In French, the “correct” word for “penguin” is “manchot” /mãʃ/ , and “pingouin” /pɛ̃ɡwɛ̃/ stayed the word for “great auk” for longer… But translating “penguin” as “pingouin” has grown more and more common. First as a mistake, but at that point it’s not clear anymore what is correct or not. Someone a bit pedantic might correct you if you say “pingouin” ok instead of “manchot”, but is a linguistic mistake still a mistake when it’s understood by the majority?
Penguins 🐧
Submitted 1 month ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/0077ac48-b4c1-4239-b6a2-c69ab4631e4d.jpeg
Comments
loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Cort@lemmy.world 1 month ago
essteeyou@lemmy.world 1 month ago
My wife and I watched this documentary when it first came out and laughed at him the whole way through. It came up when he was on The Graham Norton show.
keepthepace@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
PENGUINS! IM TALKING ABOUT PENGUINS!
Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 month ago
YEAH, science!
phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
:,(
coyootje@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I recently learned about the great auk, it’s so sad that they no longer exist. Humans really suck, so many species went extinct because of us. And in this case it wasn’t even necessary for survival, they just killed a ton of them for their feathers to make fancier pillows (and other stuff) but they weren’t eaten I believe…
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
We made the dodo extinct despite it being so gross they Dutch sailors nicknamed it the “walgvogel” or “revulsion bird”.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Were they as annoying as seagulls? Because I could see that being a fairly valid reasoning back in the day.
T156@lemmy.world 1 month ago
In fairness, that was mostly accidental, unlike with the Great Auk. They were driven to extinction by inadvertently-introduced predators, as opposed to being actively hunted.
Allonzee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The ones we kill are the lucky ones.
We put the ones we find cute when we “develop” their land in cages, and force them to breed despite being effectively extinct solely we can gawk at them for our amusement.
We pump the ones we find delicious with laboratory hormones to make them freakishly obese, and cramp them in factory farms until they’re obese enough to kill.
The Auks and Dodos were treated kindly by the standards of our species.
Rubisco@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
Image
T156@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s particularly sad, since the last of them were killed off by vandalism. Someone went to kill the last pair and smash their eggs for fun.