It's a bit cherry picked, but only a bit, since there are a few languages that just copied the English word later on.
Japanese and Korean come to mind.
Holy shit. It’s insane that random AI generated drivel and misinformation has already started seeping into random conversations like this. It really has already become completely ubiquitous, hasn’t it? 🤦🏻♂️ OOF
Great! Can't have myths about random fruit in this otherwise totally valid, reasonable and trustworthy story about a woman that was made from a man's rib and talked to reptiles.
Just because a story isn't factually true, doesn't mean that it has no value, or negative value. There are other types of values which can supersede factual value:
aesthetic
symbolic
ethical
didactic
Truth isn't always about facts. Sometimes factual statements can be used as a weapon of deceit.
There are other types of value, of course. It's just funny to specifically call the apple out for being a myth. The entire story is a myth, so they could have made it a pomelo for all I care.
Hebrew used a generic word for fruit, all languages translated that word as their version of apple which was generic at the time, and then much later, all languages changed the meaning of their word for apple, it's not specific to French. The use of apple for one specific fruit is fairly recent - more recent than the King James Bible, even.
I don't know what the word in Hebrew is and if it also changed its meaning since then, though.
You wouldn't eat them as a dessert but as a basis for brewing alcohol.
It's wild how much fruits changed in recent times.
So much so that most zoo are stoppimg giving them to animals and switched to more leafy greens. They have gotten so sugary that they promoted tooth decay and obesity.
Something thankfully not all French-speaking countries agree. But the ground apple is pretty much universal.
The alternative "patate" is also widely used,
Stuff from the "new world" (Americas) often got some weird names. Like the "Indian chickens" (turkeys).
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.
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
I didn't know that. Still a little odd to consider a potato "fruit," but then avocados and tomatoes are considered vegetables, when one's a berry and the other's a fruit.
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.
In a lot of languages the word for apple used to refer to all kinds of fruits, particularly new ones from more or less exotic lands. Pineapples also don't look much like apples, do they?
Pomme de terre (IIRC) is a sad version of a underground apple.
Pineapples look like a pinecone but with a sweet fruit inside. Makes sense to me.
Then again horse apples, i.e., horse shit doesn't taste great at all. Then again, again: horse apples, the Osage Orange fruit, are inedible. Osage Orange is neither an apple or orange tree.
Case in point: Pomegranate. pomme = apple or more generically fruit, granate = grenade. It's a shrapnel apple. Apt description if you've ever eaten one.
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.
good tasting apples are a relatively recent thing. They are one of the fruits where a good tasting one is rare and then has to propagated with grafts. Apples that grow from seed are not that great and before a certain point was mainly turned into cider and vinegar and such.
Johnny Appleseed was a real guy, but he was doing his thing in the late 1700's. Apples from grafting were pretty good eating, by then; trees grown from seed were mostly only good for making cider.
yeah and that gets back to ground apples. if people are used to apples in cooking and making alcohol but not so much munch on it, numy, numy. I could see the ground apple thing.
Here's something else to gnaw at your brain: "corn" used to be a generic term for any cereal grain, and now only refers to the one group of crops. Also we now (mostly) only use "cereal" to describe the stuff you have for breakfast with milk. Which used to be just shitty puffed grains but now also includes all kinds of flakes and processed nonsense.
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).
Edit: I just noticed what a grammatical nonsense I wrote. :p
Why is this weird? "Apple" used to be the generic word for fruit in many different languages, it wasn't until recently that it took on the meaning of a specific type of fruit. I don't think calling potatoes "fruit of the earth" is at all strange. The English equivalent to this is the word "pineapple" -- a fruit that kind of looks like a pine cone.
Oh. I've bitten into a potato before, just not one freshly and cruelly ripped from the warm breast of mother nature. I think they're more similar to Asian Pears, of we're making such comparisons, also not neatly as juicy.
That one's a euphemism, though. I don't think it counts. That's not the real name that normal (non-horse-people, all horse people are abnormal; I know, because I married one) use.
Potatoes are indeed tasty. Some varieties are even sweet-ish. I can't say I've had potatoes that were as sweet as apples, without the addition of a lot of sugar.
Well now "freedom fries" makes more sense. You know, like how apple pie is assosiated with the usa? So now it's freedom fries......anyone remember freedom fries?
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.
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?
I grew up on a farm along a small river called the Pomme De Terre and we didn't grow potatoes. But we did have a potato lifter to harvest the 1/2 acre or so we would grow for our own consumption.
There was also a small county picnic area in the middle of nowhere by the same name. And no one knew why it was there.
Yeah, pretty much. It was a converted horse drawn implement so it was quite old and pretty worn. It did work, but us kids still had to walk behind it to pickup the potatoes it missed.
And when you could muster a small army of 10 kids from 3 families, well you maybe didn't need a potato lifter so much.
Ah my bad. Back in those days, having a small one row potato lifter was not unusual for a farm where I grew up. Potatoes were a staple food because they could be stored easily until the next harvest. You would grow a half acre, sometimes more just for your own needs. Along with a lot of other vegetables to be home canned or stored.
And can you bring me a dinosaur? Like, a triceratops would be nice, although a stegasaurus or argentinosaurus would do. A baby one would be ideal. Thanks.
Fried apples? Maybe that's a Texas thing, or Scottish, but it wouldn't be a source of confusion in France because they'd take your passport away if you tried frying an apple.
That's right I guess, but at least in a beignet there's a bit of preparation involved, I was picturing just whole fried apples or maybe like french fries but made of apple, but you're right I guess beignet counts.
Fried apples are sliced into small pieces and cooked with butter, cinnamon, and stuff. They're quite good. It's not a battered and deep fried thing. Frying covers a large range of cooking styles.
Hey, that's a good point. Fried apples might me sweeter than fried potatoes, but they'd be much more similar than in other forms. Frying tends to bring out the sweetness in carbs.
Ancient humans? Europe didn't have potatoes until they were imported from the Americas in the 1600s. Conversely, the Americas didn't have apples. So it would basically be impossible for anyone before the Colombian exchange to have eaten both of these fruits.
The English for "ananas" is "pineapple", did the English really think they grew on pine trees?
It's their superficial resemblance to pinecones.
It's a bit cherry picked, but only a bit, since there are a few languages that just copied the English word later on.
Japanese and Korean come to mind.
That actually makes it funnier to me because ananas would be easier to pronounce in Japanese vs pineapple. Ananansu(u is silent) vs Painappuru.
Oh absolutely!
They just had no ananas exposure beyond that from the Americans.
Spanish conveniently missing
Here's how the creation of the graphic went:
And anthough it might be correct, I've never head anyone say mañana in Basque. We just use piña(pinia)
Fun fact: no one knows why us squid are called that in English and no other language calls us anything like that.
"Apple" is Old English for "fruit", not specifically apple.
And apparently "pineapple" for the tropical fruit predates "pine cone", OE used "pine nut".
Earliest use of "pineapple" is 14th century translation for "pomegranate".
Probably to avoid confusion with bananas?
Is english known for trying to avoid confusion?
Oh you can't even imagine the amount of times I put a pineapple up there.
Here i go, imagining again.
Pineapples are a freak fruit though.They grow on some kind of weird weed like some kind of joke.
There is no such thing as a pineapple tree. That's an AI image.
Pineapples grow in an even more ridiculous way.
Holy shit. It’s insane that random AI generated drivel and misinformation has already started seeping into random conversations like this. It really has already become completely ubiquitous, hasn’t it? 🤦🏻♂️ OOF
Thankfully due to the costs and training rot, its not going to get worse.
Pineapples don't grow on trees. Take that A'I' slop somewhere else.
👆 ai detected
Those look closer to durian than pineapples tbh.
Durian have a far worse reputation than their actual reality. Surströmming, on the other hand, over-achieves its reputation.
that image looks pretty crazy!😮
It's AI-generated non-sense. Pineapples grow on small plants like this:
ahh that makes a lot more sense as I'm currently following MegadethRulz's homegrown pineapple saga here :D
Yeah, I grabbed it at random froma search results. I think it's not real.
"apple" used to be a generic term for fruit. So it's actually "fruit of the earth", the French are poetic like that
Oh, that explains the myth that Adam and Eve at an apple, when a specific fruit is never mentioned.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/apple
That's a bingo.
It also explain why we here in the Nordics call oranges "appelsin", as in a "Chinese apple".
Same in Dutch: sinaasappel
Great! Can't have myths about random fruit in this otherwise totally valid, reasonable and trustworthy story about a woman that was made from a man's rib and talked to reptiles.
If a narrative is not literally true, does that mean it has no truth value?
What is "truth value" supposed to mean?
Sorry, I wasn't explaining myself well.
Just because a story isn't factually true, doesn't mean that it has no value, or negative value. There are other types of values which can supersede factual value:
Truth isn't always about facts. Sometimes factual statements can be used as a weapon of deceit.
There are other types of value, of course. It's just funny to specifically call the apple out for being a myth. The entire story is a myth, so they could have made it a pomelo for all I care.
But… we’re talking French and Adam and Eve was written in Hebrew. Is it the same for Hebrew?
Hebrew used a generic word for fruit, all languages translated that word as their version of apple which was generic at the time, and then much later, all languages changed the meaning of their word for apple, it's not specific to French. The use of apple for one specific fruit is fairly recent - more recent than the King James Bible, even.
I don't know what the word in Hebrew is and if it also changed its meaning since then, though.
Literally yes, ground apple is potato in hebrew
Also apples used to be small, tart, and acidic.
You wouldn't eat them as a dessert but as a basis for brewing alcohol.
It's wild how much fruits changed in recent times.
So much so that most zoo are stoppimg giving them to animals and switched to more leafy greens. They have gotten so sugary that they promoted tooth decay and obesity.
Than you, I was going to say modern apples have a taste and texture nothing like apples when this name was created.
So this means moonshine is apple juice?
Look, we're talking people who call ninety-nine “four twenty ten nine”; you can't expect them to name things properly.
Something thankfully not all French-speaking countries agree. But the ground apple is pretty much universal. The alternative "patate" is also widely used,
Stuff from the "new world" (Americas) often got some weird names. Like the "Indian chickens" (turkeys).
Edit: I misunderstood
I misunderstood
Winner. I'd forgotten about that.
To be fair, English has a bit of that too if you look at the first 20 digits
One, two, three... Eleven, twelve, thirteen... Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three... Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three...
If English was fully decimal the teens would simply be "Onety-one, onety-two, onety-three" but it's not because fuck following conventions!
If you say onety one again we’re gonna have problems
Yeah, numbers in French are really weird.
Look, I'm not criticizing French, or the French. It was just one of those things that struck me when I was learning it, and it pops up at odd times.
Some German speakers say "Erdapfel" which is literally "earth apple."
In Dutch, a potato is called aardappel, which literally translates to "earth apple" (aarde meaning "earth" and appel meaning "apple").
Unsurprisingly, similar for us in Afrikaans.
"Aartappel"
The Swabian word Grombira comes from literally "ground pear"
"Grumbern" is the same in parts of Frankonia.
Isnt that most common in Austria
That's my understanding. Though I have only visited the Kartoffel regions myself.
I know the Germans near the Czech border are also calling it erdapfel sometimes but in southern Bavaria and Austria it's the norm from my experience.
I'm in Bavaria, and my grandparents used to say Erdapfel, though for any generations after that I've only ever heard them say Kartoffel.
It's probably the Germans living near French, who've had bad influences.
Counter point:
In Castellano (Spanish from Spain), it's called piña.
Spanish in other places, too—piña colada, anyone?
The takeaway here is, the rest of the world uses different words than the continents where it comes from
Also what I was taught in US Spanish classes.
Ananas
Bananas
:-/
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.
Writer James D. Nicoll
Is this a copypasta?
The James Nicoll quote is better - use that instead.
There was a time when "pomme" was used to name any fruit.
Now we just use fruit.
Unless, incident, you're talking of a Chinese Grapefruit, also know as Pomelo.
I love grapefruiting
I didn't know that. Still a little odd to consider a potato "fruit," but then avocados and tomatoes are considered vegetables, when one's a berry and the other's a fruit.
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 screams that neufant ought to be acceptable. I'm sure Canadians are saying it, who knows what language they really speak.
Let the language which is without sin cast the first stone.
::: lanzars una piedra :::
In a lot of languages the word for apple used to refer to all kinds of fruits, particularly new ones from more or less exotic lands. Pineapples also don't look much like apples, do they?
Pomme de terre (IIRC) is a sad version of a underground apple.
Pineapples look like a pinecone but with a sweet fruit inside. Makes sense to me.
Then again horse apples, i.e., horse shit doesn't taste great at all. Then again, again: horse apples, the Osage Orange fruit, are inedible. Osage Orange is neither an apple or orange tree.
English 'tis a silly language.
I pronounce is Pin-eap-ples, just to avoid this very thing.
But, at least they're fruit.
isn't apple used in many languages as a generic term for fruit?... it's not like pineapple has anything to do with apples either.
Case in point: Pomegranate. pomme = apple or more generically fruit, granate = grenade. It's a shrapnel apple. Apt description if you've ever eaten one.
I thought it was more "apples of the Earth", n'est-ce pas?
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.
Spherical pineapples.
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.
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
Alternative forms
Eerdappel [..] (obsolete)
As Arnhemmer, I don't completely agree.
Too aard to pronounce
No, it's like how apple juice is jus de pomme.
Yeah, I wasn't going for transliteration. "Apples of Earth" doesn't convey the same concept.
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.
I guess it's because pineapple resembles pine cone a little?
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
Tree-potatoes!
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.
Wait until you hear about pomegranates.
💣
I recently learned grenadine is called that because it used to be made from pomegranate juice, NOT because it was from Grenada.
Wait until you hear about 90 pomegranates
99 luftpomegranates go by
Well are you going to tell us?
Oh? Juicy gossip, is it?
good tasting apples are a relatively recent thing. They are one of the fruits where a good tasting one is rare and then has to propagated with grafts. Apples that grow from seed are not that great and before a certain point was mainly turned into cider and vinegar and such.
How recent? Like, New World recent, or Christianity recent, or the-invention-of-writing recent?
I think not much older than the new world. 1700's or so and I don't think there was widespread cultivation until the 20th century.
Johnny Appleseed was a real guy, but he was doing his thing in the late 1700's. Apples from grafting were pretty good eating, by then; trees grown from seed were mostly only good for making cider.
yeah and that gets back to ground apples. if people are used to apples in cooking and making alcohol but not so much munch on it, numy, numy. I could see the ground apple thing.
Don't forget Calvados n_n
if you think ground apples isn't an apt description, you've never eaten potatoes raw.
Here's something else to gnaw at your brain: "corn" used to be a generic term for any cereal grain, and now only refers to the one group of crops. Also we now (mostly) only use "cereal" to describe the stuff you have for breakfast with milk. Which used to be just shitty puffed grains but now also includes all kinds of flakes and processed nonsense.
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/
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).
Edit: I just noticed what a grammatical nonsense I wrote. :p
Similarly, in Spanish, Aleman means German, as such Alemania means Germany.
Nudel?? NUDEL???
And french fries are Pommes Frites. Fried apples
I'm not sure this map is accurate. I have never heard any of the terms that this maps claims to be used in the region I come from.
Why is this weird? "Apple" used to be the generic word for fruit in many different languages, it wasn't until recently that it took on the meaning of a specific type of fruit. I don't think calling potatoes "fruit of the earth" is at all strange. The English equivalent to this is the word "pineapple" -- a fruit that kind of looks like a pine cone.
italian tomatoes have entered the chat and agree with their golden apples.
Actually sounds like you've never had a fresh potato, pulled right out of the ground and eaten on the spot
I have never. Do they taste like apples?
No not at all but a good one has a nice crunch to it, kinda like a water chestnut, and they can make a nice snap sound like an apple
Oh. I've bitten into a potato before, just not one freshly and cruelly ripped from the warm breast of mother nature. I think they're more similar to Asian Pears, of we're making such comparisons, also not neatly as juicy.
Have you ever bitten into a road apple?
People come up with funny names for things sometimes.
OMG I love road apple pie!
That one's a euphemism, though. I don't think it counts. That's not the real name that normal (non-horse-people, all horse people are abnormal; I know, because I married one) use.
eighty potatoes ..... french translation -> ... "quatre-vingts pommes de terre" (four twenties of earth apples)
Ayy lmao.
And that's terrible...
They do make an apple sound when you crunch or slice them so i can see the link
American: "Have french people never eaten a good apple?"
Frenchman: "Have Americans never enjoyed a tasty potato?"
Potatoes are indeed tasty. Some varieties are even sweet-ish. I can't say I've had potatoes that were as sweet as apples, without the addition of a lot of sugar.
Considering potatoes come from America... they didn't have the potatoes. And really didn't care how they name this new commodity, apparently
I think "ground apples" would better apply to jicama.
Dug up from the ground, somewhat sweet, can be eaten raw or cooked, apple-like in texture...
But these aren't found in Western Europe
Neither were potatoes until they came to the Americas.
Yeah, but that's hundreds of years ago and they're a staple food now. Unlike Jicamas, where I had to Google what that even is.
So, linguistically not really comparable
Meanwhile in Quebec, they call them patates
And orange is a Chinese apple
I refer to my skillet as my “fire apple”
Well Italians call tomatoes golden apples
While having two words for blue because "they look different"
Not just French
Well now "freedom fries" makes more sense. You know, like how apple pie is assosiated with the usa? So now it's freedom fries......anyone remember freedom fries?
......ok, no. It was always just stupid.
I think that was the shark-jumping Republican moment, when a bad trend suddenly became a free-fall into the idiocy the party is now.
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:
wiktionary
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!
I've been telling you for 30 years to get over it, maybe in 31 years 😢
I grew up on a farm along a small river called the Pomme De Terre and we didn't grow potatoes. But we did have a potato lifter to harvest the 1/2 acre or so we would grow for our own consumption.
There was also a small county picnic area in the middle of nowhere by the same name. And no one knew why it was there.
So you had a potato lifter that just sat there, still and silent, in case you ever decided to grow 1/2 acre of potatoes?
Yeah, pretty much. It was a converted horse drawn implement so it was quite old and pretty worn. It did work, but us kids still had to walk behind it to pickup the potatoes it missed.
And when you could muster a small army of 10 kids from 3 families, well you maybe didn't need a potato lifter so much.
oh, I see you meant you didn’t grow potatoes for the market
Ah my bad. Back in those days, having a small one row potato lifter was not unusual for a farm where I grew up. Potatoes were a staple food because they could be stored easily until the next harvest. You would grow a half acre, sometimes more just for your own needs. Along with a lot of other vegetables to be home canned or stored.
Self sufficiency is important when you were poor.
Herdöpfel (stove/cooking apple) in Swiss german. Kartoffel in germany. Guess there's some variety, since it's a relatively new crop.
Have you ever had an apple of the sort they had when the word got its meaning?
They were closer to potatoes than you think.
Doubt. I would expect Apples to have been more like crab apples which are very bitter. Raw potatoes are neutral.
I had a science book as a kids which had sensory experiments. You get a potato slice and apple slice, hold your nose and try both.
They taste the same if you can't smell.
I'm not a time traveler, so no. Have you?
And can you bring me a dinosaur? Like, a triceratops would be nice, although a stegasaurus or argentinosaurus would do. A baby one would be ideal. Thanks.
Grosse Pomme is New York
Hans Grosse
How to the French tell the difference between fried apples and fried potatoes?
Maybe context.
Fried apples? Maybe that's a Texas thing, or Scottish, but it wouldn't be a source of confusion in France because they'd take your passport away if you tried frying an apple.
French people do eat apple beignets, which are basically fried apples.
If you've never had one before, apple beignets are easy to make and delicious, plenty of recipes around.
That's right I guess, but at least in a beignet there's a bit of preparation involved, I was picturing just whole fried apples or maybe like french fries but made of apple, but you're right I guess beignet counts.
Fried apples are sliced into small pieces and cooked with butter, cinnamon, and stuff. They're quite good. It's not a battered and deep fried thing. Frying covers a large range of cooking styles.
But only an apple they’d picked themselves or received from a trusted supplier with legible labeling, since it otherwise might be a potato.
Hey, that's a good point. Fried apples might me sweeter than fried potatoes, but they'd be much more similar than in other forms. Frying tends to bring out the sweetness in carbs.
My point was, I think they would both be pommes frites.
Sounds delicious
You're not wrong!
Well apple is succulent stem of apple tree. Potato is succulent root of potato plant. Root is stem inside ground. Q.E.D.
And tomatoes are "love apples"
Which makes more sense, in a weird way.
I think this came from the fact that if you bit into an apple and a raw potato while holding your nose, they'd have the same exact taste and texture
That's an interesting theory. Maybe ancient humans didn't have a sense of taste.
Ancient humans? Europe didn't have potatoes until they were imported from the Americas in the 1600s. Conversely, the Americas didn't have apples. So it would basically be impossible for anyone before the Colombian exchange to have eaten both of these fruits.
I meant great-grandad.
Whew. Thanks for the /s. That was a comprehensive list of French stereotypes, though. Bravo.