this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts

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[–] cheese_greater 17 points 1 month ago (5 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Spherical pineapples.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Alternative forms

Eerdappel [..] (obsolete)


As Arnhemmer, I don't completely agree.

[–] ParadoxSeahorse 1 points 1 month ago

Too aard to pronounce

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

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

[–] CyanideShotInjection 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I guess it's because pineapple resembles pine cone a little?