What is the correct spelling of this tomato?

[pugs]

I've seen it in catalogs spelled 'Ananas Noir', but I've seen it in SSE and trade lists and such as 'Ananas Noire'. Or are these two different tomatoes?

I'm a horrible speller and would like to get it correct. Help! I'm so confused.

Thanks,

Pugs

[canadamike]

Ananas noir is the correct spelling in that case. Ananas ( pineapple) is male in french, and ''noire'' is the feminine form of the adjective. Forget the ''e'' at the end.

[raymondo]

Many moons ago, this one confused me so I asked the folks over on Tomodori. They told me it should be Ananas noire because the proper name is actually Tomate ananas noire.

[PatrickW]

Maybe the issue is do we have a black tomato, or a tomato named after a black pineapple?

Should it be Tomate noire ananas?

[paquebot]

Christian Lemaires site, Passion Tomates, calls it Ananas Noir ou Black Pineapple. Although most of the blacks are Noire, that is one of the exceptions. Another is Black Prince which is Prince Noir.

Martin

[PatrickW]

On this list,

tomatespassion.blogspot.com/2008/12/nouvelle-liste-292-varits-pour-2009.html

Christian Lemaires has both:

ananas noir (masculine)

and

ananas verte (feminine)

Is it just that there's no fixed rule for this kind of thing in French?

[biorag]

Hi Patrick,

It depends how you are thinking :
Tomato is feminine in french.
Ananas is masculine.

When i read :
-tomate ananas noire = tomate "ananas" noire or tomate noire "ananas". I think the tomato is black.
-tomate ananas noir = tomate "ananas noir". I think the pineapple is black.

I don't know if it's very clear ... and unfortunately my english is limited.

I think it's more correct to use the masculine.
Another example : tomate "raisin vert".

[canadamike]

We actually see both. I think we should go back to the creator and find out.

The thing is we won't always put tomate ( tomato) in front of every tomato name. I feel it is better to accord the adjective to the name, as if we were reading ''ananas noir'' alone, in the same fashion we often read ''brandywine'' or ''green grape'' alone...

otherwise, the accord( sexual determination) is made on a word that is absent...

But hey, if the creator called it noire.... the heck with it.

[PatrickW]

Thank you biorag! I understand that a lot better now.

The tomato was developed by a Belgian named Pascal Moreau, but I'm pretty sure I heard something about him passing away a few years ago, so we may never know! Maybe one of the Belgians here will know more about this than me...

[orflo]

OOOPS, I have lots of contact with Pascal, and yesterday he was still alive...
The man who died last year was Luc Fichot, a great tomato collector!
So I will ask Pascal what he thinks of it... he'll probably say :mais c'est une blague ,non? or :this is a joke isn't it? ;D ;D ;D

[paquebot]

Babelfish says that black is noir in French.

Added: On my seed offer list, I have always carried it as Noir and that was the spelling used when listing information was sent to SSE. However, I note that it is Noire in the Yearbook.

Martin

[PatrickW]

Hi Martin,

Ask babelfish what noire is in English.

In most other languages besides English, nouns have gender. In the case of French it means they are either masculine or feminine. As strange as it may seem, if you look around the room, every chair, table, etc has a gender. In most languages, every object in the world has a gender.

If you assign anything a color in French, the name of the color has to match the gender. So if you you want to say something is black, you have to say noir if it is masculine or noire if it is feminine.

How do you know if something is masculine or feminine? Sometimes you can tell by how the words are spelled, in particular the last few letters of a word, but other times you just have to know. Some languages like German are very difficult, because there really isn't any other way than to memorize the gender of individual words.

What happens if you use the wrong gender? Not much really, except that you are wrong. You just sound a little stupid, but usually everyone understands you. In most cases it's not really important.

In this case, what's at issue is the gender of pineapples and tomatoes, which happen to be different. In French, tomatoes happen to be feminine (la tomate, means the tomato) and pineapples happen to be masculine (le ananas, means the pineapple). So, the question is when you have a black pineapple tomato, what is the gender of the word 'black'?

Pugs original question is how do you spell the name of the tomato? The answer is it really depends on if the gender of the word black follows the tomato or the pineapple, and no one here knows for sure.

Frank is going to ask the person who created the tomato what his intention was when he named it in the first place. Will the world be a better place when we know? Will any French speaking person care? The answer to both of those questions is probably no, but we'll know how to spell it in English!

[pugs]

Thank you all! I thought I asked an easy question. Shows you what I get for thinking. I see it spelled both ways and surely the person who named the tomato had a spelling in mind.

I hope orflo gets an answer from Pascal. And orflo, I didn't mean it as a joke. I didn't mean to stir up any controversy.

Again, thank you all.

Pugs

[orflo]

Nono, I know you didn't mean this as a joke, I was just imagining Pascals reaction, it could take a while, he's sometimes slow answering

[orflo]

I should withdraw my last words, because I already got an answer, it's ANANAS NOIR, without the 'e'...