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In almost every other language there isn’t even a separate word for “thumb”, it’s just one of the fingers.
I don’t think that’s right? I know polish has a separate word, and sampling in Google translate seems to show separate words in German, french and Spanish. Maybe I got lucky and hit the exceptions, but it seems to commonly be a separate word.
I only know Japanese, but it is 親指 (oya yubi) which means parent-finger.
Do other fingers get their own names in those languages, though? Or is thumb special, like in English?
Not sure about other languages, but in polish the thumb is “kciuk”, while the rest are variants on finger - “palec wskazujący”, “palec środkowy”
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I don’t think that’s right? I know polish has a separate word, and sampling in Google translate seems to show separate words in German, french and Spanish. Maybe I got lucky and hit the exceptions, but it seems to commonly be a separate word.
isyasad@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I only know Japanese, but it is 親指 (oya yubi) which means parent-finger.
rockerface@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Do other fingers get their own names in those languages, though? Or is thumb special, like in English?
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Not sure about other languages, but in polish the thumb is “kciuk”, while the rest are variants on finger - “palec wskazujący”, “palec środkowy”