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Why is "pineapple" in English "ananas" in other languages? (2013)
- wppick 3y agoListen here, you can't tell the English what to do. We'll drive on whatever side of the road, use metric or not when we feel like it, and call fruit whatever we want
- notfed 3y agoIs no one going to talk about how the accepted answer was written by Peter Shor?
- joak 3y agoThe one of the famous quantum factorization algorithm!?
- x3n0ph3n3 3y agoInteresting how "all other languages" only includes PIE languages and 2 Semitic languages.
- lagniappe 3y agoBrings back memories of Monsieur Ananas. Loved it as a kid, but I look back now and it's the stuff of nightmares. https://youtu.be/MuiMBXmAAHA https://youtu.be/MuiMBXmAAHA - yep still going strong..
- beambot 3y agoI'm highly suspect. For Spanish, I've always heard piñas rather than ananás...
- sergiotapia 3y agoLatino here, never heard "ananas" - siempre piña.
- eesmith 3y agoThe Wikipedia entry for Ananás and Piña redirect to https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananas_comosus https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananas_comosus The entry for Ananas at https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananas https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananas says it's used for the genus which includes pineapple. The equivalent English word for the genus is Ananas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananas . Read the answers and you'll see the claim is based on cherry-picking.
- Vitaly_C 3y agoI've heard piña in SoCal, but once visited Costa Rica and heard ananas. Disclaimer: I don't speak Spanish.
- Vitaly_C 3y agoI also heard in Costa Rica bananas referred to as patacones instead of platano, so I'm guessing there's a lot of regional-specific vocab at play here...
- cassianoleal 3y agoAs far as I can tell, patacon (as well as platano) is plaintain - not banana.
- vasdae 3y agohttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Porpa%C3%ADs_anana_pi%C3%B1a.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Porpa%C3...
- genezeta 3y agoAnanás is correct [0], but so is piña [1]. Piña, in its second meaning is synonymous to ananás. Now, regarding usage, you're completely right. Nobody uses ananás; everybody says piña. (Funny: When describing the ananás plant, the DRAE says about its fruit: "fruto grande en forma de piña".) [0] https://dle.rae.es/anan%25C3%25A1s https://dle.rae.es/anan%25C3%25A1s [1] https://dle.rae.es/pi%25C3%25B1a https://dle.rae.es/pi%25C3%25B1a
- Bluescreenbuddy 3y agoI've never heard that word growing up in Puerto Rico. We used Piña
- extragood 3y agoThat's (b)ananas
- Matheus28 3y agoI'm sure that table omits languages in which it looks nothing like "ananas". In Brazilian Portuguese it's "abacaxi". The second response in that question seems to address this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- niemandhier 3y agoTo be fair: in Portuguese this is phonetically not to far away from ananas. At least for me the following are close phonetically in Portuguese: Abacaxi Anacaxi Ananaxi Ananashi Ananasi
- marcosdumay 3y agoYou can keep the small changes until you reach "inconstitucionalissimamente".
- cassianoleal 3y agoActually in Portuguese the 2 words are phonetically very different. Abacaxi is pronounced ah-bah-kah-SHEE, whereas ananás is pronounced ah-nah-NAHS (depending on the region, the tailing "s" takes the sound of "sh" which is slightly closer but still pretty far). Note that in Portuguese proper pronounciation of the tonic syllable is very important, and in this case the tonic gives each word a very distinct sound.
- tremon 3y agoIt may look nothing like it, but the only letter that really differs is the -c-. The -x is pronounced as -sh and -b- isn't that far removed from -n-, especially in a language with a nasal -a- like Portuguese.
- Matheus28 3y agoEtymology for abacaxi: Borrowed from Old Tupi ibakatí. Is Portuguese your native language? I can’t see how one would pronounce abacaxi in a way that sounds like ananas.
- herunan 3y agoSpanish is the other language with ‘piña’. The 5th image in this link posted explains the shared etymology: https://imgur.io/a/iVK8a https://imgur.io/a/iVK8a Edit: Of course, let’s not forget our Catalan (‘pinya’) and Welsh (‘pinafal’) friends.
- robbiejs 3y agoThis reminds me of a fragment from a Dutch TV show where the host asks a kid whether "ananas" in English is pronounced "a-nanas" or "ana-nas". Kids answers "a-nanas", host goes: "Wrong! It is pineapple!" Classic (https://youtu.be/OBrAcIl4nmw?si=Xx9j6DJywfQkXTeJ https://youtu.be/OBrAcIl4nmw?si=Xx9j6DJywfQkXTeJ)
- SilasX 3y agoThere’s a related joke about whether the capital of Kentucky is pronounced loo-EE-ville or loo-ISS-ville. Actual: Frankfort. (Actual for the other city: something more like loo-uh-ville.)
- kencausey 3y agoloo-uh-vul
- noindiecred 3y agolull-vull
- sheepshear 3y agohttps://youtu.be/VUuzkA0Qg6U?t=40m23s https://youtu.be/VUuzkA0Qg6U?t=40m23s
- throw__away7391 3y agoAt least in Spanish it’s called “piña” by the majority of Spanish speakers, “ananás” is a less common term used in a few South American countries.
- echelon 3y agoIt's pineapple (パイナップル) in Japanese too.
- x3n0ph3n3 3y agoAnd Korean, too: 파인애플
- echelon 3y agoMore "pineapple" : pynappel (Afrikaans) paina (Hawaiian) paynapul (Krio) പൈനാപ്പിൾ (Malayalam) piña (Quechua) I'm sure there are many more...
- Bimos 3y agoThere is also "ananas" in Korean: 아나나스. And there is also "凤梨"/"鳳梨"(Fèng lí in Mandarin) in Japanese: 鳳梨(ほ ーり, hóꜜòrì)[1]. But I think neither of them are commonly used now. So maybe it is the influence of English-speaking countries that makes (at least) these two languages choose "pineapples" now rather than other possibilities. [1] https://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%B3%B3%E6%A2%A8#_note-DJR-2 https://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%B3%B3%E6%A2%A8#_note-DJR-...
- vivegi 3y agoIt is அன்னாசி (Aṉṉāci) in Tamil. https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=ta&text=pineapple&op=translate https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=ta&text=pineapple&o...
- ansraliant 3y ago[dead]
- carabiner 3y agoThe Most OFFENSIVE Word In The English Language? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZRRL_bi_62A https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZRRL_bi_62A
- Yaggo 3y agoAnanas is a rare example of word which is exactly same in Finnish, although our vocabulary is usually totally alien compared to most European languages.
- jjtheblunt 3y agobut pineapples are also totally alien to Finland, so it makes sense?
- ploum 3y agoWorst of all is that "pine-apple" translate literally in French as "pomme de pin" ("apple from a pine"). Which is the french name for pine cones. So not only has English a word completely different from others, it also literally means another existing fruit!
- tschwimmer 3y agoActually this sort of clarifies things for me (perhaps falsely) that the etymology is from a pineapple sort of looking like a pinecone. Looking at the plant that it grows from, it clearly would not be mistaken for a pine tree.
- throw0101c 3y agoAnyone else from Ontario, Canada remember the character of Ananas from Téléfrançais: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBSflK1FTSY7&t=36s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBSflK1FTSY7&t=36s * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Téléfrançais https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Téléfrançais!
- howenterprisey 3y agoI'm not from Ontario but we watched many episodes in French class in high school (American). We enjoyed the sense of humor and made a lot of references to it even after the class.
- crapanas 3y ago[dead]
- the-link 3y agoThat's a very selective list. Not very representative of the whole as a whole.
- GaggiX 3y agoI'm not a native English speaker, so I'm wondering if I say "ananas" to an English-only person, will he generally understand that I'm talking about pineapples?
- dcminter 3y agoNo, generally not (at least for British English).
- code_duck 3y agoThis is the first time in my 4 decade+ life of being a native English speaker that I’ve ever heard of this, so I’d think generally not.
- toast0 3y agoAs a US english-only person, even with a smidge of other languages here and there, I would assume you meant banana.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xgstation 3y agoPineapple is called 菠萝(Bōluó) or 凤梨(Fènglí) in Chinese by the way.
- dragonwriter 3y agoLots of languages? Sure. Almost every language that is not English? No. The most common term is "ananas" or some close variation, from the extinct Old Tupi language of what is now Brazil, which was a common trade language in the region in the colonial period. The next most common term is "piña/pineapple" or a close variation. (from Latin and, for those forms using some version of the "-apple" ending, Germanic roots: English, most regional forms of Spanish [but not all, because, well, Spanish][0], Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, and others) There's also a smaller number of languages (but with lots of speakers, e.g., Mandarin!) that use their own words not closely resembling either. [0] Yes, English is frequently like this, too.
- marcosdumay 3y agoTupi wasn't spoken only in Brazil. It was spoken on all of the South or South America, and at least for some small time became the main language of every country there. Interestingly, in Brazilian Portuguese, it's "abacaxi" instead, from another indigenous language.
- Anarch157a 3y agoHere in Brazil, where the fruit originates, the most common name for it is "abacaxi", It's supposed to come from Tupi-Guarani family of languages and means "fruit with a nice smell". Ananas is more common in Portugal.
- throw1234651234 3y ago"Ananas" in slavic languages too.
- virtualritz 3y agoThe root of ananas is Sanskrit. That's why you find it in so many languages. As my brother (archeologist/linguist, reads the latter) says: "Take a time machine and travel to a market on the Indian subcontinent, a thousand years back. Ask a fruit vendor for ananāsa/anāsa. You will get a pineapple." Edit: Pineapples were introduced to India by Portuguese in 1548 AD. Edit: Kindly ignore the initial claim. It's BS. :) (the time machine claim would still hold though). The word comes from Portugese/Spanish, the origin is 'nanas' which the Tupi people in Brazil used [1]. So the actual origin is from the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families [2]. [1] https://termcoord.eu/2016/08/pineapple-or-ananas/ https://termcoord.eu/2016/08/pineapple-or-ananas/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupi_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupi_people
- fooker 3y agoanāsa means pear, afaik.
- schoen 3y agoI see a particular irony in the proliferation of spurious claims about everything in every language coming from Sanskrit. And that is that Sanskrit is, in a sense, the origin of rational scientific linguistic study, with Panini. (Yes, this has to be qualified a bit.)
- sombragris 3y agoIn Paraguayan Spanish (and I guess in many parts of Latin America) the word employed is piña, i.e., "pinecone". Ananá is also accepted, but it's almost not employed at all.
- pvaldes 3y agoBecause pineapple is the fruit of a creature called Ananas comosus. This is its (universal) scientific name. Describing this plant as a mix of a pine and an apple is a particularly poor choice having in mind that this is a monocot, thus neither directly related with coniferes nor with dicots. When we have yet a word that is unique, short and exclusive for a new type of organism, and everybody is familiar yet with the fruit and its peculiar flavor, adopting that word would be wise. In the same way as calling a type of animal "Sengis" should be preferred over the old and more verbose "elephant-shrews". Specially after we discovered that they aren't related with shrews at all, and totally deserve its own unique name. Of course tradition stands in the way, so I'm just digressing
- seba_dos1 3y ago"Sosnojabłko" would be just silly.
- sundalia 3y agoThey picked Portuguese from Europe but omitted Brazilian Portuguese (largely more spoken, like 90-10 split). It's not ananas there, it's abacaxi.
- mito88 3y ago'abacaxi' in portuguese.
- wannes 3y agoIn Dutch, a pinecone is called dennenappel, so if anybody mistook a pineapple for a pinecone, you have dennen(pine)-appel(apple). I think we have more of this misunderstandings between Dutch and English (acorn is a fruit, but an "eekhoorn" which is pronounced in the same way is a squirrel, that eats acorns).