[Lexicog] Digest Number 175

[Lameen Souag]

In Algerian Arabic it's pretty boring: t.ir el-lil (< t.ayr ul-layl) =
"night bird" or "night flyer".  In Chaouia Berber, apparently, it's
iferTiTu - an onomatopeic-seeming word probably related to the Berber
root afer "fly (v.)", which, slightly modified, refers in Algerian
Arabic (and other Berber languages) to the butterfly: bu-ferTeTTu.

Lameen Souag

> Message: 1
>    Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 21:50:22 -0000
>    From: "Fritz Goerling" <Fritz_Goerling at sil.org>
> Subject: What is a bat?
>
> In Noah J. Jabobs' amusing "Naming Day in Eden" (The MacMillan Company
> Collier-MacMillan Ltd., London 1958), p. 16, I found the following
> interesting quote on how the bat is named in different languages:
>
> "...how did Adam name the bat? Which characteristic impressed him at
>  the moment of naming? Did its blindness move him to call it
>  'murciélago'(Spanish), its baldness 'chauve-souris'(French), its
>  shyness 'pipistrello'(Italian), its leathery skin 'Läderlapp'(Swedish)
>  or 'böregér'(Hungarian from 'bör,' leather; 'egér,' mouse), its
>  preference for the night 'nukteris'(Greek), its resemblance to the
>  mouse 'Fledermaus'(German) or 'letutsaya mysh'(Russian), the sound of
>  its flapping wings 'watwat'(Arabic), its winglike hands 'chiroptera'
>  (Greek 'chir,' hand, plus 'pteron,' wing), its resemblance to a lily(!)
>  'liliac'(Rumanian), its reputed love of bacon 'bat' (Old English
>  'backe,' bacon)? The Chinese have conferred a number of laudatory
>  names on this mouse-like mammal, such as 'embracing wings, heavenly
>  rat, fairy rat, night swallow,' and use it as a symbol of happiness
>  and long life because its name 'fu' in Chinese happens to be a
>  homonym which means both 'bat'and 'prosperity.'"
>
> I have found African stories about the bat being sad because it does
> not know where it belongs.
> How do you name the bat in your language? And where would you put it
> in a domain dictionary?
>
> Fritz Goerling



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