I would have guessed “Sommerfugl” as “summer bird” tbh
Lamborghini
*Mouche à beurre* in France.
Butterflies don’t exist in Belgium
Peperutka/Пеперутка in Macedonia
Wow Romania unique.
I love the word Fluture.
It’s Fiðrildi not Skordýr
It’s interesting that in Turkish it’s kelebek, while in Tatar it’s күбәләк (kubelek)
Albanian and Romanian have basically the same word for butterfly (Flutur/Fluture). I am Albanian and I believe this similarity has to do with the Latinization of Albanian.
As someone who is interested in which countries share the etymology of a word, this map has really bad colors (e.g. in polish, Ukrainian and Belarusian it has clearly the same origin but the countries have different colors)
That being said it’s interesting to see that there are not a lot of similar words for a butterfly
In Serbo-Croatian, ‘leptir’ is used for order Lepidoptera.
Butterfly is ‘dnevni leptir’ (diurnal lepidoptera), and moth is either ‘noćni leptir’ (nocturnal lepidoptera) or ‘moljac’.
I struggle to see the link in the usual linguistic groups (romance, germanic, etc.)
Germans you did it again.
Interesting that Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland have vastly different words. I know Finland is in a different family of languages, but we have a ton of loaned words from Sweden.
Flutter-by
This map just isn’t as interesting and revealing without listing the etymology behind the words. Like how are we supposed to see that Schmetterling and butterfly actually come from the same belief that witches turn into butterflies to steal cream from their neighbours? (Schmetten meaning cream.)
Isn’t it usually fiðrildi in Icelandic?
Catalan: papallona
Schmetterling that long it goes into poland
Greek Petalouda literally means Flying Flower
Macedonian word is Peperutka not Peperuda.
The icelandic one is incorrect. Skordýr means insects and butterflies are “fiðrildi”.
SCHMETTERLING!!! *rattles sword*
Germany : schetchelling
Poland : motyl
UK: butterfly
Like uk the fuck its kinda a fly but he has no butter on it and im Polish
We use French word for bow tie.
In Russian there are two words: “babochka” and “motylek” for two types of butterflies 🤷🏻
already posted yesterday
SCHMETTERLING
I swear I can still hear that german girl shouting “SCHMETTERLING!”
German is lacking an exlamation mark xD on offence guys heh
Does anyone know etymology of Leptir in South Slavic countries?
All I can think of is “Lebdir” (not an actuall word) derived from “Lebdeti” which means “To float”.Then through sound changes it becomes Leptir.
# 𝕾𝖈𝖍𝖒𝖊𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Denmark and Norway has the best word for it. “Sommerfugl” is “Summerbird”.
Add Catalan / Valencian in Eastern Spain : “Papallona”
It is not even correct, it is “Motýl” here, not “Motyl”
Might seems like a small difference if you don’t know how diacritics works. But it is pronounced differently. Therefore even the color scheme does not make sense.
This map doing way better job showing the same but better:
43 comments
It’s called a repost.
I would have guessed “Sommerfugl” as “summer bird” tbh
Lamborghini
*Mouche à beurre* in France.
Butterflies don’t exist in Belgium
Peperutka/Пеперутка in Macedonia
Wow Romania unique.
I love the word Fluture.
It’s Fiðrildi not Skordýr
It’s interesting that in Turkish it’s kelebek, while in Tatar it’s күбәләк (kubelek)
Albanian and Romanian have basically the same word for butterfly (Flutur/Fluture). I am Albanian and I believe this similarity has to do with the Latinization of Albanian.
As someone who is interested in which countries share the etymology of a word, this map has really bad colors (e.g. in polish, Ukrainian and Belarusian it has clearly the same origin but the countries have different colors)
That being said it’s interesting to see that there are not a lot of similar words for a butterfly
In Serbo-Croatian, ‘leptir’ is used for order Lepidoptera.
Butterfly is ‘dnevni leptir’ (diurnal lepidoptera), and moth is either ‘noćni leptir’ (nocturnal lepidoptera) or ‘moljac’.
I struggle to see the link in the usual linguistic groups (romance, germanic, etc.)
Germans you did it again.
Interesting that Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland have vastly different words. I know Finland is in a different family of languages, but we have a ton of loaned words from Sweden.
Flutter-by
This map just isn’t as interesting and revealing without listing the etymology behind the words. Like how are we supposed to see that Schmetterling and butterfly actually come from the same belief that witches turn into butterflies to steal cream from their neighbours? (Schmetten meaning cream.)
Isn’t it usually fiðrildi in Icelandic?
Catalan: papallona
Schmetterling that long it goes into poland
Greek Petalouda literally means Flying Flower
Macedonian word is Peperutka not Peperuda.
The icelandic one is incorrect. Skordýr means insects and butterflies are “fiðrildi”.
SCHMETTERLING!!! *rattles sword*
Germany : schetchelling
Poland : motyl
UK: butterfly
Like uk the fuck its kinda a fly but he has no butter on it and im Polish
We use French word for bow tie.
In Russian there are two words: “babochka” and “motylek” for two types of butterflies 🤷🏻
already posted yesterday
SCHMETTERLING
I swear I can still hear that german girl shouting “SCHMETTERLING!”
German is lacking an exlamation mark xD on offence guys heh
Does anyone know etymology of Leptir in South Slavic countries?
All I can think of is “Lebdir” (not an actuall word) derived from “Lebdeti” which means “To float”.Then through sound changes it becomes Leptir.
# 𝕾𝖈𝖍𝖒𝖊𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Denmark and Norway has the best word for it. “Sommerfugl” is “Summerbird”.
Add Catalan / Valencian in Eastern Spain : “Papallona”
It is not even correct, it is “Motýl” here, not “Motyl”
Might seems like a small difference if you don’t know how diacritics works. But it is pronounced differently. Therefore even the color scheme does not make sense.
This map doing way better job showing the same but better:
https://i.imgur.com/KVGBghW.jpeg
“Firvaldur” in Faroese
French is so cool 😍
Doesn’t Schmetterling come from Schmand like the slavic word smet. As far as it know it has nothing to do with schmettern (smash)
Oh Cyprus is not in Europe. Again.
Annoyingly the UK only has the English version of the word.
You missed Wales/Cymru: “Pili-pala”
Just learned that butterfly probably stems from flutterby. That has the same origin as Dutch vlinder. Which stems from fladder.