Language

The English word language comes via Old French from lingua, the Latin word for “tongue”. The modern French word for tongue, langue, is also used to mean “language”, as is the modern Italian word for tongue, lingua (same as Latin).

The Spanish word for tongue, lengua, can also mean “language”, but there is another word for “language” in Spanish: idioma. As this word is derived from Greek rather than Latin, it is masculine (el idioma) even though it ends with -a.

The word lenguaje also means “language”, but in the sense of technical language rather than spoken language.

French, Italian and Spanish belong to the Romance branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Another one is Romanian, the word for both “tongue” and “language” in which is limbă.

Why is it that the word for both “tongue” and “language” is the same in these languages? While the quality of linguistic sounds can be influenced by the positioning of the tongue, the source of the sounds themselves is the larynx. I doubt if there is a language in which the same word is used for both “language” and “larynx”.

The source of vocal sounds in birds is the syrinx. Birdwatchers can often identify bird species by their songs or calls. Indeed, some birds, such as the Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) and Cetti’s Warbler (Cettia cetti), are much more often heard than seen.

And the Romanian word for “syrinx” is siringe.

In Greek mythology, Syrinx was a nymph. And the Romanian word for “nymph” is nimfă.

The nymph is a stage in the life cycle of certain insects. And the Romanian word for “insect” is insectă.

A dragonfly is an insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera of the order Odonata. And the Romanian word for “dragonfly” is libelulă.

A dragon is a mythical creature, which probably can fly; one appears on the flag of Wales, as well as on the flag of Bhutan. And the Romanian word for “dragon” is dragon (as in English).

Fafner is a dragon in Richard Wagner’s Siegfried, an opera in German. And the German word for “dragon” is Drache.

And the Latin word for “dragon” is draco – as in the motto of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus (“Never tickle a sleeping dragon”). By the way, the one in the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and in the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 can fly!

And the word for “dragon” in Catalan (another Romance language) is drac. It is not dragó, which is the Catalan word for gecko, a reptile belonging to the family Gekkonidae of the suborder Lacertilia (lizards) of the order Squamata.

Dragó is also Catalan for “dragoon”. “Dragoons originally were a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot,” Wikipedia.

The Catalan word for “foot” (human anatomical structure) is peu.

Catalan is the official language of Andorra, “although Spanish, Portuguese, and French are also commonly spoken” (Wikipedia). The Portuguese word for “foot” is pé.

As a unit of measure, 1 foot is equal to 0.3048 metre. The Portuguese word for “metre” is metro.

A meter, on the other hand, is a measuring device; for example, a sphygmomanometer measures blood pressure. The European Portuguese word for “sphygmomanometer” is esfigmomanómetro (esfigmomanômetro in Brazilian Portuguese).

In physics, pressure is force per unit area – or, to be more precise, the magnitude of the perpendicular component of a force exerted on a unit area of surface. The Portuguese word for “force” is força.

The word for “force” (as used in physics) in Tamil, a Dravidian language spoken in S India and N Sri Lanka, is விசை.

The name of the country is derived via Malay from the Sanskrit for “lion city”.

However, it is unlikely that lions ever lived on the island; Sang Nila Utama, the Srivijayan prince said to have founded and named the island Singapura, perhaps saw a Malayan tiger [Panthera tigris tigris].

—Wikipedia.

The Tamil word for “tiger” is புலி.

In the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel, the character Richard Parker is a Bengal tiger.

The Bengali word for “tiger” is বাঘ.

“Tiger Feet” is a song by Mud.

The Bengali word for “mud” is কাদা.

Mud is defined by The New Penguin Dictionary of Geology as “[s]ediment whose particles have a size <62 µm” whereas clay is “sediment with particles <4 µm in size”.

The creation of man from clay is a miraculous birth theme that recurs throughout world religions and mythologies.

—Wikipedia.

The Bengali word for “clay” is কাদামাটি.