"broască țestoasă"
Translation:turtle
15 Comments
1785
In German, too. It's "Schildkröte". :) Looks like some Germanic languages (not English, though ^^) and Romanian have that in common.
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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
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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.
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I thought turtle is the one that lives in water, and tortoise - on land. Is it wrong?
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.
