• Donut@leminal.space
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      1 month 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.

      • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
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        1 month 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.

        • Donut@leminal.space
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          1 month 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: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/aardappel

    • illi@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

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

    • CyanideShotInjection@lemmy.world
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      30 days 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.