A 'Patato'?

from Elliott
We have a wide variety of fruits and vegetables here. While many of them are things we are familiar with some are new to us. There have been times when we ask about something we are used to in the US only to have them look funny at us! Once we asked for pecans and after being told they did not know what we were talking about at a few stores we did find one person that said no but then showed us something called 'pecan nuts' and asked is this would work instead. It was indeed what we were looking for (imported from the US) but pronounced 'pee ka nuts' . They still did not have Karo syrup so no pie for us!

Sweet Potato is another one. They have something they call that but they are white on the inside and not very sweet. Sometimes though at a specialty shop they have what we understand to be sweet potatoes. And they are so strange to the local folks they have to label them with a sticker that says, ' Orange flesh sweet patato'.

They get confused with spelling of potato also but I don't think 'patato' is one of our versions. Sometimes we find two different spellings on a package for the same thing but that is because of the 11 official languages in South Africa but I do not think that 'patato' is a proper spelling in any of those languages.