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Man arrested after confusing Portuguese words for 'pomegranate' and 'grenade'

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Man arrested after confusing Portuguese words for 'pomegranate' and 'grenade'

#11

Post by jo6gwb »

schoen wrote: post #4

That's a minefield (so to speak), since the word grenade immediately derives from the word pomegranate (in French). And it seems that in most European languages that use it for either, the same word refers to both: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/granada https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/granata Portuguese is apparently the exception here in using it only for the weapon and not for the fruit. (My Portuguese is better tha…

The Hebrew word for Pomegranate is Rimon.

The Hebrew word for grenade is Rimon.

The arrested individual was reported as being Azerbaijani with an Israeli passport.

Re: Man arrested after confusing Portuguese words for 'pomegranate' and 'grenade'

#13

Post by schoen »

jo6gwb wrote: post #11
schoen wrote: post #4

That's a minefield (so to speak), since the word grenade immediately derives from the word pomegranate (in French). And it seems that in most European languages that use it for either, the same word refers to both: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/granada https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/granata Portuguese is apparently the exception here in using it only for the weapon and not for the fruit. (My Portuguese is better tha…

The Hebrew word for Pomegranate is Rimon . The Hebrew word for grenade is Rimon . The arrested individual was reported as being Azerbaijani with an Israeli passport.

Yes, although he was also reported to have translated from Russian to Portuguese. But now I'm more confused because apparently these words do differ in Russian, by a single vowel : граната granata for the weapon and гранат granat for the fruit.

The Portuguese newspaper reported that the word he used was "rpahata" (a kind of clumsy visual transliteration from Cyrillic) and it says that "the spelling is the same in Russian" (which is apparently not quite true!). Maybe the reporters were guessing about this (just based on the news that the confusion involved a translation app) and it really was Hebrew-to-Portuguese?

It's also interesting that Hebrew (I guess in imitation of French) took the unmodified existing word for pomegranate and used it for grenade.

Re: Man arrested after confusing Portuguese words for 'pomegranate' and 'grenade'

#14

Post by schoen »

gus_massa wrote: post #8
aaron695 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Footage of the arrest - https://www.cmjornal.pt/portugal/detalhe/homem-usa-tradutor-... Un-paywalled story - https://archive.is/41EtL Azerbaijani man speaking Russian, with an Israeli passport. Who orders a pomegranate drink at a restaurant. The story is pretty sus.

It's strange, but the page about ponergranate in Portuguese start with a reference about drink: > A romã é o fruto da romãzeira (Punica granatum), comum no mediterrâneo oriental e médio oriente onde a polpa é usada para a preparação de aperitivos, sobremesa ou algumas vezes em bebida alcoólica. autotranlation> Pomegranate is the fruit of the pomegranate tree (Punica granatum), common in the Eastern and Middle Eastern…

I think pomegranate juice is historically popular in Iran, so maybe also in Azerbaijan.

There's a pomegranate juice brand that's relatively common in U.S. supermarkets, but not in restaurants:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POM_Wonderful

I don't think I had ever seen pomegranate juice in a supermarket before this brand appeared (apparently in 2002). I think it's also used in some cocktails, so I wouldn't be surprised if bars had at least a little bit on hand.

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