this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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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? (midwest.social)
submitted 1 month ago by sxan@midwest.social to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I thought it was more "apples of the Earth", n'est-ce pas?

[–] Donut@leminal.space 13 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 4 points 1 month ago

Spherical pineapples.

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Donut@leminal.space 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/aardappel

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 month ago

Alternative forms

Eerdappel [..] (obsolete)

As Arnhemmer, I don't completely agree.

[–] ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Too aard to pronounce

[–] Cagi@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

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

[–] sxan@midwest.social 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I wasn't going for transliteration. "Apples of Earth" doesn't convey the same concept.

[–] CyanideShotInjection@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month 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.