For the umpteenth time I've mentioned this on this board, "owl" in Mandarin is maotouying: cat head eagle. Another fun one is penguin: chi e. Literally "tiptoe goose".
>>5113073 in polish there are many funny scientific names for different insects and spiders. First you give them a cute-sounding first name followed by stupid epithet - like "psotnik zakamarnik" which literally means "troublemaker corner dude"
>>5113099 There's loads of those in Chinese. IIRC the word for "frog" translates to "water chicken". In Japanese a hornet is a "sparrow-bee", I assume they copied that from China.
In Norwegian a bat is called a 'flaggermus', translated that would- Oh.
I recently learned that the Norwegian word "dyr" (animal) and the English word "deer" both come from the same etymological roots dating back to prehistory. It was one of the first sounds our ancestors made, and it means "animal". Which means that the sound Northern Europeans used when they saw an animal that was not the same kind of animal they said they'd say [d:yr]! Which is cute to imagine. But furthermore it means the word 'regnsdyr' (reindeer) is composed of the words 'horned' and 'animal'. Which is also a very old word and thus reasonably means that ancient cavepeople saw "an animal" and thought that was worth pointing out, but then also some animals with horns, and thought that was worth pointing out as well.
However like much fun trivia this is probably not true, but I will still state is fact because the world needs more fun stories about animal names.
>>5114837 The Italian word is pipistrello, which always sounded funny to me. Doesn't have any particular meaning other than "bat", just the sound is humorous, like humuhumunukunukuapua‘a, the state fish of Hawaii (which means "fish with a pig's nose")
>>5114154 >But furthermore it means the word 'regnsdyr' (reindeer) is composed of the words 'horned' and 'animal' *reinsdyr 'regnsdyr' would be 'rain-animal' - also the etymology of 'reinsdyr' is disputed, but 'horned' would make a lot of sense here's a fun one in that similar vein though: 'kloakkdyr'
The word for bat in French is chauve-souris, which means bald mouse, and it pisses me off because I can't imagine seeing a flying rat for the first time and thinking its most novel feature is being kind of baldish and not the fact that it fucking flies.
Also honorable mention to the french word for bird, oiseau, and while it's a perfectly fine word it's just written in a silly "cram as much silent letters in there as possible" way. It's pronounced like wazoo and you'd never guess its spelling.
>>5115285 Oiseau is spelled exactly as it would be if you're following French rules. As evidence, see crOIssant and the name bEAU. What're ya gonna complain about next? How grenouille shouldn't be pronounced as it is?
>>5113073 In english, we call flying mice “bats” which makes no sense out of context. But in context, it’s clearly a reference to the old sport of hitting bats with clubs (that is, with a bat), a direct ancestor to cricket, itself so named because crickets were dangled from strings to lure in the batters next victim.
>>5113073 It's not my native lang but I think Croatian for shark is "morski pas" which means "sea dog". I noticed it when watching Jaws in Croatia, was funny as fuck.
>>5115299 Not any more silent that the H in ship or the second E in tree are. Those two examples follow English "rules" (which pretty much change every other word; English has rules like a ghoti has bicycles).
When the Giraffe was first brought to China it was believed to be a mythical qilin, resulting in most asian languages naming Giraffes after qilins or some derivative.
I met an old man in Texas who referred to pocket gophers as "salamanders". It confused the hell out of me, and I came to learn that it's supposedly a bastardization of "sand mounder" pic unrelated.
What I can surmise from this thread is that english is the only language that actually thinks bats are novel enough to have a distinct name instead of just naming them after something else
>>5115247 Porpoise is an interesting one to me. Not only do they have various pig-related names in almost all European languages from Portugese to Russian (including English, with porpoise itself being a bastardization of Latin for "pig fish") but independently also in Chinese and Chinese-influenced languages (海豚, "sea pig"). Wouldn't it be more intuitive to call them "small whales" or "round dolphins" or something?
>>5117239 Finnish has three names for them: Lepakko (official, more common) - flutterer Nahkasiipi (unofficial, rarer) - leatherwing Siippi (old fashioned, still used in couple species names) - winged one
>>5117360 That's not conjugation. That's declension. Linguistics and grammar have too many terms that mean almost the same thing so I get why the mistake was made.
>>5122688 In french raccoons are called "raton laveurs" which literally means washing baby rat, but raton more commonly refers to raccoons than it does to baby rats, so it's more like the french word for raccoon is just washing raccoon.
>>5115247 There's seehund too, sea dog = seal. I thought they were taking the piss when they told me the word nilpferd. They saw a hippo and thought "kind of like a horse (pferd), right? but just in the nile (nil)? ja nahr genug" Also, I asked them the word for centipede. they said tausendfüßler (thousand-footer). I said well what do you call millipedes? They just became confused and didn't answer.
>>5115351 those are terrible examples, there are tonnes of other word have silly letters in there and you pick two that are completely straight forward basic spellings with no excess in there.
>>5128903 >completely straight forward basic spellings with no excess in there. To an English speaker. Just as oiseau and grenouille are completely straight forward basic spellings with no excess in there to a francophone. You do understand that phonetics vary language to language, don't you? You're not a monoglot, right? …right?
>>5128901 Hippopotamus literally means "river horse". Am I the only multilingual person on this board or something? Bilingualism doesn't count. I have to explain phonetics to one guy then explain that nilpferd is a perfectly valid Deutschbag localisation of the original Greek name.