Greetings. This may seem like a silly or basic question, but I am taking a few elementary steps into German, by learning colors and numbers. I noticed in the colors courses, that “orange” is the same in English as in German. Is this correct ? Is there no German word for the color “orange” ? What about the fruit, orange. Would it also be “orange”, or is there a German word for that ? Many thanks for any insight.
Nope, we Germans don’t really have a German word for ‘orange’. We just pronounce it differently. In the very old time orange was called pommeranze which we took over from the French in ca 1300. Why pommeranze did not stay as the orange word … I have no idea.
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Hallo,
the german word for orange is Apfelsine. Orange and Apfelsine are interchangeable .
The word Apfelsine means Apfel from sine (china) in dutsch it is sinaasappel.
And a Pomeranze is not an orange. It’s a different fruit. In german it’s often called Bitterorange.
Happy weekend!
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@redux2 ~ thank you very much for this information. It is very helpful. Even though I am only dabbling a bit with the language now, it seems there is much to learn. Pretty exciting ! Have a great day !
@redux2, Apfelsine is a fruit, and yes today Pommeranze is Bitter Orange. But @pdao wanted to know the color and not the fruit. So Apfelsine in case of color is not interchangeable with orange. And in history when Germany took over the word pommeranze from the French it was for the color orange which changed later on, when Bitter Oranges were introduced, to Pommeranze. But I have heard that word Pommeranze really seldom and when then just from our old folks.
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@GabrieleCramer-Knebe ~ thank you for this response. I was actually trying to learn a little more about this, so I Googled it (I know not always a good way to learn). I was reading this thread: http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/apfelsine-vs-orange.1329938/ when your post arrived. So much dialogue on what I originally thought was just a simple typo in 2 basic color courses. Wonder what awaits me when I try to learn some basic nouns, verbs or grammar rules… 
Oh well, I guess that is the challenge. Have a great day !
oops, I noticed I switched your names around, but it is now corrected. Sorry about that 
hallo,
“So Apfelsine in case of color is not interchangeable with orange”
You are right. Sorry, I only thought of the fruit 
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