Well done. Full marks.
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I think that’s bullshit but I am not sure.
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He is talking about the etymology of the word, which is decidedly not the same as what the word means in daily use in modern Japanese.
おはようございます (ohayou gozaimasu) similarly literally means “it is early,” with the implicature being “you are early,” but that is not how it is actually used.
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This is a great series on Youtube and if you’ve never seen an episode, I highly recommend it…
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Probably this is a better place to continue my tangent:
That’s not the only case where Polish borrowed more words than strictly necessary. For example, the Polish word for orange (fruit) is pomarańcza, which comes from Italian pomo arancia, literally - “apple of the orange tree”. (Pro tip: you can compare apples and oranges if the oranges are actually apples.)
And that’s just one instance of a broader genre in botanical names: “all fruits are basically just apples, right?” There’s the “golden apple”, pomo d’oro, which is what tomatoes were called in Italy (and after adoption of that word in Polish and Russian - also throughout much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia). There’s the French pomme de terre, “apple of the earth”, aka potato. And then there’s pomegranate, from Italian pomo granato, which is really just an apple with a lot of grains / seeds.
(Yes, the correct explanation is that originally in Latin pomum meant all fruit in general, and only later did the meaning narrow down to just “apple” in other Romance languages, but that’s too boring.)
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And in turn from pomegranate we get the words grenade and garnet. Named for the overall form of the fruit and the appearance of its seeds respectively.
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