Wacek Kusnierczyk wrote: (01)
> what about a butterfly? (sommerfugl in norwegian, literally meaning
> summer bird; see http://www.insects.org/ced4/etymology.html for more) (02)
"butterfly" is a really strange beast. There is almost no commonality
among European languages in either the word for the creature or the
meaning of the roots it uses. German "Schmetterling" is a "flutter
thing", and I have no idea what the origins of (French) "papillon" and
(Spanish) "mariposa" are. Some linguistics professor long ago suggested
that English "butterfly" is actually a Spoonerism for "flutterby". ;-) (03)
Familiar wild animals in general have very diverse terms, which probably
means that the words go back to hunter/gatherer societies. Terms for
familiar domestic animals tend to have much more commonality -- they
were the subject of trade. Terms for exotic animals tend also to be
much more closely related, probably because everyone read the same one
or two original works. "Rhinoceros" and "hippopotamus" originally came
from Greek authors -- few Europeans could read the Semitic languages of
the Near East. "Lion" was derived from a Semitic word, but almost every
European language uses some cognate for the same beast. (And it is not
so surprising that some German author translated rhinoceros verbatim to
Nashorn and hippopotamus to Nilpferd. That would have been a typical
"Deutsches (bzw. Preussisches) Reich" thing. In a similar way, the
French academy insisted for a while on calling email "courrier
electronique". ;-) ) (04)
>> With these examples, I am often surprised that bees are not called "small
>> flying bears" or "miniature yellow levitating zebras". (05)
Well, we do have "yellow jackets" (in American, at least), and
"hornets", which are not small flying rhinoceroses. (06)
In the immortal words of A.A.Milne, "you can never tell with bees".
And, as deliberately perverted by Alexander Menard, "de apibus semper
dubitandum est", it comes remarkably close to my point: "sensible
language", like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. ;-) (07)
-Ed (08)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 (09)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (010)
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