Apparently the Meer- bit is to indicate that the animal was an exotic/imported species in that it arrived by sea. Always from a Eurocentric viewpoint, of course.
The German Meerschweinchen (Cavia) are therefore ‘imported piglets’. In English they are from Guinea, in Italian from India.
2 Likes
Actually, that was the name I learned fist for them… I realized that Nutria is another name way later (easter Germany)… So the name seemed not more odd to me then Meerschweinchen
2 Likes
genus is Myocastor - derived from two Greek words; mys, for mouse, and kastor, for beaver. So the German is close.
Belonging to the spiny rats family Echimyidae
And - Spanish word nutria, meaning otter
2 Likes
Which, in effect, makes nutria the least accurate of the various common names.
Yeah, everyday spoken Swiss German is an interesting experience for the poor foreigner. (Fascinating, but a bit discouraging to find all my hard-won German skills are suddenly largely useless…)
But even standard written Swiss German differs from the standard written German used in Germany in a number of ways, much the way UK English conventions differ from US English ones. Some of this is formal (spelling, punctuation), but there are also grammatical differences such as the gender of certain nouns or slightly different syntactic constructions. And there are vocabulary differences, both regarding everyday items (e.g. Velo vs. Fahrrad) and for example in legal terminology. Nothing non-standard about this – it just happens that it is not the same as the standard followed in Germany.
The attentive traveler within Germany will even notice minor regional differences in the language used on local signage or menus. Again – not “dialect” in the sense of Mundart rather than Hochdeutsch, just regional variation within standard German.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.