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?
Nudel?? NUDEL???
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.
Franglais is my language of choice after several drinks in any French speaking country. I am from Jersey, New, so it’s the best I can do with my education.
Four twenties ten and seven. That’s four goddamn numbers in a row!
We also have a potato-like : word “patate”. “Pomme de terre” is déformation of “parmetière” from the name of M.Parmentier who introduce potatoes to the french population.
People seem to believe this so let me clarify:
Literally, “apple of [the] earth”. The word pomme used to mean “fruit” in Old French. The French construction originated, as calques, Dutch aardappel, Icelandic jarðepli, Persian سیبزمینی (sib-zamini), Modern Hebrew תפוח אדמה (tapúakh adamá), the rare English earthapple, German Erdapfel, etc.
In fact, apple was a catch all term for fruits in many languages from time to time, hence pineapple (originally meaning pinecone, later used for the exotic fruit because of similarity) or German Apfelsine (orange, literally apple from China), …
That’s actually not true, ‘ground apple’ is a common name for different sorts of tubers in a number of different languages, going back to the latin ‘malum terrae’.
That is news to me. Never thought to dig too deeply into my French studies in middle and high school (two decades ago), and so “apple of the earth” was just appropriate. Like, yeah, why wouldn’t it be apple of the earth?
Really? That’s fantastic! I didn’t know that. How awesome!
Meanwhile in Quebec, they call them patates
And orange is a Chinese apple
Have a look at how some early apple varieties looked like, before they were cultivated:
https://birdsongorchards.com/pages/welcome-to-wondrous-diversity-of-heirloom-apples
Thank you. Now does make more sense to call potatoes ground apples. Going start calling them that and confuse the kids.
They looks identifical to nowday apple from a non-profesional perspective. Except the Hawaïan ones, I never saw a apple with pink flesh.
Tree-potatoes!
Counter point:
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.
In Castellano (Spanish from Spain), it’s called piña.
Also what I was taught in US Spanish classes.
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
Herdöpfel (stove/cooking apple) in Swiss german. Kartoffel in germany. Guess there’s some variety, since it’s a relatively new crop.
Let the language which is without sin cast the first stone.
I think “ground apples” would better apply to jicama.
Dug up from the ground, somewhat sweet, can be eaten raw or cooked, apple-like in texture…
Well Italians call tomatoes golden apples
While having two words for blue because “they look different”
Well apple is succulent stem of apple tree. Potato is succulent root of potato plant. Root is stem inside ground. Q.E.D.
Look, we’re talking people who call ninety-nine “four twenty ten nine”; you can’t expect them to name things properly.
Yeah, numbers in French are really weird.
Look, I’m not criticizing French, or the French. It was just one of those things that struck me when I was learning it, and it pops up at odd times.
To be fair, English has a bit of that too if you look at the first 20 digits
One, two, three… Eleven, twelve, thirteen… Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three… Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three…
If English was fully decimal the teens would simply be “Onety-one, onety-two, onety-three” but it’s not because fuck following conventions!
Winner. I’d forgotten about that.
Something thankfully not all French-speaking countries agree. But the ground apple is pretty much universal. The alternative “patate” is also widely used,
Stuff from the “new world” (Americas) often got some weird names. Like the “Indian chickens” (turkeys).
Edit: I misunderstood
I misunderstood
“apple” used to be a generic term for fruit. So it’s actually “fruit of the earth”, the French are poetic like that
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.
“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.
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.
It also explain why we here in the Nordics call oranges “appelsin”, as in a “Chinese apple”.
Same in Dutch: sinaasappel
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.
I don’t know what the word in Hebrew is and if it also changed its meaning since then, though.
That’s a bingo.
So this means moonshine is apple juice?
The English for “ananas” is “pineapple”, did the English really think they grew on pine trees?
Pineapples are a freak fruit though.They grow on some kind of weird weed like some kind of joke.
Fun fact: no one knows why us squid are called that in English and no other language calls us anything like that.
Spanish conveniently missing
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.
“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?
Oh you can’t even imagine the amount of times I put a pineapple up there.
Is english known for trying to avoid confusion?
Removed by mod
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!😮
Yeah, I grabbed it at random froma search results. I think it’s not real.
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