How to Say Barbecue Around the World

“THE WORD BARBECUE is as loaded as the average plateful at a backyard cookout. It’s both a noun and a verb. One theory posits that it derives from barbacoa, the Spanish term for the Taíno technique of slow-grilling meat over hot coals. This would plant barbecue’s etymological roots in the Caribbean, but the act of smoking, pit roasting, and grilling heaps of beef, pork, poultry, and other proteins is grounded in customs that span nearly every continent,” as Alex Bresler writes in BBQ Is as Much a Cultural Tradition as a Culinary One . Below is a list of all the major languages and how they call what in the United States is known as barbecue. While the term barbecue is tied to barbacoa – the Spanish method of cooking – the methods of barbecuing has been traced to the cavemen who discovered fire and then a multitude of cooking methods were born..