[Lexicog] What is a bat?

[Thapelo Otlogetswe]

Never thought seriously about a bat name in Setswana until now - we call it mmamathwane [a feminine name, because of the mma- prefix meaning 'mother of' or just 'mother']. Why the feminine name I cannot say. It would appear 'mathwane' is onomatopoeic to the sound the bats produce and it is possibly derived from the verb 'go thwanya' - describing a cracking kind of sound. I imagine many people in Botswana would see a bat as a bird mainly because it flies - it would be a bird that suckles its young [for those who know it does!]. We do not have a word for 'mammals' in the language & therefore such a classification may only be an academic one not salient to the mother tongue speakers.


Fritz Goerling <Fritz_Goerling at sil.org> wrote:
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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Thapelo Otlogetswe
Information Technology Research Institute
University of Brighton
Lewes Road, Brighton
BN2 4GJ, England
Tel: (+44) 1273 642912 (office)
      (+44) 1273 642908 (fax)
http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/~Thapelo.Otlogetswe/



		
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