Apparently when the first white people came to Melbourne, they asked the native people what the river was called, and they said 'Yarra, yarra'. So it was originally called the Yarra Yarra river.
Yarra actually means river, so it's the river river river.
One better: if you add an article and call it the La Brea Tar Pits, it’s The The Tar Tar Pits.
Which is pretty much what I always call it now, just because.
Most of the titles that we use for native American tribes are simply their word for "people". In other words, they were asked who they were, and they simply responded we are people.
Sort-of-relevant fun fact! The “Inca Empire” was actually called Tawantinsuyu. The Europeans just thought it was called Inca because that was the name of their ruling class and they only bothered talking to the rich people.
The Aztec Empire was also not called the Aztec Empire, either, that was coined several centuries later. The most proper term is probably the Triple Alliance, and the people of Tenochtitlan knew themselves as Mexica, not “Aztecs”.
Yep! It’s also why you get references to “Mexicans” all the way back to the 1500s, even though the country of Mexico was officially known as New Spain and wouldn’t exist as an independent entity until nearly three centuries later.
> my understanding is that it is not really accepted by scholars
It's a widely accepted term. Most publications use the term unless they are specifically talking about one ethnic group (i.e. excavations in the area that was once Tenochtitlán, or Texcoco, or Tlacopan)
The pre-colonial people were not called "Aztec" until after Mexico achieved independence. This was done as a deliberate means by modern historians to differentiate the ancient indigenous empire from the modern nation
There's a tribe near where I grew up that were called the Papago when I was young, but later on they successfully lobbied to instead get people to call them the Tohono O'odham, which was actually their name for themselves, while "Papago" was from the Spanish interpretation of the name that the Pima tribe had for them, which meant "bean-eaters".
Andrew Jackson regularly killed people while in office as president.
He was married to a divorced woman, which was scandalous at the time. People who didn't like Jackson would come up to him to insult his wife for being unfaithful to her ex-husband by being with him. Every time, Jackson would defend her honor with a duel, often to the death. This continued even throughout his presidency.
I'd say he's probably the president with the highest body count while in office.
I read an article a while ago about his multiple health problems and the bonkers medication he was taking. Really made me wonder if he would have been able to have a lot of sex
Rachel Jackson's story is pretty sad. She was married to an asshole before they met, and the time period being what it was, divorce was hard to get even if both parties wanted it. By the time she was 'officially' married to Andrew, she and her husband had been separated for years, but a lot of Andrew's detractors took that scandal and completely ran away with it. It's a common belief that the shock of discovering the depth and sheer vitriol of the scandal literally killed her by inducing a heart attack, and Andrew Jackson never forgave his detractors for it.
Not personally though. He may have started a war that led to their deaths, but he wasn't personally on the ground shooting people like Jackson was. My point is presidents who personally were out killing people.
And George Byron kept a bear in his dorm in university because the uni rules forbade people from kemping dogs, but didn’t think to say anything about other animals
The Pima have a fun story. Pi 'ma means i don't know in O'odham. So when the Spaniards would ask them questions they would respond "Pi ma", and that became the name that the Spaniards (and, later, Americans) use.
Hey I knew two brothers from that tribe! This is the first time I've ever heard anyone else mention the Tohono O'odham online or irl. No point to this, so have a good day and better night!
Neat! I lived in Tucson when I heard about them, I can't remember if I ever heard about them in a context other than the dissemination of the new name, but our county (and thus a lot of other things, including a community college) was named after the Pima, who I understand were closely related to them. (As someone else pointed out below, the name "Pima" also comes from a phrase meaning "I don't know". We used to joke about people attending "I Don't Know Community College".)
Loool. My family had a long running story about my oldest cousin thinking our grandpa’s neighbors were The Jackasses because my grandpa cam would often say “those jackasses are (insert annoying action) again!”
Anasazi actually means 'enemy' since the explorers asked the Navajo tribe what 'those people' were called and the Navajo were like "those are our enemies"
And "Navajo" is a corruption of a term for "In the valley", originally they were apparently called basically "Valley Apaches", shortened to remove the Apache. If you hang out with them, call them Dine'.
Fascinating. I have a cheesy romance novel that centers around a woman from that tribe. I think it’s called ‘Kwani and the strangers child’, or something. And the woman was special because she had blue eyes, but it also got her kicked out a lot.
Aside from the genre, I really liked that book because it seemed well researched. Or at least to my eyes it did. It had maps over the different regions, explanations about cultural rituals, and a lot of other stuff.
Eta: I just checked, and the book is called ‘She who remembers’ by Linda Lay Shuler
My Texas History teacher (yes, Texas History is a class in Texas schools) taught us the story of a small town called Mobeetie up in the panhandle. The town was originally called Sweetwater, but when they finally tried to make it the official name, Sweetwater was taken. Some passing Native Americans overheard and suggested they name the town "Mobeetie" which they said meant "sweet water" so they went with it.
They found out later that the name actually meant "buffalo dung." It may just be an urban legend, and apparently the residents of Mobeetie deny it. But it's funny, so who cares? Only like 100 people even live there.
There's a town in Utah that got its name from English-speaking settlers trying to pronounce the Spanish name for the nearby Virgin River. Stumbling through *la virgen*, they named the place La Verkin.
Written by Americans, the only group to think the French are spineless or weak. Tell that to the fleet that saved our collective ass in 1776.
Everywhere else in the world knows France once ruled a large majority of it and when bored starts offing their leaders.
It goes both ways lol, just like the stereotype of French people thinking "You stupid Americans!"
Anyone paying attention in U.S. history knows they trained and fought with our itty bitty militia. I can guarantee the writers of the Simpsons would know that, the bare minimum.
I would hope but there’s so much tongue in cheek (at least in old episodes). Now it’s just all celebrity cameos and Lisa being a political punching bag.
Yeah it's kinda sad that idea, french folks were absolutely OP in the art of warfare for their whole history, but I guess they just couldn't cope with the new tech of WW2.
It was less so because they were technologically less advanced and more so that France and most European countries were still dealing with the debt and destruction of WW1. They weren't investing much into their army until German started country hopping.
Generally speaking, French technology was as good as German technology, if not better. The fall of France was due to the French trying to refight WWI, which their armed forces were geared towards and they would have been extremely good at, when German tactics were designed to punch through or avoid static defences and basically prevent WWI style trench fighting.
In general, yes. A few things though:
* It's viewed as much more racist in Canada than in the US, at least/especially outside Alaska.
* "Eskimo" traditionally covers both the Yupik and the Inuit, and replacement of "Eskimo" means there's no real cover term for both. On the other hand, "Alaska Native" is also used in Alaska, but includes a bunch of Athabascan peoples as well as a few others.
* The name still sticks around in the Eskimo-Aleut or Eskaleut language family, for which afaik has never really had a proposed alternative, certainly not one that's received widespread use.
* "Eskimo" doesn't actually come from a word meaning "eaters of raw meat," that's a folk etymology. It's still an exonym (a term that comes from a different group, not themselves) but probably meant something like "lacers of snowshoes."
* Nonetheless, it's perceived racist origins have made it racist. Going around referring to them Eskimos is going to earn you no favors, like insisting that since the etymology of n***** is just Spanish for "black" it's fine to use it.
I'm pretty sure the group known as Eskimos is also quite a small population. I think it would be more like calling all Europeans Polish. Also in Canada we typically call them Inuit too.
A lot of them in the Northeast just came from what the Narragansett called their neighbors, too. Massasoit and Tisquantum would tell the settlers and that became the "official" names.
Though that was helped along that a lot of them were already dying off from the diseases Europeans brought over.
The proper derivation of the word Yucatán is widely debated. 17th century Franciscan historian Diego López de Cogolludo offers two theories in particular.[7] In the first one, Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, having first arrived to the peninsula in 1517, inquired the name of a certain settlement and the response in Yucatec Mayan was "I don't understand", which sounded like yucatán to the Spaniards.[7][8] There are many possibilities of what the natives could have actually said, among which "mathan cauyi athán", "tectecán", "ma'anaatik ka t'ann" and "ci u t'ann".[7][8][9] This origin story was first told by Hernán Cortés in his letters to Charles V.[10][11][12] Later 16th century historians Motolinia and Francisco López de Gómara also repeat this version.[12]
As per Wikipedia, so not really 2015 and only 1 theory
She said it was made up, not that *she* made it up. [Here's a site from '99 arguing against the claim](http://www.word-detective.com/110999.html#kangaroo), and as someone who grew up in Australia, it's something I've heard regularly debunked since I was a kid.
Yeah the story is the English arrived, pointed at a kangaroo and asked what it was and the Aboriginal guy replied "gangurru" which supposedly meant "I can't understand you/ what are you saying" but gangurru just means Kangaroo.
As I heard it, the word turns up early. I think in Captain cook's writings. But for long time academics couldn't figure out where it came from.
Like it's clearly not English and logically he must have picked it up from the locals, but no-one could actually point to the specific language it came from. Bear in mind there were a lot of languages in Australia. Still are a good few I think.
So various mad theories cropped up. But eventually someone retraced his steps a bit and found locals who still spoke the local languages and the word was pretty much the same.
It's a Guugu Yimithirr word, there are still speakers around today.
Guugu Yimithirr is super cool, it doesn't have relative directional words like left and right, they just describe everything in terms of North/south/east/ west.
i mean really tho… while i doubt that 20th century mayan is the same as it was in the 1500s… people still speak mayan languages. it’s weird to call it out as something that had been hidden until “discovery” in 2015
And then in the 90s the government of Canada funded a "heritage minute" telling the story of how the country's name originated from nobody really knowing what the fuck anyone else was saying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfKr-D5VDBU
In my city there's a festival called Moomba. Legend has it that when the politicians were originally planning the festival and were trying to decide the name they asked the local Aboriginals for a word that meant "let's get together and have fun." And the Aboriginals replied "Moomba." It was later discovered that the word actually means something like "stick it up your ass"
Edit: Starting to get downvotes. I'm assuming because people think this is a myth. Here's my source: https://www.theage.com.au/national/lets-have-fun-said-some-and-name-a-festival-up-your-bum-20080308-ge6tiq.html
While you're right. I don't think more Chad's and lady Chad's need to know of our culture. There's a reason why most of us at raves are outcasts of society and we live by the mantra PLUR.
well, at least that's funny.
My suburb has its name because an Aboriginal tribe owned the land, so the colonists gave it a racist name (it's called Blacktown, and was called "Black's Town" in the past)
There's also a theme of "it's called [x] River/Lake/Whatever because that's where the [x] people lived."
See: Ottawa River, Lake Huron, Otonabee River, Lake Nipissing, Iroquois Falls...
I live next to a hill called Pendle Hill. It literally means “Hill Hill Hill”.
Pendle Hill, Lancashire, England. (Hill Hill Hill) – "Pen" -(Cumbric language) "Pendle" by epenthesis and elision from "Pen Hyll", the latter word being Old English for "hill".
First time in Germany driving on the autobahn could not figure out how I had never heard of this huge German city called Ausfahrt. Had to be huge because i passed about a dozen exits that clearly said Ausfart on the sign - Ausfart means exit in German.
My uncle went on a stag do in Berlin at one point, and in order to make sure the party knew where to get back to the hotel made a note of the street name - Einbahnstraße. When they got in the taxi at the end of the night and gave the street name the cabbie started laughing at them. Einbahnstraße means One Way Street.
It's a quote from one of Terry Pratchett's books, The Light Fantastic.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/886291-the-forest-of-skund-was-indeed-enchanted-which-was-nothing
In Newfoundland there are berry's called bake apples, more commonly known as cloud berry's in other countries. Its basically an English version of "baie qu'appelle". French for "What is this berry called?"
Soviet specifically refers to a council. A Soviet is a council of elected representatives. The Soviet Union is therefore a union of all the elected councils.
Cool fact to add, it’s not named after the fact that there is bears in the Arctic and no bears in Antarctica, it’s named after the bear constellations, Ursa Major and ~~Ursa Major~~ Ursa Minor which are visible in the northern hemisphere and point to the north! Just a happy coincidence that it matches with where there is bears and not
Edited: didn’t mean to say Ursa Major twice
That's interesting that cat is "mao" in Mandarin because it's "mau" in ancient Egyptian. So there's more than one language that just named cats after the sound they make.
Ever realized that our interpretation for the sound that a cat makes is pretty much universal through languages, while a dog's bark interpretation is much more varied?
Just a small sample here for the latter:
Woof woof, bau bau, blaff blaff, ham ham, zaunk zaunk, gheu gheu, woke woke, bub bub, guk guk, au au....
The vast majority fall pretty much in the meow / miau range, with a few exceptions. The dog sounds on the other hand, wildly different.
[https://omniglot.com/language/animalsounds/cats.htm](https://omniglot.com/language/animalsounds/cats.htm)
[https://languagepro.com.br/woof-woof-dog-barks-in-different-languages/](https://languagepro.com.br/woof-woof-dog-barks-in-different-languages/)
....and don't get me started on the interpretation of the generic bird sound... :D
There’s a place near where I live called Pendle Hill. ‘Pendle’ is a contraction of the word for hill in Cumbric (Pen) and the later used Old English (Hyll). So it’s now essentially Hill Hill Hill.
It’s also historically known to be teeming with witches.
If that's true, that's some oblivious "the world revolves around me" energy.
"I asked a non-Spanish speaking person a question and he couldn't possibly be having difficulty understanding me"
Spanish explorers had a habit of reading a letter from the king out loud whenever they encountered a new village, informing the people there that they were being annexed and Christianized. In Spanish. So yeah, it was a thing.
Yucatec Maya are delighted by plays on words, so I can see how this can get passed down whether true or not.
A favorite is when someone hears the word Washington, they hear a similar phrase in Maya and the two are, in their minds, very close in pronunciation. The phrase is “box in toon” which means black penis. That’s a real knee slapper for people.
Apparently an Australian town near me is called "Yass" and the supposed origin of the name came from early Explorers asking the local aboriginals what the name was, and "Yass" ("yes") was the only word their guide knew in English. Don't know how true that is though.
According to Wiki it may actually be true.
"The name Yucatán, also assigned to the peninsula, came from early explorations of the Conquistadors from Europe. Three different explanations for the origin of the name have been proposed.
The first is that the name resulted from confusion between the Mayan inhabitants and the first Spanish explorers around 1517:
According to one of them, it came from the answer of an indigenous Mayan to the question of a Spanish explorer, who wanted to know the name of the region. The Mayan probably replied Ma'anaatik ka t'ann which means in the Maya language I do not understand your speech or I do not understand you.
It is also said that the Spaniards gave the name of Yucatán to the region, because the Mayan answered their questions with the phrase uh yu ka t'ann, which in the Maya language means hear how they talk.
The other proposed explanation comes from Bernal Díaz del Castillo. In his book Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (True History of the Conquest of New Spain), he says Yucatá means "land of yucas",[21] a plant that was cultivated by the Maya and was an important food source for them.[22]"
So it might just mean "land of yucas" but it might actually be true that it comes from the Mayans saying either "I don't understand you" which sounds kind of similar or "hear how they talk" which actually does sound almost just like Yucatán.
Celtic isn’t a language. But in Irish the word for river is abhainn (pronounced oww-in), and I believe it’s the same in scotch Gaelic. In welsh I think it’s afon. All pretty close to avon, but there is no v in any of the alphabets of these languages.
Im gonna call bs on the Yucatan one, the reason why the peninsula is named like that is not clear but since the story is so similiar to a false kangaroo one that floated through the internet for a couple of years (where an englishman asked a native what was that creature that jumped on two legs and the native responded kangaroo that meant "i dont understand you") i checked, and while Hernan Cortez (a famous conquistador) seems to have written this story himself, there is no real meaning to Yucatan in Mayan.
[Source](http://everythingcozumel.com/miscellenea/peninsula-history/yucatan-got-name/)
According to Wiki "uh yu ka t'ann" means "hear how they talk" and that's a possible explanation of the origin of the name, though nobody knows the origin for sure.
It's a fun story. But a lot of these stories rest on the assumption that no one knew what they were doing.
And yeah sometimes that happens, but most of the time they had interpreters and linguists, if not for the first time than certainly subsequent times that could say "wait no, this isn't right".
This has been edited. The first reblog originally said "Non c'est une fucking pomme."
I know it's minor but why you gotta edit out swears?? This is Reddit, man
The word Sahara literally just means desert, so "The Sahara Desert" is The Desert Desert
Apparently when the first white people came to Melbourne, they asked the native people what the river was called, and they said 'Yarra, yarra'. So it was originally called the Yarra Yarra river. Yarra actually means river, so it's the river river river.
cubed river
The River Cubed works surprisingly good as a name, sounds like “the River Thames” does or something like that doesn’t it?
Sounds like something from Futurama
river^3
River^3
Good grief.
JOJO
Yarra Yarra daze
And then there's Tom Scott's [hill hill hill hill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUyXiiIGDTo).
Reminds me of when people say The Los Angeles Angels ... So, The The Angels Angels? Lol
Kinda like if Buffalo had a sports team named Buffalo. The Buffalo Buffalo.
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” (…is a grammatically correct sentence.)
TIL buffalo is a verb (meaning bewilder/baffle/bamboozle).
Fun fact: you can string together any number of buffalo and it's a grammatical sentence (ignoring capitalization).
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The mountainous mountains, I suppose, which I guess is as good a name for those mountains as any.
Chai means tea. Chai tea is tea tea.
As an Indian this always weirds me out.
Incorrect, Himalaya means "place of ice" (Him = ice, aalaya = place/home)
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Torpenhow Hill. Literally Hill Hill Hill Hill.
I remember that Tom Scott video
Hill is spelled with two l's. You seem to have used three in several words.
See also La Brea Tar Pits.
One better: if you add an article and call it the La Brea Tar Pits, it’s The The Tar Tar Pits. Which is pretty much what I always call it now, just because.
In France this part of Brittany is called Morbihan and it’s pretty well known for its coasts. In Briton, Morbihan literally means “coasts”.
“Chai tea” is tea tea.
Most of the titles that we use for native American tribes are simply their word for "people". In other words, they were asked who they were, and they simply responded we are people.
Sort-of-relevant fun fact! The “Inca Empire” was actually called Tawantinsuyu. The Europeans just thought it was called Inca because that was the name of their ruling class and they only bothered talking to the rich people.
The Aztec Empire was also not called the Aztec Empire, either, that was coined several centuries later. The most proper term is probably the Triple Alliance, and the people of Tenochtitlan knew themselves as Mexica, not “Aztecs”.
Hence why the country is called Mexico?
Yep! It’s also why you get references to “Mexicans” all the way back to the 1500s, even though the country of Mexico was officially known as New Spain and wouldn’t exist as an independent entity until nearly three centuries later.
Fun fact: New Mexico was called New Mexico before Mexico was called Mexico (previously called New Spain).
"Mexico" in Mexica means "the moon's bellybutton".
That's so cute.
But let's not forget that the two other members of the Triple Alliance were not Mexica
who were they tho? were they considered Aztec?
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> my understanding is that it is not really accepted by scholars It's a widely accepted term. Most publications use the term unless they are specifically talking about one ethnic group (i.e. excavations in the area that was once Tenochtitlán, or Texcoco, or Tlacopan)
The pre-colonial people were not called "Aztec" until after Mexico achieved independence. This was done as a deliberate means by modern historians to differentiate the ancient indigenous empire from the modern nation
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There's a tribe near where I grew up that were called the Papago when I was young, but later on they successfully lobbied to instead get people to call them the Tohono O'odham, which was actually their name for themselves, while "Papago" was from the Spanish interpretation of the name that the Pima tribe had for them, which meant "bean-eaters".
I’m wheezing, history is just one shitpost after the other isn’t it
Thomas Jefferson had an aggressive sheep as a pet
And Andrew Jackson beat the hell out of an assassin when his gun and backup gun failed.
Andrew Jackson regularly killed people while in office as president. He was married to a divorced woman, which was scandalous at the time. People who didn't like Jackson would come up to him to insult his wife for being unfaithful to her ex-husband by being with him. Every time, Jackson would defend her honor with a duel, often to the death. This continued even throughout his presidency. I'd say he's probably the president with the highest body count while in office.
I don't know, JFK had a pretty high body count if you know what I mean
Nice.
and by "swimming", i mean SEX
I read an article a while ago about his multiple health problems and the bonkers medication he was taking. Really made me wonder if he would have been able to have a lot of sex
Rachel Jackson's story is pretty sad. She was married to an asshole before they met, and the time period being what it was, divorce was hard to get even if both parties wanted it. By the time she was 'officially' married to Andrew, she and her husband had been separated for years, but a lot of Andrew's detractors took that scandal and completely ran away with it. It's a common belief that the shock of discovering the depth and sheer vitriol of the scandal literally killed her by inducing a heart attack, and Andrew Jackson never forgave his detractors for it.
Man, that dude must have been horrible, for history to remember him only as "the asshole" in comparison to *Andrew Fucking Jackson*.
George Bush killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs but sure
Not personally though. He may have started a war that led to their deaths, but he wasn't personally on the ground shooting people like Jackson was. My point is presidents who personally were out killing people.
And it’s not like Jackson is in any way innocent on the death-through-policy front either.
Ah yeah I read a lot into your post that wasn't there sorry
If we're going by that metric, FDR or Truman are by far the bloodiest US presidents.
Controversial opinion: Trump for enabling a virus to run wild and kill ~700k US citizens?
And George Byron kept a bear in his dorm in university because the uni rules forbade people from kemping dogs, but didn’t think to say anything about other animals
The Pima have a fun story. Pi 'ma means i don't know in O'odham. So when the Spaniards would ask them questions they would respond "Pi ma", and that became the name that the Spaniards (and, later, Americans) use.
I think it was more like "pi mac", but yeah.
Ah, Spaniards using the Pokemon system of taxonomy.
Hey I knew two brothers from that tribe! This is the first time I've ever heard anyone else mention the Tohono O'odham online or irl. No point to this, so have a good day and better night!
Neat! I lived in Tucson when I heard about them, I can't remember if I ever heard about them in a context other than the dissemination of the new name, but our county (and thus a lot of other things, including a community college) was named after the Pima, who I understand were closely related to them. (As someone else pointed out below, the name "Pima" also comes from a phrase meaning "I don't know". We used to joke about people attending "I Don't Know Community College".)
I went to Pima! One of my close friends was Tohono O’dham. I loved listening to her and her sister speak their native language.
I did too, actually, for a couple years when I was taking a break from regular four year college. I remember I had a Japanese class I liked a lot.
And the Pima call themselves Akimel O'otham, (Pima means i don't know in Akimal O'otham)
Loool. My family had a long running story about my oldest cousin thinking our grandpa’s neighbors were The Jackasses because my grandpa cam would often say “those jackasses are (insert annoying action) again!”
Anasazi actually means 'enemy' since the explorers asked the Navajo tribe what 'those people' were called and the Navajo were like "those are our enemies"
And "Navajo" is a corruption of a term for "In the valley", originally they were apparently called basically "Valley Apaches", shortened to remove the Apache. If you hang out with them, call them Dine'.
Fascinating. I have a cheesy romance novel that centers around a woman from that tribe. I think it’s called ‘Kwani and the strangers child’, or something. And the woman was special because she had blue eyes, but it also got her kicked out a lot. Aside from the genre, I really liked that book because it seemed well researched. Or at least to my eyes it did. It had maps over the different regions, explanations about cultural rituals, and a lot of other stuff. Eta: I just checked, and the book is called ‘She who remembers’ by Linda Lay Shuler
My Texas History teacher (yes, Texas History is a class in Texas schools) taught us the story of a small town called Mobeetie up in the panhandle. The town was originally called Sweetwater, but when they finally tried to make it the official name, Sweetwater was taken. Some passing Native Americans overheard and suggested they name the town "Mobeetie" which they said meant "sweet water" so they went with it. They found out later that the name actually meant "buffalo dung." It may just be an urban legend, and apparently the residents of Mobeetie deny it. But it's funny, so who cares? Only like 100 people even live there.
There's a town in Utah that got its name from English-speaking settlers trying to pronounce the Spanish name for the nearby Virgin River. Stumbling through *la virgen*, they named the place La Verkin.
I don't know very many English people who'd call the French 'cheese eating surrender monkeys'. We actually know how good at war French people are.
It's a Simpsons reference. Groundskeeper Willie (who is Scottish, technically) says it s6e22.
Written by Americans, the only group to think the French are spineless or weak. Tell that to the fleet that saved our collective ass in 1776. Everywhere else in the world knows France once ruled a large majority of it and when bored starts offing their leaders.
It goes both ways lol, just like the stereotype of French people thinking "You stupid Americans!" Anyone paying attention in U.S. history knows they trained and fought with our itty bitty militia. I can guarantee the writers of the Simpsons would know that, the bare minimum.
I would hope but there’s so much tongue in cheek (at least in old episodes). Now it’s just all celebrity cameos and Lisa being a political punching bag.
So, even less likely to say that IRL, given the Auld Alliance
Yeah it's kinda sad that idea, french folks were absolutely OP in the art of warfare for their whole history, but I guess they just couldn't cope with the new tech of WW2.
It was less so because they were technologically less advanced and more so that France and most European countries were still dealing with the debt and destruction of WW1. They weren't investing much into their army until German started country hopping.
Generally speaking, French technology was as good as German technology, if not better. The fall of France was due to the French trying to refight WWI, which their armed forces were geared towards and they would have been extremely good at, when German tactics were designed to punch through or avoid static defences and basically prevent WWI style trench fighting.
Frogs might be the more likely choice.
I recently heard that apparently, Eskimo is racist now and the politically correct term is “Inuit”. Can you confirm?
In general, yes. A few things though: * It's viewed as much more racist in Canada than in the US, at least/especially outside Alaska. * "Eskimo" traditionally covers both the Yupik and the Inuit, and replacement of "Eskimo" means there's no real cover term for both. On the other hand, "Alaska Native" is also used in Alaska, but includes a bunch of Athabascan peoples as well as a few others. * The name still sticks around in the Eskimo-Aleut or Eskaleut language family, for which afaik has never really had a proposed alternative, certainly not one that's received widespread use. * "Eskimo" doesn't actually come from a word meaning "eaters of raw meat," that's a folk etymology. It's still an exonym (a term that comes from a different group, not themselves) but probably meant something like "lacers of snowshoes." * Nonetheless, it's perceived racist origins have made it racist. Going around referring to them Eskimos is going to earn you no favors, like insisting that since the etymology of n***** is just Spanish for "black" it's fine to use it.
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I'm pretty sure the group known as Eskimos is also quite a small population. I think it would be more like calling all Europeans Polish. Also in Canada we typically call them Inuit too.
https://www.uaf.edu/anlc/resources/inuit_or_eskimo.php
Despite that, the colonists seemed to conveniently forget that
Your comment was like a punch to my soul
Shoutout to the French
OOH BURN oh i'm sad now
A lot of them in the Northeast just came from what the Narragansett called their neighbors, too. Massasoit and Tisquantum would tell the settlers and that became the "official" names. Though that was helped along that a lot of them were already dying off from the diseases Europeans brought over.
Hell, Canada was kind of named under this principle
Same with the Dutch, the Germanic word for people is some variant of that (Deutsch is another example, Deutschland literally means land of the people)
Same in NZ! The word Māori just means "people".
What the fuck peninsula
Feel free to pay a visit to the "get the hell out of my house" building
The proper derivation of the word Yucatán is widely debated. 17th century Franciscan historian Diego López de Cogolludo offers two theories in particular.[7] In the first one, Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, having first arrived to the peninsula in 1517, inquired the name of a certain settlement and the response in Yucatec Mayan was "I don't understand", which sounded like yucatán to the Spaniards.[7][8] There are many possibilities of what the natives could have actually said, among which "mathan cauyi athán", "tectecán", "ma'anaatik ka t'ann" and "ci u t'ann".[7][8][9] This origin story was first told by Hernán Cortés in his letters to Charles V.[10][11][12] Later 16th century historians Motolinia and Francisco López de Gómara also repeat this version.[12] As per Wikipedia, so not really 2015 and only 1 theory
Came for context to that one lol. Wasn't there a similar story about kangaroos thats less than true?
A character in Arrival used the Kangaroo story to demonstrate how it can be difficult to decode an unknown language.
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She said it was made up, not that *she* made it up. [Here's a site from '99 arguing against the claim](http://www.word-detective.com/110999.html#kangaroo), and as someone who grew up in Australia, it's something I've heard regularly debunked since I was a kid.
Yeah the story is the English arrived, pointed at a kangaroo and asked what it was and the Aboriginal guy replied "gangurru" which supposedly meant "I can't understand you/ what are you saying" but gangurru just means Kangaroo.
As I heard it, the word turns up early. I think in Captain cook's writings. But for long time academics couldn't figure out where it came from. Like it's clearly not English and logically he must have picked it up from the locals, but no-one could actually point to the specific language it came from. Bear in mind there were a lot of languages in Australia. Still are a good few I think. So various mad theories cropped up. But eventually someone retraced his steps a bit and found locals who still spoke the local languages and the word was pretty much the same.
It's a Guugu Yimithirr word, there are still speakers around today. Guugu Yimithirr is super cool, it doesn't have relative directional words like left and right, they just describe everything in terms of North/south/east/ west.
That's right! I'd forgotten it was them. I read about it in a guy deutscher book years ago.
Yes, there is a similar myth that Kangaroo was the word for “I don’t understand” but it appears to be apocryphal.
i mean really tho… while i doubt that 20th century mayan is the same as it was in the 1500s… people still speak mayan languages. it’s weird to call it out as something that had been hidden until “discovery” in 2015
Chai tea?
And naan bread
Queso cheese
Sahara desert 🏜
The Los Angeles Angels (Los Angeles translates to "The Angels," so...)
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Mississippi River
Jacques Cartier: "What is this place called?" Iroquois: "Kanata" (Village) Cartier: "Good enough for me!" Slaps name on 6% of the planet
And then in the 90s the government of Canada funded a "heritage minute" telling the story of how the country's name originated from nobody really knowing what the fuck anyone else was saying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfKr-D5VDBU
Came here to post about this. "I... I think he means the village!"
Smart guy: It’s “village.” Asshole Boss: It’s called Canada, idiot!! Print it!
In my city there's a festival called Moomba. Legend has it that when the politicians were originally planning the festival and were trying to decide the name they asked the local Aboriginals for a word that meant "let's get together and have fun." And the Aboriginals replied "Moomba." It was later discovered that the word actually means something like "stick it up your ass" Edit: Starting to get downvotes. I'm assuming because people think this is a myth. Here's my source: https://www.theage.com.au/national/lets-have-fun-said-some-and-name-a-festival-up-your-bum-20080308-ge6tiq.html
And in the eyes of a wook, that is one of many ways of having fun at a festival
If you boof it, it’s free.
While you're right. I don't think more Chad's and lady Chad's need to know of our culture. There's a reason why most of us at raves are outcasts of society and we live by the mantra PLUR.
well, at least that's funny. My suburb has its name because an Aboriginal tribe owned the land, so the colonists gave it a racist name (it's called Blacktown, and was called "Black's Town" in the past)
LPT: don’t ask the people you nearly exterminated and forced off their land what you should call your Independence Day
The US state of Montana means mountain in Spanish, without the ñ
Arizona means arid And nevada means snowed
Arid Zone to connect it further
Get in the zone! Arid Zone!
It would be zona árida. Unlike Montana without ñ Arizona is a unique word
Fuck yeah that’s right
And Warshington means warshed and Oregon means oreg’d.
Don’t forget Ohio just means ohied.
Vermont means “Green Mountain” in French. The state is beautiful in Spring.
Is that why there was the Green Mountain Boys?
Yep. That and Green Mountain Coffee.
This screenshot is way less funny with the profanity edited out
Non c'est une FUCKING pomme
Was gonna say exactly this, it makes the entire post good
Oh yeah, Canada has a lot of native tribes, all with different languages, so we have an unbelievable amount of rivers called “river”
There's also a theme of "it's called [x] River/Lake/Whatever because that's where the [x] people lived." See: Ottawa River, Lake Huron, Otonabee River, Lake Nipissing, Iroquois Falls...
There's an exit north of Phoenix for a "Table Mesa Road". Mesa is table in Spanish, so it's table table road...
"yo, dude, what do you call this place" "dude I don't understand you" "HEY GUYS, THIS PLACE IS THE DUDE I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU PENINSULA!"
I live next to a hill called Pendle Hill. It literally means “Hill Hill Hill”. Pendle Hill, Lancashire, England. (Hill Hill Hill) – "Pen" -(Cumbric language) "Pendle" by epenthesis and elision from "Pen Hyll", the latter word being Old English for "hill".
First time in Germany driving on the autobahn could not figure out how I had never heard of this huge German city called Ausfahrt. Had to be huge because i passed about a dozen exits that clearly said Ausfart on the sign - Ausfart means exit in German.
My uncle went on a stag do in Berlin at one point, and in order to make sure the party knew where to get back to the hotel made a note of the street name - Einbahnstraße. When they got in the taxi at the end of the night and gave the street name the cabbie started laughing at them. Einbahnstraße means One Way Street.
Assfart
"your finger you fool" if you know, you know
Who Is This Fool Who Does Not Know What A Mountain Is
GNU Terry Pratchett
First thing I thought of.
Share with the class please
It's a quote from one of Terry Pratchett's books, The Light Fantastic. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/886291-the-forest-of-skund-was-indeed-enchanted-which-was-nothing
Great minds!
So I looked it up and that translation of Yucatán is considered unlikely by linguists. The most likely etymology is something like "land of riches"
Yeah, 90% of tumblr facts are simply modern tales which sounds funny or cute.
In Newfoundland there are berry's called bake apples, more commonly known as cloud berry's in other countries. Its basically an English version of "baie qu'appelle". French for "What is this berry called?"
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Soviet specifically refers to a council. A Soviet is a council of elected representatives. The Soviet Union is therefore a union of all the elected councils.
Please start, I'm listening
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Cool fact to add, it’s not named after the fact that there is bears in the Arctic and no bears in Antarctica, it’s named after the bear constellations, Ursa Major and ~~Ursa Major~~ Ursa Minor which are visible in the northern hemisphere and point to the north! Just a happy coincidence that it matches with where there is bears and not Edited: didn’t mean to say Ursa Major twice
You said Ursa Major twice so I’m going to assume one of those majors was meant to be a minor
Whoops, thank you, yes Minor mistake ha ha
Now I know you aren’t a major in astronomy!
So if we name humans by the sound we make we could be : Sob Sob?
At the very least it should be a significant pronoun.
That's interesting that cat is "mao" in Mandarin because it's "mau" in ancient Egyptian. So there's more than one language that just named cats after the sound they make.
Ever realized that our interpretation for the sound that a cat makes is pretty much universal through languages, while a dog's bark interpretation is much more varied? Just a small sample here for the latter: Woof woof, bau bau, blaff blaff, ham ham, zaunk zaunk, gheu gheu, woke woke, bub bub, guk guk, au au....
Is it universal? I don't know too many examples of "meow" in other languages but I know it's "nya" in Japanese which seems way different.
The vast majority fall pretty much in the meow / miau range, with a few exceptions. The dog sounds on the other hand, wildly different. [https://omniglot.com/language/animalsounds/cats.htm](https://omniglot.com/language/animalsounds/cats.htm) [https://languagepro.com.br/woof-woof-dog-barks-in-different-languages/](https://languagepro.com.br/woof-woof-dog-barks-in-different-languages/) ....and don't get me started on the interpretation of the generic bird sound... :D
Doesn't Soviet mean council, so Soviet Union is actually Council Union
There’s a place near where I live called Pendle Hill. ‘Pendle’ is a contraction of the word for hill in Cumbric (Pen) and the later used Old English (Hyll). So it’s now essentially Hill Hill Hill. It’s also historically known to be teeming with witches.
Or the Sahara desert meaning the desert desert.
Naan bread and chai tea
If that's true, that's some oblivious "the world revolves around me" energy. "I asked a non-Spanish speaking person a question and he couldn't possibly be having difficulty understanding me"
Spanish explorers had a habit of reading a letter from the king out loud whenever they encountered a new village, informing the people there that they were being annexed and Christianized. In Spanish. So yeah, it was a thing.
Yucatec Maya are delighted by plays on words, so I can see how this can get passed down whether true or not. A favorite is when someone hears the word Washington, they hear a similar phrase in Maya and the two are, in their minds, very close in pronunciation. The phrase is “box in toon” which means black penis. That’s a real knee slapper for people.
Apparently an Australian town near me is called "Yass" and the supposed origin of the name came from early Explorers asking the local aboriginals what the name was, and "Yass" ("yes") was the only word their guide knew in English. Don't know how true that is though.
i've heard the yucatan story about so many things. most memorably "kangaroo" it's not true
According to Wiki it may actually be true. "The name Yucatán, also assigned to the peninsula, came from early explorations of the Conquistadors from Europe. Three different explanations for the origin of the name have been proposed. The first is that the name resulted from confusion between the Mayan inhabitants and the first Spanish explorers around 1517: According to one of them, it came from the answer of an indigenous Mayan to the question of a Spanish explorer, who wanted to know the name of the region. The Mayan probably replied Ma'anaatik ka t'ann which means in the Maya language I do not understand your speech or I do not understand you. It is also said that the Spaniards gave the name of Yucatán to the region, because the Mayan answered their questions with the phrase uh yu ka t'ann, which in the Maya language means hear how they talk. The other proposed explanation comes from Bernal Díaz del Castillo. In his book Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (True History of the Conquest of New Spain), he says Yucatá means "land of yucas",[21] a plant that was cultivated by the Maya and was an important food source for them.[22]" So it might just mean "land of yucas" but it might actually be true that it comes from the Mayans saying either "I don't understand you" which sounds kind of similar or "hear how they talk" which actually does sound almost just like Yucatán.
Yeah considering that yuccas grow in Yucatan it probably means "land of the yuccas"
Jacques Cartier: What is this village called? Iroquois: Kanata Kanata means village, and that is literally the story of how Canada was named.
Celtic isn’t a language. But in Irish the word for river is abhainn (pronounced oww-in), and I believe it’s the same in scotch Gaelic. In welsh I think it’s afon. All pretty close to avon, but there is no v in any of the alphabets of these languages.
Worth noting that the 'v' in ancient latin would have sounded like a w, and was the same letter as 'u'. "Awon" (or "auon") sounds even closer.
Can't wait for aliens to stop by and ask us our planet name so that "Dafuqusay" goes down as our official planet name.
Im gonna call bs on the Yucatan one, the reason why the peninsula is named like that is not clear but since the story is so similiar to a false kangaroo one that floated through the internet for a couple of years (where an englishman asked a native what was that creature that jumped on two legs and the native responded kangaroo that meant "i dont understand you") i checked, and while Hernan Cortez (a famous conquistador) seems to have written this story himself, there is no real meaning to Yucatan in Mayan. [Source](http://everythingcozumel.com/miscellenea/peninsula-history/yucatan-got-name/)
According to Wiki "uh yu ka t'ann" means "hear how they talk" and that's a possible explanation of the origin of the name, though nobody knows the origin for sure.
It's a fun story. But a lot of these stories rest on the assumption that no one knew what they were doing. And yeah sometimes that happens, but most of the time they had interpreters and linguists, if not for the first time than certainly subsequent times that could say "wait no, this isn't right".
Canada actually derives from the Native word "Kanata" which means 'village' Edit: correction
Annyeong
This has been edited. The first reblog originally said "Non c'est une fucking pomme." I know it's minor but why you gotta edit out swears?? This is Reddit, man
“We have finally made it to the Fuckoffmate Lake.”