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Why is "pineapple" in English "ananas" in other languages? (2013)

by godelmachine on 11/6/23, 9:05 PM with 60 comments

  • by dragonwriter on 11/6/23, 9:35 PM

    Lots 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.

  • by throw__away7391 on 11/6/23, 9:22 PM

    At 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.

  • by robbiejs on 11/6/23, 9:18 PM

    This 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)

  • by throw0101c on 11/6/23, 9:26 PM

    Anyone else from Ontario, Canada remember the character of Ananas from Téléfrançais:

    * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBSflK1FTSY7&t=36s

    * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Téléfrançais!

  • by Matheus28 on 11/6/23, 9:16 PM

    I'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.

  • by herunan on 11/6/23, 9:18 PM

    Spanish is the other language with ‘piña’. The 5th image in this link posted explains the shared etymology: https://imgur.io/a/iVK8a

    Edit: Of course, let’s not forget our Catalan (‘pinya’) and Welsh (‘pinafal’) friends.

  • by beambot on 11/6/23, 9:16 PM

    I'm highly suspect. For Spanish, I've always heard piñas rather than ananás...

  • by Yaggo on 11/6/23, 9:24 PM

    Ananas is a rare example of word which is exactly same in Finnish, although our vocabulary is usually totally alien compared to most European languages.

  • by virtualritz on 11/6/23, 9:35 PM

    The 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/

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupi_people

  • by wannes on 11/7/23, 7:56 AM

    In 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).

  • by pvaldes on 11/6/23, 11:39 PM

    Because 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

  • by lagniappe on 11/6/23, 9:15 PM

    Brings 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 - yep still going strong..

  • by notfed on 11/6/23, 9:52 PM

    Is no one going to talk about how the accepted answer was written by Peter Shor?

  • by GaggiX on 11/6/23, 9:31 PM

    I'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?

  • by sundalia on 11/7/23, 1:04 AM

    They picked Portuguese from Europe but omitted Brazilian Portuguese (largely more spoken, like 90-10 split). It's not ananas there, it's abacaxi.

  • by extragood on 11/6/23, 9:15 PM

    That's (b)ananas

  • by sombragris on 11/6/23, 10:55 PM

    In 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.

  • by carabiner on 11/6/23, 9:21 PM

    The Most OFFENSIVE Word In The English Language? https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZRRL_bi_62A

  • by xgstation on 11/6/23, 9:34 PM

    Pineapple is called 菠萝(Bōluó) or 凤梨(Fènglí) in Chinese by the way.

  • by ploum on 11/6/23, 9:26 PM

    Worst 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!

  • by x3n0ph3n3 on 11/6/23, 9:32 PM

    Interesting how "all other languages" only includes PIE languages and 2 Semitic languages.

  • by the-link on 11/6/23, 9:30 PM

    That's a very selective list. Not very representative of the whole as a whole.

  • by wppick on 11/6/23, 9:20 PM

    Listen 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

  • by seba_dos1 on 11/7/23, 12:21 AM

    "Sosnojabłko" would be just silly.

  • by mito88 on 11/7/23, 2:27 AM

    'abacaxi' in portuguese.