Yam (vegetable) Yam (vegetable) Yam is the common name for some plant species in the genus "Dioscorea" (family Dioscoreaceae) that form edible tubers. Yams are perennial herbaceous vines cultivated for the consumption of their starchy tubers in many temperate and tropical world regions. The tubers themselves are also called "yams", having numerous cultivars and related species. In parts of the United States and Canada, "yam" is sometimes used to refer to varieties of the unrelated sweet potato ("Ipomoea batatas"). The name, yam, appears to derive from Portuguese "inhame" or Canarian (Spain) "ñame", which derived from West African languages during trade. The main
Varieties of Arabic In the western parts of the Arab world, varieties are referred to as الدارجة "ad-dārija", and in the eastern parts, as العامية "al-ʿāmmiyya". Nearby varieties of Arabic are mostly mutually intelligible, but faraway varieties tend not to be. Varieties west of Egypt are particularly disparate, with Egyptian Arabic speakers claiming difficulty in understanding North African Arabic speakers, while North African Arabic speakers' ability to understand other Arabic speakers is mostly due to the widespread popularity of Egyptian Standard and to a lesser extent, the Lebanese popular media (this phenomenon is called asymmetric intelligibility). One factor in the differentiation of the