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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?

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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)
    
    As Arnhemmer, I don’t completely agree.
    
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ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Too aard to pronounce

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Alternative forms