Re: [wolfrunners] Languages & SF/F (fwd)

On Sat, 19 Aug 2000, Barry Garcia wrote:

> Don't cultures on earth that encounter new ecosystems do the same thing? I
> recall hearing that the reason a native plant called "manzanita"
> (Arctostaphylos) was named that, was because the berries reminded the
> Spanish of small apples. There's also a pronghorn antelope that isnt
> really an antelope, but resembles one.
Absolutely.   The American robin is a large thrush with a brick-red
breast, so named because it reminded the English colonists vaguely of
the European robin, an unrelated, much smaller bird with a fiery red
breast.  Furthermore, essentially all the birds in Australia are
misnamed in similar fashion: until DNA studies were done, nobody realized
that their familial resemblances to corresponding Northern Hemisphere
birds are mostly a matter of parallel evolution, not common descent.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
C'est la` pourtant que se livre le sens du dire, de ce que, s'y conjuguant
le nyania qui bruit des sexes en compagnie, il supplee a ce qu'entre eux,
de rapport nyait pas.               -- Jacques Lacan, "L'Etourdit"