{"id":6346,"date":"2018-09-04T11:34:19","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T11:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utalk.com\/news\/?p=6346"},"modified":"2020-07-07T13:55:15","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T13:55:15","slug":"the-travelling-potato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/the-travelling-potato\/","title":{"rendered":"The Travelling Potato"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The everyday potato has anything but an everyday past, notching up thousands of miles \u2013 and dozens of names \u2013 in a voyage that has taken it around the world. In this post, uTalk’s Language Guru, Brian Loo Soon Hua, charts the potato’s epic journey. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting out in Southern Peru and Northern Bolivia, where potatoes have been cultivated for thousands of years, these versatile tubers gradually spread across South America and became the staple crop of the Incan Empire, where they were known as papas<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, despite being a staple of modern meals, they were met with suspicion when they first arrived in Europe in the 16th<\/sup>century. Some people even called them \u201cDevil\u2019s Apples\u201d because they were  strange-looking, grew underground (no part of the potato growing above ground was edible) and belonged to the same family as the deadly nightshade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gradually however, their usefulness overcame people\u2019s reservations and potato crops were slowly adopted by farmers all over Europe, eventually spreading all over the world, reaching India, Southeast Asia and even China within a couple of centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all foreign imports, the potato has experienced its fair share of linguistic confusion. The first potatoes that were encountered by Europeans were sweet potatoes. In fact, the word \u201cpotato\u201d derived from the Taino (an extinct language once spoken in the Caribbean) word batata <\/em>meaning \u201csweet potato\u201d! Batata<\/em>quickly evolved into \u201cpotato\u201d. Later, English-speakers were introduced to the potato proper, known as papas <\/em>in Quechua, by Spaniards importing exotic foods from Peru. By that time, the English were already familiar with the sweet potato (known simply as \u201cpotatoes\u201d) so they called this white, non-sweet variety \u201cVirginia potatoes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the weather in Britain and Ireland was more suited to growing the white, non-sweet variety, the \u201cVirginia\u201d part was soon dropped, leaving us with the plain old \u201cpotato\u201d. In Spanish-speaking countries on the other hand, both the words patatas <\/em>and papas <\/em>remain in use: Most Spaniards refer to potatoes as patatas <\/em>while in Latin America, the Canary Islands and parts of Andalusia, they\u2019re called by their original name, papas<\/em>. Some say that this was because papa <\/em>sounded too much like the word for \u201cpope\u201d in Spanish, which is also papa<\/em>,and out of not wanting to call the pope a \u201cpotato\u201d, patatas <\/em>became the general word in Spain instead. Likewise, batata<\/em>is the Portuguese word for \u201cpotato\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French have a slightly more creative name; they call it pomme de terre<\/em>or \u201cEarth apple\u201d, as do the Dutch, who say aardappel <\/em>together with the Italians and their pomo di terra <\/em>(although patata <\/em>is quite common as well in Italy). In Southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria, one will hear its German version:  Erdapfel<\/em>, while in other German-speaking regions, stranger names like \u201cEarth pear\u201d Erdbirne<\/em>and \u201cground pear\u201d Grundbirne<\/em>are also frequent. The Northern German Kartoffel <\/em>on the other hand is a bit unusual; it comes from the Italian tartufulo<\/em>or \u201clittle truffle\u201d but why Germans would borrow this Italian word to describe something that only bears the slightest the slightest resemblance to a truffle is a bit of a mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hot on the trail of this little globe-trotting tuber with more aliases than a KGB spy, we can see that its many European names are mostly variations of either \u201cEarth \u2013 something\u201d or \u201cKartoffel<\/em>\u201d or batata<\/em>\/ patata<\/em>. For example, the South German \u201cground pear\u2019 or Grundbirne <\/em>became the krompir <\/em>\/ \u043a\u0440\u043e\u043c\u043f\u0438\u0440<\/em>of Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrin. The Russian \u043a\u0430\u0440\u0442\u043e\u0444\u0435\u043b\u044c <\/em>(kartofel\u2019) and Bulgarian \u043a\u0430\u0440\u0442\u043e\u0444 <\/em>(kartof) are derived from German, as are the Danish kartoffel <\/em>and Icelandic kartafla<\/em>. W<\/em>hile the Polish ziemniak <\/em>comes from ziemia<\/em>, the word for \u201cearth\u201d. For Czechs and Slovaks, the potato is such an important part of their culture that they have over 30 names for it! Travel around the Czech Republic and Slovakia and you\u2019ll hear names as diverse as brambor<\/em>, zemiak<\/em>, \u0161vabka<\/em>, grumbir<\/em>,repa, bobal, erteple, zem\u010d\u00e1k, budka, kartofel <\/em>and so on!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Greeks have their \u03c0\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac\u03c4\u03b1 <\/em>(pat\u00e1ta), the Albanians have their patate<\/em>and the Turks, their patates<\/em>. Norwegians and Swedes call their spuds potet<\/em>andpotatis<\/em>. The Welsh love tatws <\/em>(often as \u201cfive-minute-potatoes\u201d or tatws pum munud<\/em>) and Scottish people enjoy their bunt\u00e0ta <\/em>(in Scottish Gaelic) or tatties <\/em>(in Scots),while an Irish meal is never complete without at least one dish made with good old pr\u00e1ta\u00ed<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Finns say peruna <\/em>(borrowed from Swedish p\u00e4ron<\/em>, meaning \u201cpear\u201d \u2013 the name was probably derived from something like \u201cearth pear\u201d mentioned above). And most interesting of all, Greenlanders call the potato naatsiaat <\/em>\u2013 \u201csomething for which one waits a long time to grow\u201d!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turns out, the versatile potato is both a globe-trotter and a master of re-invention!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you know?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The French Canadians have an expression called “L\u00e2che pas la patate” which means “don’t give up” but literally translates as “Don’t let go of the potato”!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The everyday potato has anything but an everyday past, notching up thousands of miles \u2013 and dozens of names \u2013 in a voyage that has taken it around the world. In this post, uTalk’s Language Guru, Brian Loo Soon Hua, charts the potato’s epic journey. Starting out in Southern Peru and Northern Bolivia, where potatoes … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,51,1635],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}