- Forum >
- Topic: Esperanto >
- "The duck eats the pineapple."
"The duck eats the pineapple."
Translation:La anaso manĝas la ananason.
40 Comments
Like Dejo said, almost all animals have their latin name. The choice for ananaso was rather obvious as well…
It's just English stepping out of line here.
Piña is the most common word in Spanish overall, but sometimes ananá or ananás are used depending on the dialect. I think in Argentina, for example, "el ananá" is the most common word.
In Brazilian Portuguese is ananás too, there are both terms, but it depends on the region. But mostly, almost always, it's abacaxi.
201
I have a serious qualm with this image. (And not just so I have an excuse to use the word qualm, it is a lovely word). Latin did NOT have a word for pineapple. The fruit would be unbeknownst to them. They would have never come across the fruit, so would never have had need for a word for it.
There is allegedly an illustration of a pineapple in one of the houses of Pompeii.
Possibly, but I must say, it's the first Esperanto tongue twister I've come across! LoL.
Of course, ancient latins did not know pineapples, but, in biology, species are traditionally named in latin, so they created latin names for all species. Also, latin is still an official language of the Vatican City, so it's kept updated
Sur la viki-paĝo https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananaso ni vidas, maldekstre, listo da lingvoj. Ĉiu estas skribaĵo pri ananaso kaj vi povas legi la nomon en pli ol 70 lingvoj (se eblas, ke vi legas la literojn)
Ankaŭ, jen la viki-paĝo pri anasoj: https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaso
Amuzu sin!
- 201
What's interesting is that in English, we also started off using "ananas" more than pineapple too, in 1700s, though pineapple quickly overtook in usage. Here's a link to a graph that shows its usage which you might find interesting:
EDIT: I can't seem to be able to link the graph. If you search the internet for "google ngram viewer" and then search within that for "ananas, pineapple", then you should be able to see the graph (you may need to adjust the dates it's between to see the usage of "ananas", though)
In Irish it's "anann," just to add to the list. I wonder what it is in Klingon...
However you say it, it probably literally translates to "mace's head".
According to Bing and a few other translators it doesn't have a translation (they just say pineapple)
Strange, very strange word "pineapple" considering they don't even grow on trees.
It's cause they look kinda like pinecones, which was the original meaning of "pineapple". "Apple" used to be used as a generic word for "fruit" (same thing in French - which is why potatoes are "pomme de terre")
I never heard about calling pineapples 'ananás' in spanish ,'piñas' is more common
Certainly looks curious. Duck (anaso) comes from Latin "anas" while pineapples comes from a Peruvian indigenous language "nanas". Btw most names of animals and plants come from Latin except for a few domesticated animals or pets like "kato, hundo" etc.
- 201
Are you sure it's Latin "anas" and not Latin "anasa" or something like that? I'm learning Latin at school and have yet to come across a noun whose nominative ending (the one people normally use when referring to the noun) ends in "as". All I can think of is the plural accusative form of the first declension nouns, but that would be a rather odd way to refer to a noun.
EDIT: I looked up a declension table, and sure enough the only mention of as "as" ending is the plural first declension accusative. I'll ask my Latin teacher when I next have a lesson (which is unfortunately in a few weeks now) and see what he says.
Anaso comes from Latin "anas" (duck).
Ananas comes from Portuguese ananás, via Guaraní (an indigenous language of South America spoken in Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil).
Being similar is Esperanto's fault in word choice rather than actual etymological similarity, but it's still interesting (I think).
"ananason" for me is like when a kid tries to spell banana. Banananana nana na. I just don't know where it ends.
"Nanny Ogg knew how to spell 'banana' but didn't know how to stop". (Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett)
Just read that last night. I was going to quote it here, but you beat me to it. ;D
That's a very good sentence to include since duck and pineapple are so similar in Esperanto.
Do you mean at the end? It's because it's the object of the verb. It's what's being eaten.
I've been thinking about this for a while and I'm actually glad that they acknowledge that the esperanto word for duck is to similar to the word for pineapple x) In swedish they're called Anka and ananas
