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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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Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨sxan@midwest.social⁩ to ⁨showerthoughts@lemmy.world⁩

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  • ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    eighty potatoes … french translation -> … “quatre-vingts pommes de terre” (four twenties of earth apples)

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    • Zorque@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And that’s terrible…

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    • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      four twentie

      Ayy lmao.

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  • superkret@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Have you ever had an apple of the sort they had when the word got its meaning?
    They were closer to potatoes than you think.

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    • sxan@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’m not a time traveler, so no. Have you?

      And can you bring me a dinosaur? Like, a triceratops would be nice, although a stegasaurus or argentinosaurus would do. A baby one would be ideal. Thanks.

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    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Doubt. I would expect Apples to have been more like crab apples which are very bitter. Raw potatoes are neutral.

      I had a science book as a kids which had sensory experiments. You get a potato slice and apple slice, hold your nose and try both.

      They taste the same if you can’t smell.

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  • medusa@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    And tomatoes are “love apples”

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    • sxan@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Which makes more sense, in a weird way.

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  • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Some German speakers say “Erdapfel” which is literally “earth apple.”

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    • sxan@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s probably the Germans living near French, who’ve had bad influences.

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    • superkret@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The Swabian word Grombira comes from literally “ground pear”

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      • ElmarsonTheThird@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        “Grumbern” is the same in parts of Frankonia.

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    • BonerMan@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Isnt that most common in Austria

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      • Miphera@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        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.

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      • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        That’s my understanding. Though I have only visited the Kartoffel regions myself.

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  • Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The English for “ananas” is “pineapple”, did the English really think they grew on pine trees?

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    • Shapillon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Pineapples are a freak fruit though.They grow on some kind of weird weed like some kind of joke.

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    • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Probably to avoid confusion with bananas?

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      • x00z@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Oh you can’t even imagine the amount of times I put a pineapple up there.

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      • RandomVideos@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Is english known for trying to avoid confusion?

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    • sxan@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Maybe! Who knows what those crazy British were thinking. At least a pineapple is a fruit, and I can easily believe that the namers had never seen anything but crude drawings of a pineapple tree, and not having experience with palm trees, thought they looked most like pines.

      Image

      Or, maybe it’s derived from some misinterpretation of a Greek word, or something. English is a hodge-podge language of borrowed words.

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      • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Those look closer to durian than pineapples tbh.

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      • hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Pineapples don’t grow on trees. Take that A’I’ slop somewhere else.

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      • RedStrider@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        👆 ai detected

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      • NoSpotOfGround@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        There is no such thing as a pineapple tree. That’s an AI image.

        Pineapples grow in an even more ridiculous way.

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      • recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        that image looks pretty crazy!😮

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    • slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Image

      Image

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      • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Fun fact: no one knows why us squid are called that in English and no other language calls us anything like that.

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      • raef@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Spanish conveniently missing

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      • lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        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.

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      • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It’s their superficial resemblance to pinecones.

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  • cheese_greater@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I thought it was more “apples of the Earth”, n’est-ce pas?

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    • CyanideShotInjection@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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    • Cagi@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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

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    • sxan@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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

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    • Donut@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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      • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Too aard to pronounce

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      • lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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