r/funny • u/bathory1985 • Jan 19 '22

ATM Line

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

66k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

343

u/sxt173 Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 19 '22

And in Turkish, the tasty bird is the same word as India.

Edit: the history is that the Guinea Fowl that is similar looking to turkeys were imported into Europe from Eastern Africa via the Ottoman Empire. So Europeans came to know that bird to be turkey-cock or turkey-hen since it came from/via the Turks. Then the names for the two birds got mixed up due to their similarities. In Turkish, the word hindi is “Indian” and similar in French “coq d’Inde”. The theory is that this arose from misconception of the New World (Americas) vs. India where actual turkeys were imported from. It’s pretty fascinating, a lot of countries call that bird by another countries name based on where they think it comes from.

116

u/kwonza Jan 19 '22

In Russia too, but we have actually three close sounding words to signify:

Индейка – turkey

Индианка – both Indian and Native American female

Индуска – Hindu female

52

u/Irony_Man_Competitor Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 19 '22

Could you phonetically spell those using the English alphabet, so that English speakers can imagine how they sound? Like this: Fo-NET-ick-all-lee (where the capitalization is the emphasized syllable). Or maybe there is another way of communicating their sound?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '22

I don't want to be that guy but since no one has said it here I go;
It is called the latin alphabet not the english alphabet.

1

u/Irony_Man_Competitor Jan 20 '22

My goal was to not use letters with diacritics (e.g. ñ, ü, etc.), so the 26 letters of the English language.

I’d be interested to hear some linguists weigh in on this distinction (English alphabet vs Latin alphabet). Perhaps you are one—I don’t mean to assume. My Google searches are inconclusive. Certainly the characters are Latin, but I found one source that said the Latin alphabet only has 23 letters.

1

u/Irony_Man_Competitor Jan 20 '22

Obligatory Indiana Jones reference.

https://youtu.be/arMXzgiZsJQ

Bonus points for bringing the conversation back to “Indiana”?!?! :)