Re: : Butterflies
| From: | R A Brown <ray@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Tuesday, November 8, 2005, 14:03 |
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João Ricardo de Mendonça wrote:
> On 11/3/05, caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:
>
>>The Spanish is mariposa. Etymology? Is the Portuguese similar?
>
>
> In Portuguese, mariposa means "moth". The word for "butterfly" is
> borboleta. I don't know the etymology, but I can check it at the
> library later.
>
> Perhaps the original natlang list should be enhanced to include the
> moth as well, since it seems some languages make no distiction between
> butterflies and moths, or derive one word from the other.
...and some languages have quite distinct words for the two sorts of
critters - English & Welsh, for example. Yes, I think "moth" should be
included also.
While for butterfly, Welsh uses phrases such as "glöyn byw" (glowing
piece of coal), "iâr fach yr haf" (Summer's little hen) or words that
were originally hypocorism, namely "pili-pala" - the moth has a proper
word of its own, namely "gwyfyn".
--
Ray
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