and you reach for that little white container, well you’ll know a little bit more about the history of “The Most Precious Rock In The World”.
[00:16:16] OK then, that is it for today's episode on salt.
[00:16:20] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that you've learnt something new.
[00:16:24] As always, I'd love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:16:27] What words or expressions come from salt in your language? How would you describe salt? And here’s a trickier one to think about: how would the world be different were there no salt?
[00:16:39] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:16:42] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:16:50] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:16:55] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
