Quote:
Originally Posted by Ambarina
Slight digression here.
I always thought it strange that the Spanish and the Portuguese use manzana and maça for apple, when most other "latinate" languages use the pomum root: pomme, poma, pom, pomo...
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I think that is because the Spanish is taken from older Vulgar Latin, when the word for an apple was
malum, from which a kind of apple
mala matiana hence
mattiana hence
manzana. Later, Latin
pomum took on the meaning, and other languages took words from a later date. This happens with lots of Latin words, e.g.
mesa -
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