I remember an interview with Lisa Kudrow in which she described her French boyfriend’s failure to remember the English word for toes, and said they were foot fingers.
English: if the people you’re talking to understand what you’re saying, you’re ok. Even if the people you’re talking to don’t understand what you’re saying, you’re still ok. Just be fancy with your words, and everyone will like it.
Originally tomatoes were called pommes d’amour. There is pommes de terre (potatoes) pommes de pin (pinecones). If we would translate literally pomme de pin it would give us pineapple.
There were also other fruits beginning with pomme originally but I can’t seem to recall them.
It’s the same in Dutch - “aardapple” - but using the Dutch words for earth and apple rather than the French ones.
And don’t get me started on French numbering - for example 98 is “four twenties eigtheen”.
One doesn’t get it for one’s own language because all the weird stuff is “normal” but when you’re learning other languages you discovered they’re all riddled with funny constructs like this (and then there are expressions, which are often hilarious - for example on of the Dutch expression for wasting time on small details literally translates to “fucking ants”)
I remember an interview with Lisa Kudrow in which she described her French boyfriend’s failure to remember the English word for toes, and said they were foot fingers.
English: if the people you’re talking to understand what you’re saying, you’re ok. Even if the people you’re talking to don’t understand what you’re saying, you’re still ok. Just be fancy with your words, and everyone will like it.
In french, that’s really the name that is given to them, colloquially : doigts de pied (foot fingers)
The real term is orteils (toes)
They’re really good at it, too. Sometimes it’s even charming. For example, potatoes are “earth apples.”
I wonder if the meaning of pomme was broader in Old French, like how meat (from mete) used to mean food in Old English.
Yes it was the case, broadly pomme meant fruit.
Originally tomatoes were called pommes d’amour. There is pommes de terre (potatoes) pommes de pin (pinecones). If we would translate literally pomme de pin it would give us pineapple.
There were also other fruits beginning with pomme originally but I can’t seem to recall them.
I vaguely heard that ‘berry’ and iirc ‘apple’ were used the same way in English, one for small fruits and the other for larger ones.
Pomme comes from latin pomum which could be used for any fruit, apple specifically was malum.
It’s the same in Dutch - “aardapple” - but using the Dutch words for earth and apple rather than the French ones.
And don’t get me started on French numbering - for example 98 is “four twenties eigtheen”.
One doesn’t get it for one’s own language because all the weird stuff is “normal” but when you’re learning other languages you discovered they’re all riddled with funny constructs like this (and then there are expressions, which are often hilarious - for example on of the Dutch expression for wasting time on small details literally translates to “fucking ants”)
In Québec, we don’t say that and I didn’t even know French people say that.
I knew someone who used the term “bird leaves” which I find hilarious.
Same in Russian: пальцы ног (fingers of the foot).
And in German, Dutch and Afrikaans (at least), we call gloves hand-shoes (Handschuhe / handschoenen / handskoene)
I would think gloves would be hand socks, but then I don’t know what hand shoes would be.