Yall should remove some of these animal words and instead add different words for like the 5 different meanings of “spring”

  • osanna@lemmy.vg
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    10 days ago

    I always thought turtles mostly live in the water and tortoises mostly lived on land.

      • osanna@lemmy.vg
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        10 days ago

        Well, it’s fine for the Americans to be wrong again :)

        • Tanis Nikana@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          I don’t seem to ever get corrected, chewed out, or bitched at when I call the animal with shell and legs a turtle, and I talk about turtles a lot. More than you’d ever know.

          • Wolf314159@startrek.website
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            10 days ago

            All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. Generally tortoise implies that it is mostly land based, but it’s not a rigorous definition. You can call all of them turtles all day long and still be correct, but that doesn’t mean that American English doesn’t still have the same connotations for turtle and tortoise that British English does.

            • Tanis Nikana@lemmy.world
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              10 days ago

              I just do in English what I’d do in Japanese: see turtle? If feets, land turtle. If flippers, sea turtle.

              🐢

              • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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                9 days ago

                In common speech Japanese conflates way more animals than English does, including turtles/tortoises. I just had to look up rikugame because I’d only ever heard kame before. If you’re a scientist or at a turtle conference I’m sure the distinction gets used, but otherwise it goes along the lines of pigeon/dove, alligator/crocodile, rat/mouse, etc.

                • Tanis Nikana@lemmy.world
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                  9 days ago

                  I grew up speaking Japanese. I know this already.

                  I’m choosing to believe that rather than explaining my own language back to me, that you’ve made that comment for the sake of audience notes, so people who don’t speak Japanese can follow along from the comfort of their own toilets.

                  Otherwise it’s kinda cringe.

  • danda@lemmy.zip
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    10 days ago

    A turtle lives in water, a tortoise lives on land. A turtle’s not a tortoise, it’s not hard to understand.

    • blinfabian@feddit.nl
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      9 days ago

      in dutch theyre called landschildpad and zeeschildpad (landshelltoad and seashelltoad)

      • JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net
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        9 days ago

        But zeeschildpad doesn’t include things like box turtles that live near bodies of water but not all the time, right? I guess here in Belgium we just use “schildpad” for everything.

        It also sounds cooler to translate it to shield-toad lol

        • blinfabian@feddit.nl
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          9 days ago

          idk what a box turtle even is 😭 but here in the netherlands we call all of them “schildpad” too. literally no normal human here will say “look a zeeschildpad” (except for biologists probably)

    • zerofk@lemmy.zip
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      8 days ago

      Wait wait wait. Have we been lied to? Are Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, and Leonardo tortoises?

    • renzev@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 days ago

      Most humans live above ground level, you sound like your live in your mother’s basement. Doesn’t make you a different species, does it?

        • Tudsamfa@lemmy.world
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          9 days ago

          Technically this is nor taxonomy, since we aren’t talking about relatedness. This is just linguistics.

          explanation

          Land dwelling evolved multiple times in turtles, like in box turtles, which are not in the clade of tortoises, but would fit the common definition of tortoise.

  • BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world
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    9 days ago

    Tortoises are Turtles, but not all Turtles are Tortoises.

    This isn’t an English thing, this is a taxonomy thing. It should be the same in any language, just with different words used.

  • FishFace@piefed.social
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    10 days ago

    Tortoises are land animals. Simple.

    Frogs and toads might be a better one - there’s no systematic difference except toads are ugly.

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Distant muffled sound of Diogenes frantically strapping scuba flippers onto a Galapagos tortoise

  • fartsparkles@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    All tortoises are turtles (but not all turtles are tortoises) from a biology point of view. Tortoises specifically being exclusively land-based members of the turtle (Testudines) order. So there is a difference.

    And “spring” doesn’t really have different meanings - as per the root of the word, it always means some variant of “to burst forth”. There’s lots of different definitions for the word but they’re all rooted in the same place, from an etymology point of view.

    The season bursting forth from the winter darkness and cold, the metal coil as it bursts forth when released from compression, the source of water as it bursts forth from the ground, bursting forth someone out of jail, etc.

    Homographs are the real problem - when two different words, over time, become spelled the same.

    Sow, lead, close, bear. All have multiple etymologies where different words eventually became spelled the same. Those are the worst!

    English is a truly crazy mashup of Latin, Greek, French, German, Celtic, Norse and more.

    • Actionschnils@feddit.org
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      9 days ago

      As far as I know, they are totally diferent species, that coincidentally look alike. The European hares closest relative is the roe deer(?)

      But Im not a biologist. Probably someone with real knowledge can say something about it