Not just French
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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In Germany they are called Kartoffeln (which is also a slur for the Germans itself).
But potatoes are also called Erdäpfel (ground apples) or in southern dialect Krombire (bent pear).
More variants here:
Source (German): https://die-kartoffel.de/wissen/schon-gewusst/kartoffel-deutsche-dialekte/
And french fries are Pommes Frites. Fried apples
Nudel?? NUDEL???
So calling someone a potato in German is a slur?
Semi.
Another kind of slur is calling "spießig" (dunno the english word. Google suggests stuffy or bourgeois) Germans "Almans" which is essentially the french word for german people but if you call a german "Alman" it's kinda an insult (unless you own it).
Recently I watched an press event with a Canadian politician, who was switching between French and English as we must sometimes. He was talking about a bag of apples (which his colleague was holding) costing a stupid amount of money. He made the mistake of saying a bag of potatoes, which i found fucking hilarious as I speak both languages and understand the mistake. Unfortunately for him, the people criticising him were morons and were like WHY WOULD HE SAY POTATOES IS HE STUPID.
Franglais is my language of choice after several drinks in any French speaking country. I am from Jersey, New, so it's the best I can do with my education.
Four twenties ten and seven. That's four goddamn numbers in a row!
The franglais in me acreams that neufant ought to be acceptable. I'm sure Canadians are saying it, who knows what language they really speak.
We also have a potato-like : word "patate". "Pomme de terre" is déformation of "parmetière" from the name of M.Parmentier who introduce potatoes to the french population.
People seem to believe this so let me clarify:
Literally, “apple of [the] earth”. The word pomme used to mean "fruit" in Old French. The French construction originated, as calques, Dutch aardappel, Icelandic jarðepli, Persian سیبزمینی (sib-zamini), Modern Hebrew תפוח אדמה (tapúakh adamá), the rare English earthapple, German Erdapfel, etc.
In fact, apple was a catch all term for fruits in many languages from time to time, hence pineapple (originally meaning pinecone, later used for the exotic fruit because of similarity) or German Apfelsine (orange, literally apple from China), ...
That's actually not true, 'ground apple' is a common name for different sorts of tubers in a number of different languages, going back to the latin 'malum terrae'.
That is news to me. Never thought to dig too deeply into my French studies in middle and high school (two decades ago), and so "apple of the earth" was just appropriate. Like, yeah, why wouldn't it be apple of the earth?
Really? That's fantastic! I didn't know that. How awesome!
Meanwhile in Quebec, they call them patates
And orange is a Chinese apple
Have a look at how some early apple varieties looked like, before they were cultivated:
https://birdsongorchards.com/pages/welcome-to-wondrous-diversity-of-heirloom-apples
Thank you. Now does make more sense to call potatoes ground apples. Going start calling them that and confuse the kids.
They looks identifical to nowday apple from a non-profesional perspective. Except the Hawaïan ones, I never saw a apple with pink flesh.
Tree-potatoes!
Counter point:
You can't include English in any rational discussion about languages. It breaks every rule, and isn't one language, but a pidgin of three or four. It's a bastard of a language, and what-about-ism involving English is so trivial it's not worth debating. You can always find a worse example of any language linguistic stupidity in English.
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Herdöpfel (stove/cooking apple) in Swiss german. Kartoffel in germany. Guess there's some variety, since it's a relatively new crop.
Let the language which is without sin cast the first stone.
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