Comment on It's been 30 years and I still can't get over the fact that the French word for "potatoes" is "ground apples." Have The French never had an apple?

cheese_greater@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• Donut@leminal.space ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Yup, pommes de terre. In Dutch is “aardappel”, which is more literally earthapple. But I will add, the apple part isn’t referring to the fruit, but means more like “a spherical object”.

  Also the French used aardappel to create the word pomme de terre for it in 1716, as they couldn’t pronounce the Dutch word.

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  • lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    as they couldn’t pronounce the Dutch word

    I mean I can’t blame them, the language’s phonosyntactics are very different from French, it’s hard to pronounce in general and sounds awful to boot.

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    • Donut@leminal.space ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s funny how Dutch doesn’t shy away from loaning French words, despite the difference. Examples are chauffeur, etalage, cadeau, auto and medaille.

      I don’t agree that aardappel is hard to pronounce in general if you’re an English speaker though. Check it out: en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/aardappel

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      • lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Alternative forms

        Eerdappel […] (obsolete)

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        As Arnhemmer, I don’t completely agree.

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  • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Too aard to pronounce

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• Cagi@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  No, it’s like how apple juice is jus de pomme.

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• sxan@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Yeah, I wasn’t going for transliteration. “Apples of Earth” doesn’t convey the same concept.

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• CyanideShotInjection@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Not really cause then it would be “pommes de la terre”.

  For the record, some of us also use the word “patate” which is straight up the equivalent of potato.

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