VICTORY

[kaberett]

Duolingo just finally for the first time in the entire time I've been using it accepted my Correct Potatoes Word!

-- okay let me back up.

German Duolingo is very... well, it's very Germany-flavoured. It's deeply dubious about perfectly reasonable terms from Austrian-flavoured German (I will grudgingly grant that it's just-about reasonable not to accept "vélo" as the German word for bicycle on the grounds that Swiss German Doesn't Count). On the one hand, they're frequently pretty responsive (e.g. the word I use for priest -- Pfarrer -- is now accepted as well as their default Priester, about which all I really have to say is ???) but apparently someone there has at least as much of a grudge about my potatoes word as I do about theirs, because, well.

Literal years! I have spent literally years typing in Erdapfel mulishly and then reporting that my answer should have been accepted before finally resentfully typing in Kartoffel! (Austrian German, like most of the rest of continental Europe and environs, had an extended You Know What's Sexy? French moment, so, yes, our potato-word is a calque of pomme de terre.)

So I did that again this evening, expecting to go through my usual sulky routine, and instead it just worked.

VICTORY IS MINE.

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

I'm so happy for you but also happy that I got to learn from this that Erdapfel is a word, I love a good calque.

[davidgillon]

I've only been doing Duolingo for a couple of months, and while I'm perfectly happy for it to correct my German phrasing, I'm slightly annoyed every time it throws out a perfectly valid English translation - I had a couple earlier this evening where the English sentence made sense with or without an 'a' in it, and at least in British English is more natural without, but Duolingo insisted on its Americanised phrasing (I deeply resent every time I have to go looking through the word bubbles for something like "movie theatre").

I'm fairly certain I've come across "Erdapfel" before, though I'm not certain where, as I was definitely taught "Kartoffel". "Pfarrer" is a new one on me, but to be fair I don't think I knew "Priester" either.

VICTORY IS MINE.

Or even "Sieg ist mein" ;)

[tree_and_leaf]

Pfarrer is regional, but more widespread than "Erdapfel" - you get it over most of the South of German-speaking regions. (Although it's complicated, because it can be used to refer to Protestant clergy, who it would be incorrect to describe as "Priester.")

[naath]

my com plaint with Duo is thamt it does not know the perfectly good English words ereyester and overmorrow (the Japanese words are apparently in common use) and insists on long winded synonyms instead. Harumph.

[fyreharper]

What do ereyester and overmorrow mean?

[naath]

ereyester; yesterday; today; tomorrow; overmorrow

(in that order)

[fyreharper]

Ah, nifty!

[naath]

In English, we don't use it nearly at all, but Japanese apparently does (duolingo has taught them to me along with "hello" and "red").

[kaberett]

We use them in German, too! "Vorgestern" and "übermorgen".

[alexseanchai]

ooo shiny

[indywind]

I’m so happy for you, but also happy for myself that I learned the term “calque” to describe these kinds of linguistic borrowings.

[lunabee34]

Yay! I love it!

[conuly]

It's the little things.

[ludy]

My Mum used to complain when we were at our Twin Church in Germany (in a small town in Rheinland-Pfalz) that she got called Frau Pfarrer rather than being allowed to have a name of her own...

Because History Reasons the Estonian for potato is an loanword from the German-flavour-of German: "kartul/kartuli/kartulid" (Brother lived in a suburb of Tartu where most of the streets are named for fruits and vegetables - generally they are pretty opaque to those of us used to Indo-European languages apart from that and "meloni"!)

[vass]

Herzlichen Glückwünsch zu deinem Erdapfel.

(Is that right? I have no idea how to decline something I'm congratulating someone on, and Google Translate is no help unless I want to be kind of rudely formal given context and (of course) use the Wrong Sort of Potato.)

[macey]

okay but earth apple / erdapfel is deeply charming tho, yay victory! I never did manage to learn enough german while in luxembourg for it to be Flavoured but boy howdy would it've been if I had XD

[fyreharper]

VICTORY POTATOES

[aldabra]

I grew Peruvian ground apples on the allotment last year. They are different.

[tree_and_leaf]

Meanwhile, Duolingo Spanish still continues to insist on "Carro" for car, which is the Latin American form, and I think is mostly used to mean "cart" in Spain.

[silveradept]

Victory for dirt apples!

[azurelunatic]

let us have VICTORY DIRT-APPLE ITEMS

[glass_icarus]

... it's weirdly hilarious and happy-making to see your Victory Potato post, given the number of times I have deleted shit sentences and thrown them in notes docs under potato sections, and my sister's complaints about her "potato" work computer?? xD BUT YAY ERDAPFEL.

[sfred]

Congratulations!

[swingandswirl]

Yay!

In related Duolinguo quirks, Duo Spanish is so used to LatAm Spanish that it will sometimes not accept my mother's Castilian (which is what I - her usual conversation partner - have, having learned at Instituto Cervantes) accent. So 'me llamo' will have to come out closer to 'me zh/shamo' than 'me yamo' which as a child of colonialism I find hilarious.

(also calques are so much fun! I wish we used them more instead of borrowing.)