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What's an interesting etymology for a common term? (feddit.uk)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 26 points 3 months ago (1 child)

This isn't a common term but it's something I recently learned that's kind of funny - the country Timor-Leste is named from the Malay word timur, meaning "east", and the Portuguese word leste, meaning "east". So it's literally "East East".

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    That’s bizarre ….. during the independence violence the news always refers to it as East Timor, so it would have been more literally east east

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    How is one language more literal than another?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Think of the language like units in a math problem.

    “East” (English) is more literally “East”

    Than “Leste”( Portuguese), even if it translates to the same

    If you make an analogy with temperature:

    • 212°F is more literally “212” than 100C even if they are both the boiling point of water
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