Topic: Your Country

@Tiefseemiez Thanks, your city isn't too bad either. I visited it once when me and my parents went on a Rhine cruise through Germany a long time ago, so I don't know all that much about it anymore, but I know I liked the architecture, and the people were nice too. And I like bratwurst and curry wurst, so I'm almost always good when I visit Germany... (EDIT: and German apple pie is pretty darn good as well. In fact, most German confectionery is pretty good)

The blood sausage doesn't really do anything for me. They also have stuff like that in England and in the Netherlands, but it's just not for me. Mashed potato dishes, however...

Over here, they make a lot of them, especially in the winter. They either make oven dishes with meat and vegetables topped with a layer of mashed potatoes, which then goes into the oven. I was once told it was a way to use leftovers and still make a nice dish, so any scraps of vegetables and meat will do, spice them up with whatever you like, slap the mashed potatoes on top, and then heat it up in the oven.

A variation on that is instead of meat and vegetables, you put a layer of sauerkraut underneath the mashed potatoes, also good.

Other than that, they simply mix all kinds of vegetables into the mashed potatoes: there's mash with chopped up carrots and onions, or mash with (green aka curly) kale, or mash with lettuce and cubed/chopped up bacon or ham, and they also have a very old mash recipe, called "hot lightning" if you literally translate it. Don't know where the name comes from, but it's potatoes, onions and two kinds of apples (usually sweet and sour) mashed together, and it's a dish that was already known in the Middle Ages. Sounds a lot like your Heaven and Earth mash.

Oh, and the Dutch do indeed call their potatoes "Earth apples"...
It also makes much more sense than potatoes, which is just a name derived from the original word "batatas", which the Spanish named "patatas", and the English in their turn bastardized into potatoes, whereas "Apple from the Earth" actually denotes what it is. The French also call it that, although in French, it sounds a lot more chic, like so many things do: Pomme de Terre.

Speaking of all these potatoes, reminds me that I also really like your country's kartoffelsalat, but as a side dish though, because I'm definitely no vegetarian, so I will have that salad with a decent sized Wiener schnitzel, and a nice German beer...

P.S.

What is a deep sea cat? My German is a bit rusty, but I think I got the translation, unless miez isn't short for miezekatze...

@ThanosReXXX 'Apple' used to be a synonym for fruit. That's we have pineapples (fruit that looks like a pine cone), and it's the reason why many languages call an 'orange' an 'apple from China': appelsin, apelsin, sinaasappel, or literally an 'orange apple' in Polish: pomarańcza. It's also why old stories, like the bible, speak of apples instead of fruit in general.

I like potatoes, apples and pineapples.

This discussion is getting interesting.

@Octane That is true to some extent, but if you look much further back into the etymology of the word, it also meant something round, bolus-, or pill-shaped, which is what makes the word "Earth apple" instead of potato a whole lot more logical once again.

The original Latin word for apple is malum (apple tree being genus malus), and that word doesn't even remotely look like apple. Malus of course also meaning bad, supposedly because of Eve having eaten an "apple" from the tree of knowledge, damning humankind forever. Complete BS of course, since there were no apples in that supposed area around that time, and we all know that all human species originated from Africa, but people like their fairy tales, I guess...

And other countries have completely different words for apple, such as the Spanish "manzana" or the French "pomme", so it's not all as cut and dried as it would seem.

There's also so many differences in languages and meanings, such as pine cone actually being called "dennenappel" in Dutch (although on a side note: old Dutch also mentions it being called "pijn-appel", coming from the "pijnboom" which means pine tree), which literally translates to pine apple, and the fruit pine apple is called ananas in Dutch.

The English once again bastardized the Spanish word "piña" (so not really so much because they themselves thought that it was a fruit that looked like a pine) and the Dutch, and quite a few other countries, simply took the original word (a contraction from naná en ananá, meaning "excellent fruit", and it came from the indigenous Tupi Indians from South America) and incorporated it in their own language, simply because there wasn't a word for it.

And then there's also things like "the apple of your eye", "Adam's apple" and what not, and you can hardly call those fruit...

But we're veering off-topic. It's not the apple or potato thread, after all...

In Spanish piña Is also the word for pinecone.

@Meowpheel That might be the word that the average Joe uses in every day live, but the official/actual Spanish word for pine cone is "cono de pino".

EDIT:
And for the Spanish version of the word pineapple, you could of course also think about a pretty well-known cocktail called Piña colada...

@ThanosReXXX Well, 'pomme' comes from the Latin 'pomum', which could be an apple, or any other type of fruit. And using my trusty old dictionary, it tells me that 'manzana' comes from 'mala Matiana'. They're all related to each other (the same it true for 'melon') Even the Germanic word 'apple', if you trace them back far enough (at least, I'm almost certain of it).

Latin likes like use a figure of speech called pars pro toto ([a] part for [the] whole). Ferrum means sword, but it can also mean iron in general, likewise, tectum means roof, but it can also mean house. Maybe that's also true for apples and fruit. Where the word for apple became a synonym for all kinds of fruits, I'm not certain of it, but it's plausible.

Kinda funny you mentioned 'apple of your eye'. I didn't know this either, but apparently it's a mistranslation from the old testament. 'אפל' (apl) in Hebrew can mean both 'apple/fruit' and 'dark'. Just like how malus in Latin can be 'apple/fruit' and 'bad/evil'. But here's the brilliant part; the Hebrew word 'אפל' is not a precursor to 'malus', but to 'apple'! We've come full circle.

_{Looking all of this up had to be the most interesting fifteen minutes of today!}

@ThanosReXXX piña colada Is called like that because it is made with pineapple.

Yeah "pomme" comes from the latin "pomum", generically used for fruit but more specifically for apples. Back in the day apple (mela in italian) and "pomum" (pomo in italian) were interchangeable - that's why we call Adam's Apple "pomo d'Adamo" and the apple of Discord "pomo della discordia" (the apple that supposedly screwed Peleo's wedding). Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese all come from latin but being at different distances from the centre of the roman empire, some regions (which became countries) retained certain variants of words, other regions retained others. Most people don't realise that Spanish in many ways is more faithful to old latin than Italian because, being farther from the centre, was less exposed to change (although they had the arab invasion, which added an entirely different layer of influence).

English is a germanic language so "apple" probably comes from something entirely different. The spanish variant "manzana" comes from "mala mattiana", Mattius' apple (Caius Mattius being the popular roman plant scientist).

@Octane Yeah, interesting stuff, for sure. I've always been kind of a linguaphile, especially interested in the origins of words and sayings, also because the latter are mostly foreign to us nowadays because they contain words or professions that we simply don't know or have anymore.

As for the whole Hebrew vs Latin thing: there's no connection there, so the fact that the Hebrew word for apple doesn't mean malus means absolutely nothing in regards to the origin of the word as a whole. And Latin is of course leading in lots of fields, such as medical and of course also botanical, so malus it is...

Anyway, I'm still of a mind to get back on the actual topic. Wouldn't want to confuse new visitors to what kind of discussion this actually is, much less disappoint the OP, who is looking for more "where are you from" stories, not for more "where does the word apple come from" stories...

But thanks for an interesting discussion nonetheless.

@Meowpheel Dòh, that was the point. Pino is pine cone, piña is pineapple. Mind blown...

You made it sound like the fruit was named after the drink.

Anyway I think I know enough Spanish, no need to tell me the difference between different kinds of piñas.

I just mentioned that in Spanish, Piña can be used to refer to both pine apples and pine cones. Which is kinda reminiscent of the way it's used in English.

@ThanosReXXX Nah, don't worry! I wasn't looking for a connection between Hebrew and Latin, but the fact that 'apl' appears in Hebrew and has a similar definition (that of bad and the fruit), it's quite interesting. Hebrew, old Greek, it's basically the same at that point

Anyway, you're right. Let's get back on topic. If anyone is from a different country, let us know what apple is called in your language

I think you might have already mentioned all the different words for Apple we may have to offer in this page.

@spizzamarozzi Interesting info. I found some more in an online language forum:

From the big Lewis and Short dictionary, pomum refers to "fruit of any kind (apples, cherries, nuts, berries, figs, dates, etc.)" while malum refers to "any tree-fruit fleshy on the outside, and having a kernel within", so apples, but also oranges, peaches, etc. All mala are poma, but not all poma are mala.

(Side note: 'fruit' in the pomum definition is being used in a rather archaic sense to refer to pretty much any edible that is picked from a larger, inedible plant, in the same way that 'corn' is used to refer to grain in general.)

Whether there's a Latin word for a fruit depends on the fruit. If the Romans knew about a particular fruit, they'd have a name for it; if not, they wouldn't. (Oranges were unknown to the Romans; lemons came to Italy under the Empire, but I don't know if the name is recorded; wild strawberries are mentioned by Ovid.) A good source, if you're interested, is Pliny's Natural History, which contains long lists of plants and their uses.

As to how fruits (or anything else) are named in general, they get their names in one of two ways. Either a pre-existing foreign name is borrowed into the language ('orange' comes from Sanskrit, 'naranga'), or a neologism - a new word, usually a combination of other existing words - is invented to describe it (thus 'pomme de terre' in French; the French, in general, dislike borrowing words from other languages).

The Greek is actually mēlon (τὸ μῆλον), which is equivalent to the Latin mālum, after factoring in the appropriate sound changes. The original Greek meaning was probably something like 'tree-fruit', which later specified to 'apple' (and then, according to the LSJ, was metaphorically extended to mean 'woman's breast'). English melon is from the same root (mēlon-), and according to Watkins this root may have ultimately been borrowed from another language in the region (the root-shape suggest this, I think). Latin clearly borrowed malum from Greek; Latin maintains another term, pomum, which is generally interchangeable, and means 'fruit' or 'apple'.

Latin malus ('bad, wicked) is from a PIE root mel- that meant, as you would expect, 'bad, evil'. The first lexeme in the Greek compound blasphēmos (βλάσ-φημος, 'evil-speaking') is from the same root, interestingly enough, but underwent radical phonetic transformation. The Greek adjective melas (μέλας, 'black, dark') is from a root with the same shape, but different semantic value. Watkins claims that the rare Latin adjective mulleus ('purplish-brown'..?) is from the same root.

@Meowpheel No, that's not what I meant, so that was just your interpretation of my words. I just said that pino de cono is the actual word for pine cone, not Piña, and no offense, but that knowledge isn't somehow exclusive to or greater by default in someone that is indigenous to some country or region. Other people, such as people that study languages, can also easily get access to such knowledge.

Sorry if it came out that way, but what I meant is that you don't need to teach me what a piña is by using examples.

@Meowpheel No worries, I think we kind of flew past each other with our interpretations of each other's comments. We'll just pretend that it didn't happen and move on...

Anyway, you got me curious. Doing some quick research.

The name piña does indeed come out of the Latin pinea, "of the pine". The Spanish named the pineapple piña, simply because it looked like a pine cone.

If that helps, in Italy a pinecone is called "pigna" aswell (gn = ñ). For pineapple, we use the indigenous south american word "ananas" instead, cos that's what our explorers heard when they arrived in the Caribbeans. When spanish explorers came later, they started calling it with a name that translates as Indian Pinecone and when other explorers from centre-Europe came, they started calling it Royal Pinecone, because it was so expensive that only royal families could afford it.

I used to hate to study linguistics when I was at the university, but in the context of fruit it becomes magically entertaining.

I guess in the end if Apple used to be synonymous with fruit, then pineapple does indeed mean exactly the same thing a piña. Fruit of the pine.

Which doesn't make much sense in the context of the fruit itself... I guess.