A
Hippo by Any Other Name
By
Darren Baker |
česky |
How do you say hippopotamus in Hungarian?
Easy, said this one man. "Víziló." It comes from the word
víz, meaning water, and ló, meaning horse. Water horse,
which is what hippopotamus means in Greek. Great, I saw
my chance to show off what an advanced linguist I was.
So I took out a dictionary and looked up the Hungarian
word for stripe. I figured I would use the same logic to
show that I knew his word for another type of horse. Once
I found the word, csík, I smiled and told him that the
Hungarian word for zebra is csíkló, meaning striped horse.
And did he ever start laughing. Csíkló, it turns out, means
clitoris. Yes, the clitoris. Apparently there are limits
to logic in Hungarian. I had to wait until this man caught
his breath before I could ask him what the Hungarian word
for zebra was. Easy, he said. "Zebra."
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