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Butterfly | ||
Tags: Etymology | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| 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 9 of 15 27 December 2009 at 3:34am | IP Logged | ||
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You are correct. It seems I've fallen victim to a folk etymology.
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 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5847 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 15 31 December 2009 at 11:10am | IP Logged | ||
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[QUOTE=Ikarias] 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? END OF QUOTE Dutch: vlinder Esperanto: papilio Turkish: kelebek Danish: sommerfugl Latin: papilio The French word is a derivate from Latin and Esperanto uses the identical Latin word. Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6142 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 11 of 15 05 January 2010 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also noticed this a while back and at one point made a big table of the word for "butterfly" in every language for which I could find a translation. If I remember correctly, the only two languages which had an identical word (I obviously forgot about Esperanto, but it shouldn't count in such a situation) were Danish and Norwegian with sommerfugl.
Here are some more IE-language words for it: Greek: πεταλούδα（petalúdha) Romanian: fluture Swedish: fjäril Icelandic: fiðrildi Dutch: vlinders Afrikaans: skoenlapper Belarusian: матылёк (matylyok) Ukrainian: метелик (metelik) Czech: motýl Slovak: motýľ Polish: motyl Slovenian: metulj Serbo-Croatian: лептир/leptir Bulgarian: пеперуда (peperuda) Macedonian: пеперутка (peperutka) Latvian: tauriņš Lithuanian: drugys Irish Gaelic: féileacÚn* Scottish Gaelic: dealan-dè Welsh: pili-pala Persian: پروانه Hindi: तितली I don't know how to pronounce the Hindi or Persian... *I'm not sure how credible this is because I found it on Google Translation and it seems a little peculiar to me to have a capital letter in the middle of a word. Then again, I'm not familiar with Irish, so I wouldn't know. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 12 of 15 05 January 2010 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Looking at that list, I'd hesitate to make a big deal about the difference between some of the Slavonic words for "butterfly". The Belorussian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian words descend from a reconstructed ancestor of *motyl'ь in Proto-Slavonic. It's quite similar to how the French word is visibly related to the Latin form. The Czech and Slovak forms are EXTREMELY close to the point of defeating the original observation that words for "butterfly" in various I-E languages aren't similar. The difference here is that the Slovak word has a palatalized final "l", whereas the Czech one doesn't. This is in keeping with the Slovak tendency to be "softer" than Czech. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Envinyatar Diglot Senior Member Guatemala Joined 5536 days ago 147 posts - 240 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 13 of 15 05 January 2010 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Butterflies are a very interesting subject indeed. They can be found in several idiomatic expressions like the English "butterflies in the stomach", the French "papillons noirs" or the Spanish word for wanderlust "mariposear".
Ladybugs have also non-similar words in many languages: mariquita in Spanish, joaninha in Portuguese and coccinella in Italian for example. In Spanish both butterflies (mariposas) and ladybugs (mariquitas) have similar etymologies both related to the Virgin Mary (old Spaniards were very catholic) and weirdly both words are also used as pejoratives for "gay" people! 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 14 of 15 06 January 2010 at 8:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Don't forget about "social butterfly".
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| paparaciii Diglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6336 days ago 204 posts - 223 votes Speaks: Latvian*, Russian Studies: English | Message 15 of 15 06 January 2010 at 6:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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What about balisong?
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