"Hippopotamus" literally means "river horse" though https://twitter.com/XiranJayZhao/status/1316076159315005442 …
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I kinda wanna get the explanation of FIRE CHICKEN and SEA PIG
3 replies 0 retweets 7 likes -
Replying to @loudpenitent
At a guess, turkeys are probably "fire chickens" in Chinese because of the bright red heads and necks (It's not like English speakers calling them "turkey-fowl" after the country Turkey even though they don't come from there makes more sense, it's one of those long stories)
4 replies 1 retweet 26 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent
The Chinese word for dolphin being "sea pig" is, in fact, just borrowing an alternate (and easier to translate) English word for dolphins, "mereswine"
7 replies 2 retweets 28 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @loudpenitent
Which, fun fact, would be a guinea pig if translated directly to German. (Mereswine->Meerschweinchen) Languages are weird.
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Replying to @tamamonomog @loudpenitent
Yeah, that's definitely weird considering guinea pigs aren't, you know, in any sense aquatic Wikipedia says they were named "Meerschweinchen" because their little squealing noises sounded more like dolphin speech than pig grunts, at least to Germans
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Not because they were imported on ships??
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Yeah that is what I always thought was the case.
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"Meerschwein" already existed in German as the word for a porpoise before they had guinea pigs apparently so that seems unlikely
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