Re: Att. Ray -- of snails and slugs

En réponse à Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>:

>
> Thanks - it confirms what I thought.
>
> But according to my French daughter-in-law, her compatriots - just like
> us
> anglophones - do distinguish between _limace_ (slugs) and _escargots_
> (snails).  Interestingly, altho born and brought up almost in the
> geographical center of the Hexagone, she was unfamiliar with either
> _limaçon_ or _colimaçon_ which dictionaries gives as alternative words
> for
> "snail".  I guess they are either archaic or regional.  Maybe
> Christophe
> can shed light on this.
>
Indeed, "limaçon" I didn't know until I saw it on the list :) , and as for
"colimaçon", it's not used to refer to snails but to a kind of stairs (the ones
that go up around a central column).

> I get the impression that the Romancelangs generally do have different
> words for these two sets of land gasteropods; but then I guess that's
> not a
> surprise if you eat the one but not the other.
>
Strangely enough, I love eating "escargots", but the idea of eating slugs is not
that appetitizing. Maybe because in french "limace" has more negative
connotations than "escargot".

>
> Andrew will have to decide whether Brithenig will have two different
> words
> as other Romancelangs do or whether it will just keep basically one word
> as
> the Brittoniclangs do.  The 'slug' word, at least, should be drived
> from
> Latin: li:ma:x, [gen.] li:ma:cis.  Romance snail-words come from
> various
> sources, but none from the Classical _coclea_.
>
Indeed. In French, it's used as a learned borrowing from latin "cochlée", which
refers to the snailshell-like organ in the inner ear.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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