The British Go Journal just published a translation of this. If you get a BGA membership for ~£30 then you can read it online, otherwise I think you have to wait a year for the free publication.
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Aboard the Ark: A Thorough Exploration of Bestial Terms
In (rough) size order!
Part 1
| English | Latin | Japanese | Korean |
|---|---|---|---|
| flea | púlex | 蚤 ** / のみ | 벼룩 |
| fly | musca | 蠅 / はえ | 파리 |
| ant | formíca | 蟻 *1 / あり | 개미 |
| beetle | no word *2 | 甲虫 / こうちゅう | 딱정벌레 |
| bee | apis | 蜂 *3 / はち | 벌 |
| wasp | uespa | same as bee | 말벌 *4 |
| moth | pápilió *5 | 蛾 / が | 나방 |
| butterfly | same as moth | 蝶 / ちょう | 나비 |
| slug | límáx | 蛞蝓 / なめくじ | 민달팽이 *6 |
| snail | cochlea *7 | 蝸牛 / かたつむり | 달팽이 |
| worm | uermis *8 | 虫 / むし | 벌레 |
| spider | aránea | 蜘蛛 / くも *9 | 거미 |
| centipede | centipés | 百足 / むかで | my dictionary doesn’t have this :c |
| millipede | millipeda *10 | 馬陸 *11 / やすで | or this |
| shrimp | squilla *12 / cáris | 海老 *13 / えび | 새우 |
| crab | cancer *14 | 蟹 / かに | 게 |
| lobster | locusta *15 | same as shrimp | 바닷가재 |
| locust | same as lobster | 蝉 / せみ *16 | not in my dictionary |
** Note the prevalence of the insect 虫 radical in these words.
- Wow, tough kanji, no wonder it’s usually written in kana
- There’s scarabaeus (scarab)
- As I said before, the hyogaiji 范 is prettier~
- Looks like this term describes a “type of bee”
- This could also mean a dead person’s soul
- Term indicates a “type of snail”
- Loaned into English as the spiraled part of the inner ear
- Root of vermin
- What laborious kanji
- Only appears in Naturalis Historia
- I wonder why 馬 (horse) is there
- Scientific name of the mantis shrimp
- Note the water radical 氵
- Apparently enlarged veins around a cancerous tumour look like the legs of a crab, hence the name of the disease
- This, obviously, also meant locust
- More familiar as cicada
Part 2
| English | Latin | Japanese | Korean |
|---|---|---|---|
| fish | piscis | 魚 / さかな | 물고기 |
| eel | anguilla | 鰻 / うなぎ | 장어 |
| salmon | salmō | 鮭 / さけ | 연어 |
| bird | auis | 鳥 / とり | 새 |
| mouse *1 | mús | 鼠 / ねずみ | 쥐 |
| shrew | migále *2 | 尖鼠 / じねずみ *3 | not in dictionary |
| sparrow | passer *4 | 雀 / すずめ | 참새 |
| starling | sturnus | 椋鳥 / むくどり | 찌르레기 |
| pigeon | columba | 鳩 / はと | 비둘기 |
| hawk | accipiter | 鷹 / たか | 매 |
| eagle | aquila | 鷲 / わし | 독수리 |
| owl | no word *5 | 梟 / ふくろう | 부엉이 |
| weasel | mustela | 鼬 / いたち | 족제비 |
| rabbit | cunículus *6 | 兎 / うさぎ | 토끼 |
| hare | lepus | same as rabbit | ditto |
| cat | félis | 猫 / ねこ | 고양이 |
| dog | canis | 犬 / いぬ *7 | 개 |
- The only of these four languages to distinguish mouse from rat
- Disputed to be the field mouse or even the ferret
- Based on 鼠, mouse
- A famous genus, since Passer domesticus often stands in for the whole of Aves in phylogenetic definitions
- No single word: strix, bubo, ulula, and noctua are all different types of owl
- This name means “little miner”
- According to my highly reliable source (the Nichijou manga) a mnemonic for this is that the dog (the isolated stroke) stays near to its owner (大, which looks like a stick figure)
Part 3
(I would use katakana for the Japanese, but the hiragana are supplied a lot more easily from Jisho.)
| English | Latin | Japanese | Korean |
|---|---|---|---|
| frog | rána | 蛙 / かえる | 개구리 |
| lizard | stéllió *1 | 蜥蜴 / とかげ | とかげ |
| bat | uespertílió | 蝙蝠 / こうもり | 박쥐 |
| squirrel | sciúrus *3 | 栗鼠 / りす | 다람쥐 |
| monkey | símia | 猿 / さる | 원숭이 |
| vulture | uultur | 禿鷹 / はげたか | 독수리 |
| fox | uulpés | 狐 / きつね | 여우 |
| wolf | lupus | 狼 / おおかみ | 늑대 |
| badger | no word | 穴熊 / あなぐま | 오소리 |
| horse | equus | 馬 *2 / うま | 말 |
| donkey | asinus | 驢馬 / ろば | 당나귀 |
| mule | múlus | 騾馬 / らば | 노새 |
| pig | porcus | 豚 / ぶた | 돼지 |
| sheep | ouis | 羊 / ひつじ | 양 |
| cow | bós | 牛 / うし | 암소 / 젖소 |
| shark | squálus *4 | 鮫 / さめ | 상어 |
| ray | batia *5 | 鱝 / えい | not in dictionary |
| turtle *6 | testúdó | 亀 / かめ | 거북이 |
| squid | not in dictionary | 烏賊 / いか | 오징어 |
| octopus | polypus | 蛸 / たこ | 문어 |
- Apparently there’s a lizard called the stellion that hangs around Middle Eastern ruins
- Easy to get 馬 (horse) confused with 鳥 (bird) like I did earlier
- As you can guess, squirrel is a Romance noun. It replaced Germanic acquerne in Middle English.
- Disputed
- Also disputed. Interestingly, batia in Japanese means “cursed”, which is a good name for a poisonous ray…
- In the inclusive American usage, encompassing what we Brits would call a tortoise
Part 4
| English | Latin | Japanese | Korean |
|---|---|---|---|
| seal | phóca | 封 / ふう | 물개 |
| dolphin | delphínus | 海豚 / いるか | 돌고래 |
| whale | bálaena *1 | 鯨 / くじら | 고래 |
| zebra | zebra (NL) | 縞馬 / しまうま | 얼룩말 |
| camel | camelus | 駱駝 / らくだ | 낙타 |
| rhinoceros | rhínocerós | 犀 / 犀 | 라이노 |
| giraffe | camélopardalis | 麒麟 / きりん | 기린 |
| elephant | elephás | 象 / ぞう | 코끼리 |
- You could also use cétus, which had a broad meaning encompassing any large sea animals such as whales, dolphins, seals, sharks, tuna, and monstrous creatures
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Most animal and plant names are written in kana. In fact, usually katakana are used, not hiragana. Only a few species have kanji that the average Japanese would know.
The difference between bees and wasps is rather difficult anyways. Wasps are paraphyletic, in that it includes all members of the “Wasp / Bee / Ant” family, excluding those that are bees or ants. Japanese does exclude ants from their wasp group, but doesn’t distinguish between wasps and bees in the same way. They call bees ハナバチ (flower wasp), and the archetypical wasps & hornets are called スズメバチ (sparrow wasp).
Also, tidbit: Japan is home to the largest hornet species known, the Japanese giant hornet, which is also the deadliest animal in Japan, causing more fatalities than the venomous snakes, and bears (non-venemous, as far as I’m aware).
This doesn’t mean worm, but insect in general. Normal earthworms are called ミミズ in Japanese.
It’s the Japanese pronunciation put on top of the Chinese characters. Why the Chinese chose those characters? Probably because of pronunciation.
Actually, the first kanji means sea, the second kanji means old (of human age). One theory is that this is because shrimp look like crooked old men (crooked in the non-figurative meaning, the literal one that refers to figure) , and they live in the sea, of course.
You seem to have forgotten one of the most useful insects to know by name:
the mosquito / culex / 蚊 (か) / 모기
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@Bugcat! Don’t add twice as much to comment on just as I’ve finished my comments! This’ll never end now…
Hey hey, that’s my profile picture.
Must watch:
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I tried to read Sallust’s Jugurthine War. I spent a genuine hour on the first sentence and couldn’t translate it…
Falso queritur de natura sua genus humanum, quod inbecilla atque aevi brevis forte potius quam virtute regatur.
The best I got was genus humanum … forte potius … virtute regatur “if a strong and capable people are ruled with courage”.
Take forte for instance. It could be the ablative singular of fors (luck); it could be an adverb meaning “luckily”, “by chance”, “perhaps” or even “once upon a time”; or it could be an inflection of the unrelated adjective fortis “strong”, and you just have to figure this out from context.
I don’t think I’m reading Sallust any time soon.
I’m reminded of my translation of tabula duorum pedorum or whatever it was as “two-footed table” and then reading the BGA translation of “table with two-foot sides”…
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I shouldn’t give up so easily.
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mélés f. (also martens in general; mústéla and mústélínus are weasels)
A squalus could also be some other kind of really big fish, that’s true. Italian and Rumantsch have squalo and squal for ‘shark’.
How about sepia?
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I did a very non-english and literal translation in quotes and a better, more english translation in square brackets. Man, English is quite defective when it comes to impersonal sentences, even more than German.
Summary
“The human race is asked falsely after its nature” [= It’s a mistake to ask after the nature of humanity], “because by weakness and short livespan maybe it is rather governed, than by virtue” [= for it (humanity) is governed maybe rather by weakness and a short lifespan than virtue.
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Both my dictionaries (Wiktionary and latin-dictionary.net) give sepia as “cuttlefish”.
I’m persevering with Jugurthine War. So far, I’ve written eleven pages of notes trying to crack this sentence.
So far, my best try is Falso queritur … natura sua genus humanum quod imbecilla … aevis brevis … quam regitur.
Having been deceived (falso), the refined classes (genus humanum) – being ruled by a weak nature (natura … imbecilla … quam regatur) – for a short time (aevis brevis) fell into lamentation (queritur).
But this doesn’t find a place for forte, potius, or virtute.
Here are some of the ideas from my notes:
genus humanum … potius forte strong and capable race of people
falso … natura sua genus humanum … virtute regatur I disprove that that the character of the refined classes is governed by virtue
aevis brevis forte moment’s chance – I also tried translating this as “once in a brief life”
And a load of tables and spider diagrams trying to prove different agreements of case and gender…
Some things I’m trying to figure out are:
- whether falso is a verb, a participle, or a noun
- what aevis is possessing
- whether genus or natura is the nominative
- whether forte is “strong” or something to do with luck or chance
Well, I think at this point there’s no shame in me checking your translation and moving onto the next sentence.
I checked with a professional translation on perseus.tufts.edu and it’s different from mine (meaning I did some mistakes).Take the first clause up to the comma. You have:
falso
queritur
de
natura sua
genus humanum
right? Okay, by now you sure already figured out which cases are possible for these nouns.
falso: Dative or Ablative singular
natura sua: Nominative or Ablative singular.
genus humanum: Nominative or Accusative singular.
We’ve got a verb with passive morphology, queror, which should not be confused with a passive voice of the verb quaero.
Next steps? Whatcha gonna do about the preposition?
The word sua has another clue: It refers to a subject that has to be somewhere within this clause.
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Alright, if you’re going to tell me that falso is a noun then that makes things easier.
falso is falsehood. In the dative, probably for the falsehood. The ablative is going to be… more complicated.
queritur is the 3-per. sg. pres. active indicative of queror – to complain, lament, or be indignant.
Okay, then queritur de – indignant about. If genus is the nominative, then queritur de … genus humanum – the refined classes are indignant about something.
Words matching up with de take the ablative, so its subject is going to be natura.
queritur de natura sua genus humanum – the refined classes are indignant about the nature of something. I’d want to put falso in there (“the refined classes are indignant about the nature of the lies”) with falso being in the dative or ablative because it goes off and does something in the second clause.
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Yer almost there! Now take genus humanum by its most natural and common meaning: Humankind, the human race. Then, can you really take falso naturà as ‘the nature of lies’? Wouldn’t you want ‘lies’ or ‘falsehood’ in a case that is better suited for a direct relation between nouns? 'cause the ablative is not really suited for that, unless your name is Virgil and you can say crateres auro ‘chalices of gold’ for ‘golden cups’.
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Hmm, I’m having some trouble here…
You’ve told me that falso is in the dative. So this is probably the dativus commodi, right? ie. “for the lie”.
So, “inclination to lie”? “Dishonest temperament”? “The world that serves the lie”? I can’t get a handle on how natura relates to falso in this case.
“Humanity is indignant that they serve a lie”?
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The ablative is also a case of Adverbiale Bestimmung. Try ‘wrongly’ in the sense of ‘without justification’, as opposite of recte ‘with justification, rigthly’. In fact, falsô is the more common adverbial form to falsum, according to my dictionary, the expected false being uncommon.
“Humanity is wrongly complaining about …”
As you can see, natura does not relate at all to falso. It’s easy to think of that: both look like ablatives. But on closer inspection one is governed by a preposition and one is not. An apposition “about the nature, which is a fraud” is, I think, possible, but not the straightforward way to make this sentence. We would simply use falsa as an adjective.
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Oh, this is the “ablative of manner”? Right.
So, Falso queritur de natura sua genus humanum, inbecilla … aevis brevis forte virtute regatur.
“Humanity is wrongly complaining about the frail (inbecilla) existence (natura) of each short-lived generation (aevi brevis) being ruled (regatur) by chance (forte).”
And I can’t even fit potior in there. At this point, I feel like I’m just wasting your time. I didn’t expect the very first sentence to be so crushingly difficult…
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nonono, on thing at a time. “Humanity is wrongly complaining about its nature,” quod –
and then you solve the quod-clause. Here, quod means “because” or “namely”.
The sentence is not that crushingly difficult, but you lack practice. potius can work as an adverb ‘rather’, too, especially in the construction potius quam ‘rather than’.
Apart of that, you’re quite on the right track. imbecilla refers to natura but has a predicative sense and is the subject of the clause. To make things worse, we’ve got an ablativus qualitatis here, too:
“… is complaining about its nature, because it [the nature], being weak and of a short live, is governed …”
Besides, Sallustus has a reputation of contracting his sentences beyond clarity. So, yeah, it is a difficult text.
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@Sanonius Want to cut my suffering short and give me the translation?
Filling the Fields: Fruit & Vegetable Deep-Dive
Every culture has its own words for the familiar fruits, vegetables, and other plants that they cook with and consume.
Carrots are recorded in Greek as karoton, then in Latin as carota, and French as carotte before entering Middle English. Interestingly, carota seems to have replaced the older word daucum (a Greek loanword itself) in Late Latin. A daucum could also be a parsnip. The word for carrot was similar in several Northern European languages such as German Möhre, Russian morkov, and Old English moru. English parsnip descends from Latin pastinaca (again, referring also to carrots), which had a bizarre second meaning of “stingray”. Its more familiar sense in turn derives from the pastinum, a sowing tool.
In Latin, the word radix (root), could also mean radish. Radish appears, unusually, to have passed straight through a Vulgar Latin form radice into Old English redic and from there evolved into its modern form.
Turnip can be deconstructed into turn + nepe, deriving from the Latin name napus. The turn part may allude to their round, “lathe-turned” shape.
The word onion has been passed down through French union and oignon, from a Latin word unio. Unio also, and probably originally, referred to large pearls, as those that were imported from India: their name means “unique”, reflecting the belief that no two of these pearls matched. Pliny discusses this in Natural History.
Unlike the previous words, leek is one of a wide family of similar Germanic nouns: Dutch look, German Lauch, Danish løg and so on. Garlic was coined as “spear leek” because the cloves looked like spearheads.
One of the oldest attested fruits is the fig. Its etymological history is very deep, preceding Latin ficus (fig tree) into forms such as Phoenician pg (ripe fig) and Syriac pagga. Wiktionary supplies this colourful side note, explaining the coining of the word sycophant, which literally means “fig shower”:
The gesture of “showing the fig” was a vulgar one, which was made by sticking the thumb between two fingers, a display which vaguely resembles a fig (sûkon), which also meant vulva. The story behind this etymology is that politicians in ancient Greece steered clear of displaying that vulgar gesture, but urged their followers to taunt their opponents by using it.
Apple is a solidly Germanic noun. The Latin word was malum, which is also cited as encompassing the lemon and quince. As pears go, most European languages use a word descended from Latin pirum. From prune and plum derive from Latin prunum. English peach comes from the second word of the Latin compound term malum persicum, or Persian apple.
A strawberry has nothing to do with straw, but rather are “strewn” upon the bush. The rasp in raspberry is not the sound but, probably, a rose wine called raspise. A lingonberry takes its name from Swedish ljung, heather.
Cherry comes from Latin cerasium. A grape is something which is graper, picked; as a raisin it descends from racemus, a bunch of fruit.
Over the last few centuries, Europeans have incorporated more foreign plants into their cuisine. The avocado, by its Nahuatl name ahuacatl, could also refer to a testicle (by their similar shape.) Interestingly, there was a phase in English of calling them “alligator pears”. Tomato comes from Nahuatl tomatl. The name of the potato originated as batata in a very interesting extinct language called Taino, which was the main language of the pre-Columbian Caribbean.
Now over to @Vsotvep to balance out my Eurocentrism with a look at the fruits and vegetables of Japanese?
Let’s have a look at some casual Russian.
@stone.defender is our master of Russian, ofc~
| English | Russian | Romanisation |
|---|---|---|
| hi | приве́т | privét |
| bye | пока́ | pоkа́ |
| man | мужчи́на | mužčína |
| woman | же́нщина | žénščina |
| kid | ребёнок | rebjónok |
| shop | магази́н | magazín |
| cafe | кафе́ | kafɛ́ |
| cake | торт | tort |
| music | му́зыка | múzyka |
| money | де́ньги | dénʹgi |
| snow | снег | sneg |