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- "broască țestoasă"
"broască țestoasă"
Translation:turtle
17 Comments
2354
In German, too. It's "Schildkröte". :) Looks like some Germanic languages (not English, though ^^) and Romanian have that in common.
Ooh, I didn’t know that and I’m studying Dutch. I knew that schild means shield, but didn’t know that pad means frog. Thank you.
testoasa comes from Latin " testudo" meaning turtle and turtle shell. It was also the name of the famous Roman military formation where all the legionaries put their shields on their heads ( except those in front and on the sides) to protect themselves from enemy arrows etc. In French it is called LA TORTUE, Spanish Tortuga. If I remember well, in English you also have the term " Tortoise" ? Don't you use it anymore ? Broasca must be Slavish ?
Hey! Not sure about elsewhere, but here in the UK we use tortoise for the land dwelling ones, and turtle for the water dwelling ones, so both are used quite often
I’m Serbian and I couldn’t think of anything Slavic that sounds like “broasca”. According to Wiktionary it comes from Vulgar Latin “brosca” which in turn comes from Ancient Greek “βρόταχος”, which means frog.
Edit: Oh, as for “turtle”, it’s much more common that “tortoise” in American English. See here.
Thanks a lot. My Latin is the classical one. I did not think about the popular one. Thanks also for the Greek Brotaxos which I never knew !I can still read it but understand maybe 5% only. As to tortoise vs turtle, my English is more British than American but I knew both words. Thanks for the link.
Wow a Classics graduate. Impressive! Have Lingot'd your original post, even though it is a year old, it doesn't matter.
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In Russian it's 'черепаха' (cherepaha) pronounced as ch(j)e-r(j)e-pa-ha, where 'cherep' means 'skull'.
