It’s German. Much like English, thinking about it too hard just leads to unhappy places. I suppose I should just enjoy the fun in the languages.
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Also, that reminds me that a lot of animals in German break down into some kind of something-bear something-dog or something-pig.
Raccoon: Wash-bear
Seal: Sea-dog
Porcupine: Snake-pig
I know English has it’s own, with the Manatee aka Sea Cow, and the Ant Lion. But we don’t seem to have so many pig-bear-dogs.
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Yeah, it’s pretty funny that English often uses latinized names for animals, while German just cobbles some shit together.
Rhino: Nashorn - Nose-Horn
Hippo: Nilpferd - Nile Horse
Hog: Wildschwein - Wild Pig
I have to correct you on the porcupine though: Its called Stachelschwein, which translates as needle-pig.
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Yeah, I thought that seemed weird.
I was reading this flowchart
and managed to misread “spike-pig” as “snake-pig”. Should have spent more than half a second on that one.
I really do think “Flutter-mouse” is a better name than Bat though. Bat is a stupid name. At least Fluttermouse is descriptive of what it looks like and does.
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That reminds me of this little text, which explored what English would look like if it constructed words the way German does
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Ha! That’s a great graph. Schildkröte (it’s not a toad, damnit) is always a favorite. Nacktschnecke, thoug, is so obvious - it’s a snail without a shell, so it’s nude, right?
Edit about the bat: Fledermausmann is a pretty terrible superhero name though.
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I’d watch that over this BvS turd. Obiously, Bats has to be played by Arnie. Or Waltz, that would be interesting.
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Are Nashorn and Nilpferd really that much weirder than rhinoceros (nose horn) and hippopotamus (river horse)?
Also…
- Turtle = Schildkröte (shield toad)
- Guinea pig = Meerschweinchen (little sea pig)
- Armadillo = Gürteltier (belt animal)
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Don’t forget the famous Strauss operetta, Deflator Mouse
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Memories!
I remember my dad doing this with a board he’d made with four of those mounted on it.
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Go out and treat yo’ self! Make that childhood dream come true!
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Shouldn’t that be “asshole snake” and “sea assholesnake?”
ETA: Colour me skeptical that they can have 72,000 (plus whatever additional orders they get in the next six weeks) of these ready for Christmas, with production starting in November.
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O_o
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Yeah. They’re ‘Kickstarter veterans’ - 2 projects funded out of 4, and both of those were fairly small scale, not multi million projects. I look forward to a long saga with overseas manufacturing.
Imgur strikes again 
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You beat me to it! I watched that again a few weeks ago.
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That one’s not too far off the mark, since “hippopotamus” means “river horse.”
(EDIT: @LearnedCoward beat me to it)
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