The English for “ananas” is “pineapple”, did the English really think they grew on pine trees?
It’s their superficial resemblance to pinecones.
It’s a bit cherry picked, but only a bit, since there are a few languages that just copied the English word later on.
Japanese and Korean come to mind.That actually makes it funnier to me because ananas would be easier to pronounce in Japanese vs pineapple. Ananansu(u is silent) vs Painappuru.
Oh absolutely!
They just had no ananas exposure beyond that from the Americans.
Spanish conveniently missing
Here’s how the creation of the graphic went:
- Create a binary
- Ignore vast majority (of people working with subject)
- slap together chart, cherrypicking
- Gloat
And anthough it might be correct, I’ve never head anyone say mañana in Basque. We just use piña(pinia)
Fun fact: no one knows why us squid are called that in English and no other language calls us anything like that.
i call bullshit. its “abacaxi” in portuguese, not nanana
“Apple” is Old English for “fruit”, not specifically apple.
And apparently “pineapple” for the tropical fruit predates “pine cone”, OE used “pine nut”.
Earliest use of “pineapple” is 14th century translation for “pomegranate”.
Probably to avoid confusion with bananas?
Is english known for trying to avoid confusion?
Oh you can’t even imagine the amount of times I put a pineapple up there.
Here i go, imagining again.
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There is no such thing as a pineapple tree. That’s an AI image.
Pineapples grow in an even more ridiculous way.
Holy shit. It’s insane that random AI generated drivel and misinformation has already started seeping into random conversations like this. It really has already become completely ubiquitous, hasn’t it? 🤦🏻♂️ OOF
Thankfully due to the costs and training rot, its not going to get worse.
Pineapples don’t grow on trees. Take that A’I’ slop somewhere else.
👆 ai detected
Those look closer to durian than pineapples tbh.
Durian have a far worse reputation than their actual reality. Surströmming, on the other hand, over-achieves its reputation.
that image looks pretty crazy!😮
It’s AI-generated non-sense. Pineapples grow on small plants like this:
ahh that makes a lot more sense as I’m currently following MegadethRulz’s homegrown pineapple saga here :D
Yeah, I grabbed it at random froma search results. I think it’s not real.
Pineapples are a freak fruit though.They grow on some kind of weird weed like some kind of joke.
“apple” used to be a generic term for fruit. So it’s actually “fruit of the earth”, the French are poetic like that
“apple” used to be a generic term for fruit.
Oh, that explains the myth that Adam and Eve at an apple, when a specific fruit is never mentioned.
It also explain why we here in the Nordics call oranges “appelsin”, as in a “Chinese apple”.
Same in Dutch: sinaasappel
Great! Can’t have myths about random fruit in this otherwise totally valid, reasonable and trustworthy story about a woman that was made from a man’s rib and talked to reptiles.
If a narrative is not literally true, does that mean it has no truth value?
What is “truth value” supposed to mean?
Sorry, I wasn’t explaining myself well.
Just because a story isn’t factually true, doesn’t mean that it has no value, or negative value. There are other types of values which can supersede factual value:
- aesthetic
- symbolic
- ethical
- didactic
Truth isn’t always about facts. Sometimes factual statements can be used as a weapon of deceit.
There are other types of value, of course. It’s just funny to specifically call the apple out for being a myth. The entire story is a myth, so they could have made it a pomelo for all I care.
But… we’re talking French and Adam and Eve was written in Hebrew. Is it the same for Hebrew?
Hebrew used a generic word for fruit, all languages translated that word as their version of apple which was generic at the time, and then much later, all languages changed the meaning of their word for apple, it’s not specific to French. The use of apple for one specific fruit is fairly recent - more recent than the King James Bible, even.
I don’t know what the word in Hebrew is and if it also changed its meaning since then, though.
Literally yes, ground apple is potato in hebrew
Also apples used to be small, tart, and acidic.
You wouldn’t eat them as a dessert but as a basis for brewing alcohol.
It’s wild how much fruits changed in recent times.
So much so that most zoo are stoppimg giving them to animals and switched to more leafy greens. They have gotten so sugary that they promoted tooth decay and obesity.
Than you, I was going to say modern apples have a taste and texture nothing like apples when this name was created.
So this means moonshine is apple juice?
Some German speakers say “Erdapfel” which is literally “earth apple.”
In Dutch, a potato is called aardappel, which literally translates to “earth apple” (aarde meaning “earth” and appel meaning “apple”).
Unsurprisingly, similar for us in Afrikaans.
“Aartappel”
The Swabian word Grombira comes from literally “ground pear”
“Grumbern” is the same in parts of Frankonia.
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That’s my understanding. Though I have only visited the Kartoffel regions myself.
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I’m in Bavaria, and my grandparents used to say Erdapfel, though for any generations after that I’ve only ever heard them say Kartoffel.
It’s probably the Germans living near French, who’ve had bad influences.
Counter point:
In Castellano (Spanish from Spain), it’s called piña.
Spanish in other places, too—piña colada, anyone?
The takeaway here is, the rest of the world uses different words than the continents where it comes from
Also what I was taught in US Spanish classes.
You can’t include English in any rational discussion about languages. It breaks every rule, and isn’t one language, but a pidgin of three or four. It’s a bastard of a language, and what-about-ism involving English is so trivial it’s not worth debating. You can always find a worse example of any language linguistic stupidity in English.
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Writer James D. Nicoll
Is this a copypasta?
It is now
The James Nicoll quote is better - use that instead.
Ananas
Bananas
:-/
There was a time when “pomme” was used to name any fruit.
Now we just use fruit.
Unless, incident, you’re talking of a Chinese Grapefruit, also know as Pomelo.
I didn’t know that. Still a little odd to consider a potato “fruit,” but then avocados and tomatoes are considered vegetables, when one’s a berry and the other’s a fruit.
Recently I watched an press event with a Canadian politician, who was switching between French and English as we must sometimes. He was talking about a bag of apples (which his colleague was holding) costing a stupid amount of money. He made the mistake of saying a bag of potatoes, which i found fucking hilarious as I speak both languages and understand the mistake. Unfortunately for him, the people criticising him were morons and were like WHY WOULD HE SAY POTATOES IS HE STUPID.
isn’t apple used in many languages as a generic term for fruit?.. it’s not like pineapple has anything to do with apples either.
Case in point: Pomegranate. pomme = apple or more generically fruit, granate = grenade. It’s a shrapnel apple. Apt description if you’ve ever eaten one.
In a lot of languages the word for apple used to refer to all kinds of fruits, particularly new ones from more or less exotic lands. Pineapples also don’t look much like apples, do they?
Pomme de terre (IIRC) is a sad version of a underground apple.
Pineapples look like a pinecone but with a sweet fruit inside. Makes sense to me.
Then again horse apples, i.e., horse shit doesn’t taste great at all. Then again, again: horse apples, the Osage Orange fruit, are inedible. Osage Orange is neither an apple or orange tree.
English 'tis a silly language.
I pronounce is Pin-eap-ples, just to avoid this very thing.
But, at least they’re fruit.
Let the language which is without sin cast the first stone.
good tasting apples are a relatively recent thing. They are one of the fruits where a good tasting one is rare and then has to propagated with grafts. Apples that grow from seed are not that great and before a certain point was mainly turned into cider and vinegar and such.
How recent? Like, New World recent, or Christianity recent, or the-invention-of-writing recent?
I think not much older than the new world. 1700’s or so and I don’t think there was widespread cultivation until the 20th century.
Johnny Appleseed was a real guy, but he was doing his thing in the late 1700’s. Apples from grafting were pretty good eating, by then; trees grown from seed were mostly only good for making cider.
yeah and that gets back to ground apples. if people are used to apples in cooking and making alcohol but not so much munch on it, numy, numy. I could see the ground apple thing.
Don’t forget Calvados n_n
Wait until you hear about pomegranates.
💣
I recently learned grenadine is called that because it used to be made from pomegranate juice, NOT because it was from Grenada.
Wait until you hear about 90 pomegranates
99 luftpomegranates go by
Well are you going to tell us?
Oh? Juicy gossip, is it?
if you think ground apples isn’t an apt description, you’ve never eaten potatoes raw.
In Germany they are called Kartoffeln (which is also a slur for the Germans itself).
But potatoes are also called Erdäpfel (ground apples) or in southern dialect Krombire (bent pear).
More variants here:
Source (German): https://die-kartoffel.de/wissen/schon-gewusst/kartoffel-deutsche-dialekte/So calling someone a potato in German is a slur?
Semi.
Another kind of slur is calling “spießig” (dunno the english word. Google suggests stuffy or bourgeois) Germans “Almans” which is essentially the french word for german people but if you call a german “Alman” it’s kinda an insult (unless you own it).Edit: I just noticed what a grammatical nonsense I wrote. :p
Similarly, in Spanish, Aleman means German, as such Alemania means Germany.
Nudel?? NUDEL???
And french fries are Pommes Frites. Fried apples
I’m not sure this map is accurate. I have never heard any of the terms that this maps claims to be used in the region I come from.
Actually sounds like you’ve never had a fresh potato, pulled right out of the ground and eaten on the spot
I have never. Do they taste like apples?
No not at all but a good one has a nice crunch to it, kinda like a water chestnut, and they can make a nice snap sound like an apple
Oh. I’ve bitten into a potato before, just not one freshly and cruelly ripped from the warm breast of mother nature. I think they’re more similar to Asian Pears, of we’re making such comparisons, also not neatly as juicy.
Why is this weird? “Apple” used to be the generic word for fruit in many different languages, it wasn’t until recently that it took on the meaning of a specific type of fruit. I don’t think calling potatoes “fruit of the earth” is at all strange. The English equivalent to this is the word “pineapple” – a fruit that kind of looks like a pine cone.
italian tomatoes have entered the chat and agree with their golden apples.
