"संतरा एक फल होता है।"
Translation:An orange is a fruit.
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संतरा comes from the name of the Portuguese town of Sintra. Greeks call oranges 'Πορτοκάλι' too. The Portuguese use the Arabic root (laranja). The Arabs brought the orange to Spain from the Far East: al-naranj > naranja > an orange. (16thC English called them noranges!) Interestingly the Sanskrit for Orange was narang (नारंग) too. The Germans simply call it 'Apfelsine' - Chinese Apple, although Orange is becoming more common. Does anyone else have any other interesting Orange stories?
Great info.
Another thing - orange is also called Naarangi(नारंगी) in Hindi. Sounds quite related to the Arab Naranj.
In Malayalam, the original name was "Naarangai". The English-derived "orange" is more frequent nowadays.
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The Dutch royal House of Orange is a legacy of its former Spanish rulers. William of Orange (who went to England) and Willem of Orange (current Dutch king) are branches of that family tree. So on Queen's/King's Day the Dutch people celebrate with much orange-coloured clothing on display!
I find this interesting, especially because I have been to Sintra. It is my favorite spot in Portugal.
How do you know for certain संतरा derives from Sintra, especially when the early Portuguese in India didn't use that word?
One assumes the single vowel sound difference was a big clue(!), but it is backed up by Wiktionary:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BE
नारङ्ग (नाग the best + रङ्ग color) is a Sanskrit loanword in Arabic and other languages.
- 1472
That, in turn, comes from the Turkish "portakal". The Turks invaded Romania a couple of times.
Quick correction, they didn't invade Romania. They wanted to, but couldn't initially. After some time the three Romanian territories became vassal states (paid tribute not to be invaded), but eventually managed to become fully independent of the Ottoman Empire.
- 1472
Thanks! I thought the Romanian territories had become vassal states after having been invaded.
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It is most probable for this word to come from Greek into Romanian. https://ro.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/portocal%C4%83
thanks for this tidbit :) a crucial bit of information i found -- the arabic 'naranj' was borrowed from the persian 'narang', which was borrowed from the sanskrit 'narangah', which ultimately comes from a dravidian language (possibly mayalayam, telugu, or tamil.) and as and if it couldn't get any better, arabic has another word for orange: 'al-burtuqaliu'. sound familiar? ;) the portuguese sure were proud of their fruit....
My interesting tidbit is actually debunking part of yours, I'm afraid!
It's a fun story that it was originally 'a norange' (and it really did happen for some other words, such as 'a nuncle' - not sure about 'aunt' though!) but oranges were always oranges, and came to us via French 'pomme d'orenge', which of course came from Spain and the rest of the root as ypu describe.
Modern French, yes. It, along with English 'orange' comes from the Old French 'pomme d'orenge'.
Does anyone else have any other interesting Orange stories?
There ain't no rhyme for oranges.
But seriously, I love the etymology stuff. That was worth 2 lingots. :-) Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
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In Russian, as well as in Ukrainian, we call it 'апельсин' with almost same pronunciation, which is almost the same as in German, but without 'f' and final 'e'. In Vietnamese, orange as a fruit and orange as a colour have the same word 'cam'.
It is typically used when speaking in generalizations. Such as, "horses are big animals" - "घोड़े बड़े जानवर होते हैं"
In Persian both Portugal and orange are called "porteghal". Narengi is a different relative of orange family.
A statement where the verb is simply है, हैं, or हो talks about what is true right now without taking a stand on what is always true.
Prepending the auxiliary verb होता, होती, or होते to the है, हैं, or हो adds the "habitual" aspect to the statement, indicating that that's how things always are. You use this form to describe habits, which tend to not change, and to describe "immutable truths" which never change.
See the section headed with "होना - The Habitual Form" in the tips and notes for the "Animals" skill: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/28223405.
In the current example, an orange is a fruit by definition, and that will never change. So you use the habitual aspect to say so. In one of the other questions you'll see, संतरा लाल है, is a reference to a specific orange that happens to be red. But oranges are not always red, so you don't use होता/होती/होते in that statement.
Hindi strictly speaking doesn't have the फ़ fa sound, it appears in loanwords, since e.g. English and Persian do have that sound. So sometimes the dot will be omitted and it's written फ as you did, and also some speakers will approximate it as 'pha'.
(Just like in loanwords from Hindi to English we make similar approximations with the sounds we have - chutney, jodpur, and kedgeree for example.
होता is the masculine singular habitual form of होना 'to be', so like I might say:
मैं सेब खाता हूँ - I eat apples
we can also say:
सेब अच्छे होते हैं - apples are nice
in both cases the verb (खाता, होता) is in the 'habitual aspect' - because we're not just saying I ate a specific apple, or am eating one, or a certain apple in my hand is nice - but that in general, I habitually eat apples, apples are generally ('habitually' to personify them) nice.
It doesn't translate brilliantly because we don't use 'to be' in the habitual aspect in standard English ('apples be nice') - but just compare it to the same conjugation of a different verb, as above with खाना, and I think it's clearer.
होता? Could somebody explain from where we take it? Is it not correct if I say संतरा एक फल है?
If you think about the grammar with other verbs, it should be clearer: 'the orange eats a fruit', for (nonsensical) example. It's sort of 'the orange bes [does be] a fruit'; not a construction we use in standard English.
It's similar to some dialectal English though, such as 'I be going now', 'orange be fruit'.
Pronouns in the following there is a wood like but what is An orange is a fruit. You can know a answer
This doesn't sound right, my father speaks Hindi as a second language (he is Punjabi) and I'm sure that एक isn't interchangeable with "a" in this context. एक is meant to be like a discrete quantity rather than saying that orange is fruit.
