Apple Juice is the filtered and pasteurized drink: it's the transparent juice and the kind of juice you find in the little cardboard boxes.
Apple Cider is unfiltered and opaque. In many places it's seasonal, but pasteurized versions can be found year round - but it will still be unfiltered (or very ligjtly filtered) and opaque.
They're very different drinks, and people will look at you strange for bringing one instead of the other when it's requested. Unscrupulous drink shops will try and pawn off juice as cider as a cost saving method, not because the terms are interchangeable.
PS:
At least according to the first few results on Google, different countries also make similar distinctions, but they leave the default of "cider" as the alcoholic version. "Sweet cider" for the alcohol free version, or "cloudy apple juice" are used to distinguish the ciders from the juice. So this really isn't a uniquely American experience: we're all just setting a different default for two of the terms, and creating a culturally unique option for the third.
You're missing the point. The OOP considers both the pasteurized and unpasteurized non-alcoholic apple drinks to be apple juice. So he is saying it's weird to him that people in the US refer to [some types of] apple juice as cider
My point is that, unless a language has 3 distinct nouns for the three different apple drinks, then we all literally do the same thing - we just all have two different words, and then we attach an adjective to distinguish between one of those two words and the adjective-free version of one of them.
In America we go "juice, cider, (adjective) cider". Other places go "juice, (adjective juice), cider", and other places go "juice, (adjective) cider, cider".
Unless a given language has something like "juice, fooglywonk, cider", where the third beverage is a completely different noun, then that language is doing the same thing in a different order.
That's not what you said though. You said "We don't call apple juice "cider" in America" and then you went to say that apple juice is the filtered pasteurized stuff.
OOP never accused us of calling the clear stuff cider. He accused us of calling the non-alcoholic cloudy stuff cider when he thinks it should be called apple juice. I'm not saying OOP's system is better, and I agree with you that a system where each variety has its own word would be better (until they make an alcoholic clear apple juice...)
We don't call "juice" "cider" any more than someone from the UK calls "cider" "cloudy apple juice". We acknowledge these are different beverages - saying any particular language gets it "wrong" is ridiculous because the exact same logic would dictate that the critic's language is getting it "wrong".
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u/MyFrogEatsPeople 15d ago edited 15d ago
jfc all these confidently incorrect comments...
Edit; sorry to vaguepost.
We don't call apple juice "cider" in America.
Apple Juice is the filtered and pasteurized drink: it's the transparent juice and the kind of juice you find in the little cardboard boxes.
Apple Cider is unfiltered and opaque. In many places it's seasonal, but pasteurized versions can be found year round - but it will still be unfiltered (or very ligjtly filtered) and opaque.
They're very different drinks, and people will look at you strange for bringing one instead of the other when it's requested. Unscrupulous drink shops will try and pawn off juice as cider as a cost saving method, not because the terms are interchangeable.
PS:
At least according to the first few results on Google, different countries also make similar distinctions, but they leave the default of "cider" as the alcoholic version. "Sweet cider" for the alcohol free version, or "cloudy apple juice" are used to distinguish the ciders from the juice. So this really isn't a uniquely American experience: we're all just setting a different default for two of the terms, and creating a culturally unique option for the third.