Why is "pineapple" in English "ananas" in other languages? (2013) | Hacker News Reader

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

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58 pointsgodelmachine60 comments

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.

Tupi 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.

Here 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.

"Ananas" in slavic languages too.

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.

It's pineapple (パイナップル) in Japanese too.

It is அன்னாசி (Aṉṉāci) in Tamil.

https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=ta&text=pineapple&o...

And Korean, too: 파인애플

There 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-...

More "pineapple" :

pynappel (Afrikaans)

paina (Hawaiian)

paynapul (Krio)

പൈനാപ്പിൾ (Malayalam)

piña (Quechua)

I'm sure there are many more...

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)

There’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.)

loo-uh-vul

lull-vull

https://youtu.be/VUuzkA0Qg6U?t=40m23s

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!

I'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.

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.

It 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.

Etymology 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.

They might be mistaking it with "bananas"

To 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

Actually 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.

You can keep the small changes until you reach "inconstitucionalissimamente".

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.

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

Ananás 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

[1] https://dle.rae.es/pi%25C3%25B1a

I've heard piña in SoCal, but once visited Costa Rica and heard ananas. Disclaimer: I don't speak Spanish.

I 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...

As far as I can tell, patacon (as well as platano) is plaintain - not banana.

Latino here, never heard "ananas" - siempre piña.

The Wikipedia entry for Ananás and Piña redirect to https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananas_comosus

The entry for Ananas at 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 .

Read the answers and you'll see the claim is based on cherry-picking.

I've never heard that word growing up in Puerto Rico. We used Piña

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Porpa%C3...

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.

but pineapples are also totally alien to Finland, so it makes sense?

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

I 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.)

anāsa means pear, afaik.

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).

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

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..

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

The one of the famous quantum factorization algorithm!?

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?

This 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.

As a US english-only person, even with a smidge of other languages here and there, I would assume you meant banana.

No, generally not (at least for British English).

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

That's (b)ananas

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.

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

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

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!

Actually 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.

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

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

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

"Sosnojabłko" would be just silly.

'abacaxi' in portuguese.

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