In Germany, this is just a regional thing. Where I come from (southern Germany), the word "Apfelsine" is not used at all. If you used it here, people would most

In Germany, this is just a regional thing. Where I come from (southern Germany), the word "Apfelsine" is not used at all. If you used it here, people would most likely immediately ask if you mean an orange. As I understand it, it's only used north of the "Speyer Line": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speyerer_Linie_(Isoglosse) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speyerer_Linie_(Isoglosse) One explanation would be that southern Germany has more direct contact to France, and therefore uses the French "Orange", whereas northern Germany uses the low German "Apel de Sina" (basically "China-Apple", "sina" as in "Sinology"). French words have always been used in the southern parts of the German-speaking world to appear more educated, most notably "Trottoir" instead of "Bürgersteig" (sidewalk) or "Portemonnaie" instead of "Geldbeutel" (wallet). A best-selling cooking book published in Stuttgart in 1791 made heavy use of french kitchen terms and gave the correct pronounciation in brackets (e.g. ragout ("Raguh")) [0] [0] https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_6f8pAAAAYAAJ/page/n247/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_6f8pAAAAYAAJ/page/n247/mo...