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English has too many words for animals (thelemmy.club)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world
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Yall should remove some of these animal words and instead add different words for like the 5 different meanings of "spring"

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[–] 49 points 5 months ago (8 children)

That's not true at all. American English absolutely differentiates them in exactly the same way.

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  • [+] -16 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 38 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

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

    🐢

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] -5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago

    I don't know what you know. Your comment above about US English not distinguishing between turtle and tortoise wasn't accurate, so I'm also not sure what you were trying to say with the explanation about the Japanese separation.

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