It's been 30 years and I still can't get over the fact that the French word for "potatoes" is "ground apples." Have The French never had an apple?

π•½π–šπ–†π–Žπ–‰π–π–—π–Žπ–Œπ–@midwest.social to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 345 points –
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Counter point:

In Castellano (Spanish from Spain), it's called piΓ±a.

Spanish in other places, tooβ€”piΓ±a colada, anyone?

The takeaway here is, the rest of the world uses different words than the continents where it comes from

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.

Writer James D. Nicoll