Funny enough it seems in Persian there's no clear distinction between lime and lemon. My wife calls both "limoo". She does however claim there's a particular cultivars "limoo Shirin" that is supposedly very sweet (and hard to find outside of Iran)
Lime is called "limoo Shirazi", meaning Lemon of Shiraz (a city). But you are right that both are usually just called limoo.
Limoo Shirin is a rather common fruit here, I didn't expect that it is not easily found outside Iran. Although it doesn't taste that good and is usually mixed with orange juice or consumed for health benefits (it's considered good for preventing/treating cold).
I heard that the normal yellow limes we can buy in Europe aren't as sweet as limoo shirin. however it seems to be the same plant, just a different cultivar. Anyway, now I have yet another reason to go to Iran
We don't have this distinction in Brazilian Portuguese too.
When you refer to lemons you're usually referring to the green lime (which is called "limão-taiti", meaning tahiti lemon).
When we want to refer to the yellow lemon (the common lemon outside South America) we usually say Sicilian lemon.
There's another very common type of lime which we refer to as "limão-capeta" (devil's lemon), it's a small, orange-color lime with a less sour taste than the green lime.
So, in short, we don't distinguish between lemon and lime, everything is a lemon.
We had a Brazilian come to visit us in Europe and she was wondering why do we insist on using Sicilian lemons instead of the "normal" ones. When she went out to buy limes, she understood it at the cash desk.
I believe this is true in Hindi as well, both are “nimbu”. It’s generally not a problem because we overwhelmingly buy limes for food use at home but it did take a bit to figure out (when I was younger, of course) that the two fruits that I knew from school were not something my mother distinguished.
What about toranj? I still have no idea which citrus fruit it is. I know that the traditional pattern in the middle of Persian carpets is called this way, and it has some significance in Sufi symbolism. (plus there's Toranj by one of my favourite modern Iranian musicians -- Mohsen Namjoo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a64OFz4PkkA)
Coincidentally, or maybe not, I honestly don't know. Brazilian Portuguese also has a single name for lime and lemon, we call both "limão" (pronounced with a nasalized end).
The yellow sweet lemon we call it Sicilian lemon, another fruit name with origin from a country name
That seems bizarre, they’re different fruits, they taste different - how can you just call them both the same thing? Doesn’t that cause unnecessary confusion? Or do they just call them like ‘green thing’ and ‘yellow thing?’
I can’t recall having the sour variety of lemon in Iran. There’s lemon (english lime), and there’s sweet lemon. Well, it is only sweet if you have it in the first couple of seconds after opening. After exposure to the air, it doesn’t taste that great.
That's exactly what my wife said too, the limoo shirin is only sweet just after peeling/juicing and turns bitter fast. I looked it up and looks very similar to the "standard" yellow lemons we get in Europe, mostly grown in Spain and Italy. However she's adamant that they don't taste the same
Artificial lemon flavours that you find in candy and cough syrup taste much more like “sweet lemon” than the typical lemon found in North America. It is sweet when eaten within the first minute or so and bland afterwards. It does not taste acidic at all.
