They’re actually called penguinland and no-penguinland
TIL what “Arctic” means.
I love the bear monkeys
This joke would be rather hard to translate to my language because we use the same word for dirt (as in, ‘soil’ - in fact, in certain cases for actual soil, as well) as for Earth. Or ground.
We only have a separate word for the unclean meaning of dirt, or a compound word containing dirt to denote soil.
I can easily imagine this as an actual attempt from a beginner English speaker from home.
…didn’t i just see something about ursus arctos arctos?..
Yup. There was a meme about some bear (the european brown bear, maybe?) that was more bear than other bears, because it’s latin name (as you pointed out) is literally bear bear bear.
It’s common courtesy to tell others of bear sightings.
BEHIND YOU!!!
A three headed monkey?
I don’t know about you, but I learned the Greek part the other day in Dadjokes, something like why don’t penguins worry about polar bears? Because they’re polar opposites!
…snort…
A bit disappointed this isn’t about the funny YouTube song about the Dirt Man
ChatGPT or Bing Translate?
Is there a difference?
Copilot is basically just repackaged chat gpt.
Just wait until they hear about Virginland.
Gonna need you to be more specific about that. We have a lot of virginlands in the Americas
Wyoming
Fun fact, Wyoming gets it’s name from the Wyoming valley in Pennsylvania, and is a Delaware word for “big plain” in reference ti a river’s flood plain.
Nah, isn’t it more Towardsbearland and Awayfrombearland?
Yep. It’s Towards-bear-land, and Against-towards-bear-land.
IMO, nobody every made it clear if it’s (against-towards)-bear-land, what would be away-from-bear-land, or against-(towards-bear-land).
Arktos means bear in Ancient Greek and the name Arctic comes from Arktikos which could be translated as near the bear. One theory is that it was named because of the Ursa constellations (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor). Antarctica just means opposite of the Arctic.
The scientific name for Brown Bears is Ursus Arctos. Ursus means bear in Latin while Arctos means bear in Ancient Greek so their name translated is Bear Bear.
If it comes from the constellations, we got pretty fucking lucky
And then there’s the grizzly bear, ursus arctos horribilis, horrible bear bear. My favourite part is that ‘horribilis’ is a mistranslation from English into Latin; ‘grisly’ is synonymous with ‘horrible’, but ‘grizzly’ actually means ‘greyish’
Edit: Ursus arctos griseus or Ursus arctos canescens would be the most likely names of it had been translated correctly (grey bear bear and greying (with age) bear bear, respectively)
bears and unbears
But Antarctica doesn’t derive from “not Arctic”, but from ‘opposite of Arctic’. The bear part is right, though.
And wouldn’t you say the opposite of bearlandia is not-bear-landia?
As I said, “opposite of”, not “the opposite of”
Just wait until they realize we named everything in space after milk.
Space bird:
Not everything
… But yeah, a crazy number of things relate to dairy.
“And your sun system is located in the milky milk?”
Our Sun is a Sun, not THE sun but The Sun
Yeah, it should be translated to Bearable and Unbearable.
Bare and barenaked
Just read one of Ursula Le Guin’s books where humans sent off some unwanted people, no scientists, to another planet and they brought up how hundreds of years into living there, they still give arbitrary names to things. E.g. naming an animal Heron because it kind of resembles one, but this is an alien world, so it is really not.
Anyways, at one point one of the characters asks why people still use the name Victoria for the planet, as this was named by Earth people. And then suggested to just call the planet Mud, since they got so much of it. Was half a joke but later in the book some people do use Mud as a name for it.
Ursula
Ursulandia and NoUrsulandia ?
Careful, if you go there you might run into Zensursula.
Yesss, I just Le Guin pilled someone last week. Fingers crossed they read it. They asked me for a general book list and chose one of hers from it.
Same! I snuck up behind and choke-holded them with Wizard until they passed out from Ged overdose, and then I crammed Atuan into each and every orifice before I left them for dead.
I can’t wait to have a new book bestie!
😂
While I recognize the humor, I wish I had a book bestie.
i recently read through the series and now i only have the last short story left– and i don’t want to finish it becuase then it’ll be over :(
so few authors manage to make me sad this way
The ones who walk away from Omelas is one of my favorite stories. Powerful metaphor, that.
Its currently sitting in my library app, but I’m bracing myself because of how hard the left hand if darkness broke me
i don’t know if it was intentional, but one of Expedition 33’s endings gave me vibes of that story
I read that story like 20 years ago and I still think about it all the time.
God she was an epic baller of a person too. An amazing personal story and she herself was a deep well of insight and compassionate wisdom. It comes through in most everything she wrote or said.
I am going through her catalogue. Whatever is available at our library. So far I liked them all. Least of all Lavinia, that started off quite weak but also got better, but out of all the strong books it was the one at the bottom so far.
There is a clear thematic connection here, but when I started reading your comment I thought you were going to say it was because “Ursula” resembled “Ursus.”
Heh, gotcha’!
humans sent off some unwanted people, no scientists, to another planet
Telephone sanitizers?
Are those people? Are they unwanted?
Idk, someone’s gotta clean those things. I would’ve gone with telemarketers tbh. Those mfs can all be sent to mars for all I care.
Even if they were on Mars, I bet they’d still try to call us.
Only until the entire race contracts a nasty virulent disease from a dirty telephone.
It’s funny, as I got older I became kind of a germaphobe. (Like I’m usually carrying a pack of antibacterial wipes.)
When I was young payphones were still a thing. And I used them frequently. I couldn’t see myself doing that now. I have to wonder if people got weird ear diseases or ear infections from those things. I don’t remember any stories about it. Though it seems like the kind of thing that would become an urban legend.
That’s just the “B” ark. Ah. But I forget about the mutant star goat.
Took me too long to remember “Arctic” and “Antarctic” and I kept wondering how “North Pole / South Pole” translated to “Bearlandia / NoBearlandia”
