The journey of the word orange is interesting (1 Viewer)

[Ahsoka]

For this I’ll be taking about just the fruit. Color will come another day. Also I’ll be taking just in terms of the main European languages because around the world is too many

First, in terms of the fruit. Most languages use a variant of naranga (examples are orange, naranja, ect). A smaller group use a variant of appelsien (from Dutch, meaning literally apple of China). Countries that use this are mostly Nordic, Baltic, or East Slavic (or not European). And the last group is those that get their word from orange from the country name Portugal. Who wants to guess which country brought sweet oranges to Europe via trade? Countries that use this variant tend to be in the east part of the Balkans and Turkey. What’s interesting in Arabic, both the older form based on naranga and the newer form based on Portugal remain, where the naranga form is used for sour oranges (they were from India and known in Europe before sweet oranges), while the Portugal based form is used for sweet oranges.

Stay tuned for pt 2 about the words for the colors! Coming to KS posts near you. Or whatever the movie theater phrase is.

 

[Ahsoka]

Language tag:
@athenarose @intothevault @Nyaz @Dreamer_of_Songs @Nina @velvet @ChuuAntics @MyLovelyLove @alo @AllTimeChiara @eclipsoul @sick @Moguri @LoveYooShaSha

 

[dark_tranquility]

truly fascinating and all those terms for orange

 

[Moguri]

Moguris head is spinning trying to wrap my head cat head around this

Which is the country that brought them to europe??

 

[Ahsoka]

Moguris head is spinning trying to wrap my head cat head around this

Which is the country that brought them to europe??

Portugal was the first to bring them to Europe. The Dutch also supplied them later. That’s why 2/3 of the names trace back to those two countries

 

[Moguri]

Portugal was the first to bring them to Europe. The Dutch also supplied them later. That’s why 2/3 of the names trace back to those two countries

oh I see!!!

I thought it might a surprising one that was not mentioend yet