Re: [lojban] Re: bakyjba

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Jorge Llamb?as scripsit:

> (I don't
> recognize any of them myself, and I probably still wouldn't if I 
> knew what their corresponding name in Spanish was.)
> How are cowberries associated with cows, BTW?

They belong to the genus _Vaccinium_, and this is a classical word (not
a modern calque), so the association "cowberry" is ancient.  Many plants
are associated with animals in ways now mysterious.  AFAIK _Vaccinium_
is confined to the North Temperate Zone.  The generic Spanish name FWIW
appears to be arándano.

Other species in Vaccinium include the lingonberry = mountain cranberry,
the whortleberry = huckleberry, and the bilberries (it's possible that
"blueberry" is a folk etymology of "bilberry").

> Are cranberries associated with cranes?

Sort of.  "Cranberry" is a half-calque of a Low German term that indeed
meant "crane+berry", but the "cran" part is not perceived by anglophones
as meaning "crane", and indeed "cranberry morph" is a term used by
linguists for something liek the "cran-" in "cranberry", which appears
to be bi-morphemic but where the first morph has no synchronic meaning.

-- 
John Cowan                                jcowan@reutershealth.com
At times of peril or dubitation,          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Perform swift circular ambulation,        http://www.reutershealth.com
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