this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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You could do this all day with Vietnamese. Kangaroo is bag mouse. Orca is assassin fish, giraffe is a long-necked deer. Etc.
Dutch has a lot of good ones!
Hippo: Nile Horse (nijlpaard)
Leopard: Lazy Horse (luipaard)
Sea urchin: Sea Hedgehog (zee egel)
Seal: Sea Dog (zeehond)
Skunk: Stink Animal (stinkdier)
Turtle: Shield Toad (Schildpad)
Slug: Naked Snail (Naaktslak)
Porcupine: Spiky Pig (Stekelvarken)
Edit: formatting
I've looked it up and apparently leo is lion and part is leopard or panther. So it's a lion leopard. English and Dutch have the same etymology, and German too, all your examples are the same in German.
Are you implying that the word for leopard is compounded from the word for leopard???? How did they get the first word for leopard if they didn't have a word for leopard?????
Correction: it's male leopard. It surprised me as well. It's ultimately from Indo-Iranian origin.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/pardus#Latin
The Dutch are sneaky bastards (stiekemeklootzakken).
There are only two things I can't stand in this world: People who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.
Hippopotamus comes from the Greek words hippos (horse) and potamos (river). So literally "river horse".
While this is kind of fun, it’s also kind of frustrating. Like when Merriam Webster tries to define a word for me by using the word. Frustrating: having a quality or qualities that frustrates.
So this is why Indonesian names for hippo, sea urchin and seal are weird af. They are actually direct translation from their dutch names!
Norwegian
Hedgehog: Needle Swine (pinnsvin/
Wow that’s a big bouncing animal! Kind of reminds me of-
“A mouse. Like a big mouse with a bag.”
…Good idea sir.
Sylvester agrees.
That's adorable
German has Killerwahl (killer whale) for orca
So does English, no?
I didn't know. So the German might be a calque from the English
Somewhere, out there, there's a language that does NOT have any funny details like this. Those who speak it have the maximum enjoyment potential when learning out.