TT #17


Hello!
I'm busy helping Not The Mama this week get ready for the Bestest Blog Carnival: Animal Edition (coming Saturday!), so this week, we're gonna do our first re-run TT here at Purrchance To Dream. This one was our #4, and today is our #17, so this was thirteen weeks ago so somes of you might need a refresher on this, anyways! Enjoy ~ Daphne

Since Not The Mama says I'm too smart for my own good, I thought that today we would explore the word "cat" in other languages.

1. The Latin name for cat is felidae, and the trinomal scientific classification for the domesticated cat is felis silvestris catus. Wonder why there aren't more cats named Sylvester -- other than the obvious Putty Tat, of course. Have you ever known a kitty named Sylvester?

2. The Spanish name for a male cat is gato. Hence Chloe's suitor's name, Senor Gato means Mr. Cat. A senorita kitty would be gata. Closely related to the Spanish is the Italian: gatto.
Another language that separates male and female cats is Hebrew; male cats are KHaTooL' and female kitties are KHa'TooLaH' -- that's an awful lot of syllables for just "cat", if you ask me -- and they sound more Klingon than Hebrew, but I'm not a Jewish kitty. An online Klingon To English dictionary, by the way, states that the Klingon word for cat is Daq.

3. The French throw in an H to make cat = chat.

4. The Yiddish catalog cat as katalog. Do their libraries have card katalogs?

5. In Esperanto, a cat becomes kato. Is Esperanto a real language? Are there really Esperanto kitties out there?

6. German cats are called katze. So if Dr. Seuss had been German, we would have Die Katze in der Filzhut.

7. Russian kitties are koshka. Were there Bolshevik koshka?

8. In China, a cat is a mao. Meow from mao. However, just across a tiny stretch of water in Japan, a cat is neko. Is this pronounced neee-ko or necco, like necco wafers?

9. Korean cats are ko-yang-i. Can't you just see Mama-san yelling out the back door, "Ko-yang-i! Ko-yang-i!"

10. In Africa, a Swahili kitty is a paka.

11. Egyptian cats, in Arabic, are biss. But the ancient Egyptians said "ba" -- their cat goddess was Bast, goddess of the hearth and home, and her cult center was Bu-bastis.

12. If you're a Lord Of The Rings fan, you can go to www.nevrast.net and learn that the Elvish word for cat is miel.

13. And here at home in America, the word cat is interchangeable with kitty.

I prefer Bright Shining Center Of The Known Universe, myself, but I answer to Daphne.


If you have other translations for "cat", please leave them in a comment.

Meow for now ~ Daphne

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Mo and The Purries

21 comments :

  1. oh daph your tt banner is so cool. did not the mama make it for you or did you make it yourself? i know you are smart, but are you that smart??? did you see mine? not the mama made it for me. you are a lucky girl!!! meows, auntie bee

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  2. Happy TT!

    So many facts about cats.

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  3. Really, I am a cat person - you'd just never know it reading my blog :) Thanks for the great list - now I'm going to upload my Sylvester...

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  4. You have gorgeous kitties sugar.

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  5. Anonymous5:51 AM

    Great list, I love cats & grew up with 5 in the house, but I didn't know many of those.

    Thanks.

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  6. You're one smart kitty, Daphne!

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  7. Very instructional!
    From,
    Daisy the Kurly Koshka

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  8. Anonymous11:12 AM

    Chloe is: "una hermosa gata"
    (beautiful cat)

    ;)

    Señor Gato

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  9. Well, I thought this was really interesting! I am a language person AND a cat person. I am going to start calling my cat my Mao.

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  10. Very cool! That's a great list! :) Did you know the German word for cat is female? So it is actually die Katze and would have been Die Katze in der Filzhut. Thanks for sharing all that interesting information. :)

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  11. Actually, I meant "feminine" not "female" (grammar is not my strong point). All nouns in German have a gender - masculine, feminine, and neuter, and cat - Katze is feminine.

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  12. very kewl!! The Mom that Lives here knew Gato. She learned something today!!

    D
    J
    CC

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  13. Anonymous12:32 PM

    'The one who is in charge' is my personal fav.

    Purrs

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  14. Dragonheart: We stand corrected!
    We have corrected our error!
    thanks for the hot tip :)
    Not The Mama & Daphne

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  15. Daphne is a figgin' genius! Jeesh, we just call our cat Sassy. How do you get such good pictures? Almost every time we point a camera at her, and the camera focuses, she's gone into the one-leg-straight-up-gotta-lick-my-butt pose.

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  16. i enjoyed reedin all da diffrent wordz fer cat in da diffrent langwichez.
    verree intrestin.

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  17. Anonymous8:11 PM

    I'm a Lord of the rings fan so thanks for the link. Hey check out my Thursday 13.

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  18. Daphne:
    You are so learned!

    Mom calls me "boo-buh-luh," but I don't think that it means anything other than Mom is weird.

    DMM

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  19. Erudition, thy name is Daphne.

    Cat in Norwegian is katt. A cat is en katt (masculine...opposite of German...now isn't that strange). The cat is katten.

    Please add me to your blog roll. My blog is called 'under the bed', and my name is Suzanne.

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  20. Anonymous1:20 AM

    An esperanto cat!

    Bobo

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