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19 points
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Dutch has a lot of good ones!

Hippo: Nile Horse (nijlpaard)

Leopard: Lazy Horse (luipaard)

Sea urchin: Sea Hedgehog (zee egel)

Seal: Sea Dog (zeehond)

Skunk: Stink Animal (stinkdier)

Turtle: Shield Toad (Schildpad)

Slug: Naked Snail (Naaktslak)

Porcupine: Spiky Pig (Stekelvarken)

Edit: formatting

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10 points

Leopard: Lazy Horse (luipaard)

I’ve looked it up and apparently leo is lion and part is leopard or panther. So it’s a lion leopard. English and Dutch have the same etymology, and German too, all your examples are the same in German.

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5 points

Are you implying that the word for leopard is compounded from the word for leopard??? How did they get the first word for leopard if they didn’t have a word for leopard???

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4 points

Correction: it’s male leopard. It surprised me as well. It’s ultimately from Indo-Iranian origin.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/pardus#Latin

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4 points

The Dutch are sneaky bastards (stiekemeklootzakken).

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3 points
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Norwegian

Hedgehog: Needle Swine (pinnsvin/

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5 points

While this is kind of fun, it’s also kind of frustrating. Like when Merriam Webster tries to define a word for me by using the word. Frustrating: having a quality or qualities that frustrates.

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5 points

Hippopotamus comes from the Greek words hippos (horse) and potamos (river). So literally “river horse”.

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4 points

So this is why Indonesian names for hippo, sea urchin and seal are weird af. They are actually direct translation from their dutch names!

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Memes

!memes@lemmy.ml

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