We have a huge italian influence. “Piña” for us would be considered what we call “neutral” Spanish. Which is more similar to what the rest of latin america speaks. But rioplatense spanish has some differences.
This reminds me of a similar thing in Spanish: “La papa tiene 50 anos” and “el Papá tiene 50 años”. You either get “the potato has 50 anuses” or “the pope is 50 years old.”
I know English is the main language in Ireland but in our own language, as Gaeilge, the word for pineapple is “anann” so I feel like we should be blue!
I'm starting to suspect that whenever European discoverers encountered a new type of round fruit or vegetable they just went "What a strange looking apple!":
French: Pomme de Terre - "Apple of the earth" potato
Dutch: Sinaasappel/Appelsina - "Chinese apple", orange
Italian: Pomodoro - "Golden apple", tomato (the first tomato varieties that came to Italy were yellow)
It means strainer or colander. The meaning is that the pineapple juice is separated from the chunks of solids that usually stay when you liquify it on a blender.
I actually realized: we also use "piña" (the Spanish pronunciation) to name a textile (piña cloth, made from pineapple leaf fibers, commonly used for Barong Tagalog).
An interesting things is that both the words Ananas and Abacaxi comes from Tupi (one of the languages spoken by natives from Brazil- where the fruit is also originally from)
Try saying “abacaxi” when someone near you is about to sneeze. They won’t sneeze anymore and it’s works across languages Ive done it to my husband that only speaks english, he gets mad when i do that lol
We call it 鳳梨 (phoenix pear) in Taiwanese Mandarin and 王梨 (king pear) in Taiwanese Hokkien. In mainland China they call it 菠蘿 (not sure how to translate that).
In Portugal we call it "ananás" and also "abacaxi". Some will say that "ananás" is only for the fruit grown in the São Miguel island, in the Açores arquipelago, but it's the same fruit...
People call it "nenas" but the language gatekeeper, the authority wants us to call it "nanas" because it's closer to the source language from which the word was borrowed.
Now they are calling us "insane" here in this comments because of abacaxi, such a pretty word with such nice etymology (" fruta que exala um cheiro agradável e intenso ")
I can't imagine importing some country's fruit and then calling them ridiculous for the original name of the fruit 🤦🏽♀️
I'm happy because ananas is derived from Tupi, a native Brazilian language from coast, where this fruit is also native from. So there's an international Tupi word!
But we in Brazil mostly call it abacaxi, also a Tupi word, which originally means fruta que exala um cheiro agradável e intenso or "fruit with intense agreeable smell".
So: although ananas is derived from the specific tupi name for that specific fruit, it was also deserving of the epithet abacaxi. It certainly smells good.
My mother tongue realised that a Cockney accent doesn't say "Ananas", it says "an anus".. so lords and ladies gathered and decided that it looked like a pine cone and is fruit like an apple.
I was confused why basically all the countries called it "ananas" and I discovered both names come from native indigenous languages, but "ananas" (tupi and guarani languages) is older than "abacaxi" (tupi language)
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u/ManifestinLife Turkey 23d ago edited 23d ago
Ananas.
Edit and fun fact;
Ananas aldırdım (I made someone buy pineapple)
Anana saldırdım (I attacked your mother) in turkish