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NielsBohron@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Fun fact about the etymology of “alligator:” When the Spanish first landed in what is now Florida, they found alligators and simply called them “el lagarto,” which literally translates to “the lizard.” While there were many reptiles in the swamps and bayous, only one was enough of a problem to be called “THE lizard,” and after several mistranslations into other languages, “el lagarto” morphed into “alligator”

Or at least that’s what I read somewhere once.

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Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
We still colloquially call them lagartos, regardless if its a crocodile or alligator.

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- NielsBohron@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Good to know! I took years of Spanish classes and my kids are in a Spanish immersion school in California, but I’ve only ever heard lagarto for smaller lizards and cocodrilo for anything resembling crocodilians
  
  Thanks for the info
  
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  - Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah lagarto literally means lizard, but we use it for pretty much any type of reptilian that looks like a lizard lol
    
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Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In the northern Territory of Australia we have no alligators. We are however famous for pur salt and fresh water crocodiles.

So whe.n Europens arrived and found this few massive rivers full of crocodiles they called them the West, South, and Aast alligator rivers.

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hakase@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
All of this is correct, except that it’s not a “mistranslation”, it’s a borrowing. Boundaries between words and morphemes are commonly lost in borrowing, and borrowed sounds commonly undergo adaptation as well.

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- NielsBohron@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thank you. Linguistics is not my field, obviously
  
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