Real questions that keep me up at night, part 809

in Random Crap, weekly reruns

me:  I can’t sleep.

Victor: Why?

me:  Because pretty much everyone in the world calls pineapples “ananas” or something similar, except for America but why?  I assume it’s because pineapples look like pine cones on the outside? But they aren’t like apples on the inside. They’re more like oranges. Why don’t we call them pine-oranges?

Victor:  Well now I can’t sleep either.

I stole this image from 9gag but I'm fairly certain they stole it from someone else so fair enough.
I stole this image from 9gag but I’m fairly certain they stole it from someone else, so fair enough.

*******

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This week’s wrap-up is brought to you by Rocky Mountain Essentials, a family-owned company that creates all natural health & beauty products. “We believe in three things; amazing customer service, fair prices and the producing products from the highest quality ingredients.  Most products manufactured and package in the USA, and US shipping is free for orders over $20.”  Plus, their instagram is freaking awesome and lightly sprinkled with kittens.  Just saying.

125 thoughts on “Real questions that keep me up at night, part 809”

Read comments below or add one.

  1. We call them pineapples here in Australia. It’s Australia Day soon so pineapples will feature prominently in desserts!

  4. Now I have that Muppet song stuck in my head but they are singing Anana na na.

  5. Bananas was already in play, and go big or go home! I’m guessing that’s why pineapple.

  8. True story: Until I was an adult, I thought pineapples grew on some kind of palm tree. Another true story: So did all my friends. All of us with advanced degrees. Just not in botany.

  12. When I was little I thought pineapples were apples that tasted like pine. I refused to eat them.

  13. Why does pretty much every other language else call Germany a version of “Deutschland” but English? I

  16. But —- what about bananananas ?? we have to say pineapple cuz the ananananas sound was taken by banananananas. ( oblique reference to Discworld for people who aren’t familiar)

  18. “What is this?”
    “Ananas”
    “Those are NOT bananas. Hmm I guess I need to name it.. Pine… something. Pinefruit Naaah. Pineapple. PERFECT”.
    facepalm

  19. Questions that keep me up at night:- Does thinking a human shagging a centaur is gross make me racist?

  21. Hmmm. In Spanish in most places I’ve been it’s called “piña” and in Brazilian Portuguese it’s “abacaxi”, so English isn’t the only odd man out.

  23. I think someone already mentioned it but Pina in Spanish means Pineapple. I do know that ananas in Italian is Pineapple but other than that I’m not so sure how accurate that list is?

  24. The bigger question is why some people like pineapple on pizza and some people think it’s gross. Is it different in countries that call them ananas? And why is ananas so close to bananas? Did people just run out of ideas when they were naming things?

  26. All I know is that I’m allergic to them now, dang it. meanders away, cursing the multiple food allergies

  29. Now I’ll be up all night wondering what happened to Ben Cartwright’s wives. Thanks notquiteold.

  30. Now I’ll be up all night wondering what happened to Ben Cartwright’s wives. Thanks notquiteold.

  31. Melissa #13, that’s not true though.

    Russian: germaniya
    Spanish: alemania
    Polish: Niemcy
    Greek: germania
    French: allemagne
    Finnish: saksa (like Saxon)
    Danish: tyskland (that on is like Deutschland)
    Czech: Německo

  33. In Mandarin, pineapples are called bo1luo2. The Hanyu Pinyin “o” is more of an “aw” sound than what Americans think of when they think of an “o.” Plecodict says that it means “trailing spinach,” more or less, while Google Translate gives me “spinach radish.” So there’s that.

  34. Well, shit! Now I’m afraid of pot — and The Jetsons. Thanks a lot, Jenny! 😉

  39. Perhaps the original intent was to have banana coladas, but someone got confused. Also, fyi, you can cut off the top of a pineapple, plant it in soil, and it will grow a pineapple on top once every two years. I have a Filipino friend who is growing a pineapple in his living room. We are attempting this, because obviously we must.

  40. so basically at some point someone said, “Gosh! I have to name this long yellow fruit. Dang it, I just named ananas last week. Let’s just stick a ‘b’ on it and call it them bananas.” Laziest jerk ever.

  42. Gangsta Granny sprayed two cans of air refreshener after the cabbage soup did “a little encore”. The scents were Pine and Apple. She wanted to be posh and make pineapple.

  43. Congratulations on your Publishers Weekly award. My husband and I are enjoying the audio book as we drive doing errands together. I caught him checking images of you out online, he must like you. LOL

  46. My husband is from the Czech Republic and he says its ananas there too and it sounded to me like he said “bananas.” That got me thinking well then what’s a banana called? I typed in “banana in Czech” which returned results like Free Banana Porno Movies. Huh. If not for your post I would probably never know banana porn was a thing.

  48. Well, I was deeply saddened that your 2016 calendar had come out so late. I mean, January’s almost over. But then I saw I could make it a 2017 calendar, and the light came back on. I mean, how cool that I’ll have next year’s calendar 11 months early! Thanks, Bloggess!

  49. You find the weirdest, coolest stuff. Also, I thought pineapple was “pina” in Spanish (with a tilde on the n.. my computer won’t let me add it because gr)

  50. What about grapefruit?? For years I thought it was Great Fruit, which would make more sense. They are great = big. They are nothing like grapes!!!!

  53. Pine-apple was originally the old English word for pine cones. When the tropical fruit was discovered, Limeys thought it resembled a pine cone on the outside. Same in Spanish – piña means “pine cone” as well. The ananas was the original Native American word for the fruit (in Native Tupi tribes language) and meant “excellent fruit”, which it sure is!

  54. Tala 🙂 I KNEW it! I always thought there was something fishy going on between the pinecones and the pineapples! (We say ‘pinecone’ in one word in Oregon, spellcheck!)

  56. Totally off subject but I have to Thank you, Jenny! I just had to drive thru a nerve wracking low visibility snow squall for about 50 miles and instead of freaking out & getting all stressed, I took a Xanax and listened to “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” for the 3rd time! It got me home safe & with a smile on my face! You are awesome & now that I’m safely home I am exhausted, but probably won’t be able to sleep as I wonder about pineapples and if Ben Cartwright was secretly a serial wife killer??

  57. Oddly enough, there I a song by Lorne Green called The Ponderosa. It tells the story of what happened to Ben Cartwright’s wives.

  58. I’ve started to judge these “Best Of” lists by whether or not Furiously Happy is included – because if it isn’t, clearly they haven’t read it and their research can’t be trusted.

    The giraffe video is both mesmerizing and hilarious. How does something like that even happen?

  59. I was wondering what my 3am Sunday night/ Monday morning wandering mind topics might include (other than the general suckiness of the pending Monday), and here you have provided some subject matter. Pine. Apple.

  60. ::put on linguistic hat::
    Apple use to refer to all round fruit or veggies. This is why the French word for potato translates as ‘apple of the earth’. The ‘pine’ in pineapple is because it looks similar to a pinecone, and apple is because of the apple reason I mentioned.
    ::takes of linguistic hat:
    Languages are so strange.

  61. AAAHHHH!!! A video I sent you made it into the blog! I just died from sheer happiness and validation! LOL I feel much more important than I should right now. Thanks Jenny!

  62. Do you seriously think that only America calls them pineapples? You are aware that there are other English-speaking countries in the world…?

    (Sure. But I know enough about those countries to know that we don’t always use the same words for things. ~ Jenny)

  63. I don’t care what you call them. Put that shit in my piña colada and everything will be juuuuuust fine.

  64. You’re exactly right with it being related to pinecones. At the time, pinecones were called pineapples (“apple” being a general term for any fruit, not the specific fruit we call an apple today). Since the fruit resembled pinecones, it was given the same name. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pineapple (Notice that in French, they still call some types of pinecones “pommes de pin,” literally “pine apples,” just as they call potatoes “pommes de terres,” or “earth apples.”)

  65. Help me. I’m not a blogger.I love you and
    your friends, but I am older than many of you and I don’t know how to do anything
    except read all this stuff. I need that Frantically happy raccoon. please help. diann. I own a restaurant. .I’m a cook not a computer expert.Would someone tell me how to talk to you without so much hassle. They don’t think I exist. Maybe I don’t.

  66. drew #31 – the Russian word for “German” is “nemeshki”, it literally means “mute” or “dumb” (as in unable to speak). The Russians and Germans have been not-getting-along for longer than they’ve had a written language!

    Although “Germanski” or some variation may be used to refer to the modern country, been a while since my Russian classes.

  68. the french call potatoes apples of the earth. terres du pomme. or earth apple or something like that. maybe that’s just the trend? add an apple into delicious food names. oh, now i see a more elegant and researched comment above me. never mind.

  70. yeah dont do the edibles. but the medical stuff. the cbd which stands for cannabidiol. that shit is amazeballs. i have gone off all my meds. just a tiny bit of that and anxiety….gone. depression…..lifted just enough to cope. insomnia….gone. pain…..gone. it is a freaking crime that stuff isnt legal all over the place.

  71. In Spain, they’re pinas with funny “n”. Which is the same word they use for pine-cone.

  73. Pineapple tip:
    1) Take one pineapple
    2) Cut off top
    3) Scoop out middle
    4) Add (ie pack with) as much soft dark brown sugar as you can.
    5) Carefully pour in as much white rum as you can (overproof if you can get it); 1/2 a bottle is a kind of minimum.
    6) Replace top and affix with elastic bands
    7) Wrap in big sock or similar (not plastic naturally)
    8) Hide in back of cupboard/larder for about 3-4 weeks
    9) Retrive
    10) Slice
    11) Eat
    12) fall over.

  74. I think it’s odd that oranges are the only fruit that I know of named after their color. And it’s not even that they are the only orange fruit.

  77. My kid asked me about this just a couple of days ago! I had no idea what to tell her.

  80. Additional weird and only tangentially connected information:
    In French, pinecones are called “pomme de pin”, which means apple from the pine. Pineapple.

  82. I had left my great pineapple story here but the wifi kicked me out and now I am too lazy to repeat it…But you are fun to read as always. 🙂

  84. I moved to Panama last year…locals call them piñas. No one calls them ananas here. They lied. Except in Argentina and Uruguay, according to my Spanish-English dictionary.

  88. Pineapples are much more like pinecones than bananas. So clearly the rest of the world needs to change.
    meow meow meow

  89. I’m starting to get the impression that everything looks like an apple to the French.

  90. As a die-hard stationer, I’m slightly offended you don’t know stationery is spelled with an “ery”. It may stand still, but it’s not stationary.

    (Fixed! But I’ll probably fuck it up again. ~ Jenny)

  92. My friend in Brazil pointed out that the Portuguese word for the pineapple you eat is abacaxi, whereas ananas refers to… ornamental pineapples? At any rate, abacaxi is fun to say. 🙂

  93. Why don’t we call them bananas…oh wait….America MUST BE DIFFERENT! But seriously piananas would be a good name though if you think about it.

  94. Just bought Butterfly Confessions while I ate pineapple. AddyeB’s work is outstanding, vibrant and ALIVE! Thank you for sharing!

  97. OMG! This inspired me to look up the reason, because… well, I’ve stayed up many nights thinking wondering about this. But why solve my own insomnia when I can solve anyone else’s.

    Europeans originally called “pinecones” “pineapples.” The first recorded mention of a pineapple was 136…ish (iit doesn’t like it’s age revealed) but they were referring to pinecones.

    Then in 1664, explorers were introduced to what we now call pineapples and called them pineapples because they looked like pinecones which were, at the time, called pineapples.

    And within 30 years, the term “pinecone” was invented. I suspect because guests were tired of showing up to Pineapple Parties and discovering the hosts had skimped and purchased the dry, fibrous, conifer tree variety of pineapple.

    As for the “ananas” thing, I can’t be sure, but I suspect it was the world’s way of saying, “Fuck the British.”

  100. “What the fuck am I doing with my life,” “where are all the cats,” and “how can my wife sleep so soundly” keep me up, after I awaken at 4:00 AM to pee. I never think of pineapples. Unless they are crushed and mixed with small curd, cottage cheese.

  101. Um. Pineapple in Spanish is pina with the ~ over the n. It’s not ananas. Maybe that’s Spain Spanish or some regional dialect thing, but all of Latin American says pina.

  104. I’m in the same boat with the pineapple reference. I would just like to say that us Americans calling soccer ‘soccer’ is unnerving too….. great, now I won’t be able to sleep tonight either.

  109. I figure Hawaii, where they grow them would have the final word. Hala-kahiki. Most syllables wins.

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