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- Topic: Italian >
- "Una mucca"
17 Comments
I was thinking the exact same thing! It helps a lot when I'm trying to remember what "mucca" is in English, or what "cow" is in Italian.
I saw your comment and realized this! Thank you, I have so much trouble remembering what "cow" is! Have a lingot! :)
So wait, Duolingo teaches the plural form of cow (mucche) before the singular form (mucca)?
You must have clicked on the "plurals" lesson before the "animals" lesson. I did the same thing. They're kind of displayed in a weird order.... :/
How does it go from vacca in Latin, and vaca in Spanish, to mucca in Italian? I'm familiar with an "m" or "b" sound becoming a "v" sound in Gaelic (specifically mh, and bh having a "v" sound in the Scottish variant), but I have never seen the opposite in effect until now. How udderly fascinating.
The two words are unrelated, as far as I can tell. "Mucca" apparently comes from Swiss-German, according to the Treccani dictionary, which traces it back to imported Swiss cows: http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/mucca/ "Vacca" exists in Italian, but is not as commonly used now because it has picked up some negative connotations: http://www.wordreference.com/iten/vacca
My dad called a cow vacca. That is the only way I heard him say it. However, he left Italy in 1955 so there may have been changes.
The same source also says its a milk-cow (vacca da latte), which garners no credit. It appears a herford steer is not a mucca.
I think that the moocow thing has really helped me remember that mucca is cow in english and I really do sudjest this method to other people
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Has the sound changed? Because ive always said it sounded like moocow but now coming back a year later it sounds like moka.
