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Butterfly | ||
Tags: Etymology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Ikarias Triglot Newbie Spain multilinguae.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6031 days ago 29 posts - 36 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, GermanB1 Studies: ItalianA2, DutchA2, FrenchA2, Mandarin | Message 1 of 15 16 December 2009 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Has anyone of you ever thought over the word "butterfly" in different IE languages?
Well, I have, and I find it very strange, the fact that these words aren´t similar: Spanish: Mariposa Portuguese: Borboleta (I think mariposa also exists in Portuguese) Italian: Farfalla French: Papillon German: Schmetterling Could you please provide more examples and give me you opinion about this? Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 2 of 15 16 December 2009 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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This has been discussed by linguists before.
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Anthropology/publications/B utterfly.htm "Butterfly" seems to be an example of a curious linguistic phenomenon in which an object gets a unique name in nearly every language — even closely related languages — perhaps because of its psychological effect on people. One wonders whether PIE had a word for it. Edited by Captain Haddock on 16 December 2009 at 3:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6034 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 3 of 15 18 December 2009 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the English word is very funny, can't help but think of it as a flying chunk of butter. And the Russian бабочка is not a tiny old woman, in spite of being exactly this in other languages.
Papillon lacks funny associations, although I can fabricate a few should I need to ;-p. Edited by Sennin on 18 December 2009 at 4:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 4 of 15 20 December 2009 at 9:25am | IP Logged | ||
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The English word is actually a corruption of an earlier form, "flutter-by", which I think is a lovely and sensible name for the creatures, one that in my opinion should be revived.
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| Halie Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6110 days ago 80 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 5 of 15 21 December 2009 at 8:59am | IP Logged | ||
It's like the joke, "Why do we drive on a parkway but park on a driveway?" I don't think she knew the origin of the word "butterfly" but my mother always used to jokingly call them "flutterbys" to me when I was little. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| XGargoyle Bilingual Triglot Groupie Spain Joined 5956 days ago 42 posts - 93 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, EnglishB2 Studies: GermanA2, Japanese, Russian | Message 6 of 15 23 December 2009 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Catalan word is "Papallona" which shares the same root than the French "Papillon" and the Italian "Farfalla"
Although not an IE language, but in Japanese the word is 蝶 (Chou) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5535 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 7 of 15 23 December 2009 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||
In Korean, butterfly is 나비 (nabi) with moth being the very similar 나방 (nabang). So apparently that isn't one of those words they both inherited from Chinese (unless only one of the languages did in this case). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jackal11 Groupie United States Joined 5662 days ago 41 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Latin | Message 8 of 15 27 December 2009 at 2:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Levi said:
The English word is actually a corruption of an earlier form, "flutter-by", which I think is a lovely and sensible name for the creatures, one that in my opinion should be revived Levi, could you please tell us where you obtained this information? The sources I've read indicate that the word 'butterfly' comes from an old belief that butterflies were witches who had transformed themselves to steal cream and milk from unsuspecting humans. Another possible etymology is that the color of the wings of certain butterflies reminded the speakers of Old English of butter. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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