I'm just starting to get onto food words in Portuguese. A few throw me for a real loop (a manteiga--butter; as uvas--grapes), a few are recognizable from signs in Spanish I recall seeing in New York (a laranja--orange). And then there is the one somehow manages to cause amusement in every language.
I'm talking about the bird we eat every Thanksgiving.
Now, in English this bird is turkey. In French, it's la dinde (literally, the bird from India); in Russian, it's indyook (probably a loan word borrowed during the period when the Russian nobility spoke French better than it spoke Russian); and in Portuguese, it's o peru--the Peruvian bird.
Now, I'm really beginning to wonder how the peoples of Europe became so confused about where this bird is actually from--especially since it's from none of these countries but is native to North America.
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Maybe the confusion began with the 15th, 16th and 17th Century explorers from Western Europe? In their quest for a passage to India, they also managed to saddle the Native Americans with the mis-appellation, "Indians."
ReplyDeleteAs to the "Peruvian bird" question--I'm entirely stumped.
LK