Zoo Animals in Spanish, iÁndale! Quiz

Answer: elephant

"The elephant has a long trunk."

'Elefante' comes from the Greek 'elephas' (genitive 'elephantos'), which appeared in Old Latin in the 3rd century B.C. (in Plautus and Ennius) and referred either to the animal or the ivory. It probably came to Ancient Greece thanks to the Phoenicians, perhaps from the Hamitic 'elu' or the Arabic 'al-fil', or perhaps from a language in Africa or in Asia Minor.

The English and Spanish words are nearly identical mainly because in the 1550s, writers began re-spelling 'olyfaunt' to conform to Greco-Roman models, as was the trend in that period for many words that had come to English somewhat corrupted via Old French ('olifant').

Answer: giraffe

"The giraffe is very tall, with a long neck".

'Jirafa' comes from the Arabic 'zarafe'[*], perhaps from another African language, such as Somali ('geri'). The giraffe was well known among the ancient world. In Hindi, it was 'zarifa'; in Persian, 'zaraf'. In Old Spanish, it was 'azorafa'.

The Late Latin was 'camelopardalis' (roughly, "spotted camel"). Linnaeus decided to split the difference when he devised his taxonomy, and called the animal Giraffa camelopardalis.

[*]There is some disagreement on the transliteration of this Arabic word, spelled variously zarïfah, zorafa, and jeraff in different sources.

Answer: rhinoceros

"The guide shouted: «Watch out! The rhinoceros has a horn!»"

Well, this came straight from the Latin 'rhinoceros' (identical to the English), from the Greek 'rhinokeros' ("nose-horned"). According to a Spanish etymology site, in Spanish they added the instrumental suffix -onte (like adding -ant or -ent in English words of Latin origin). And you can see the Spanish word 'cuerno' ("horn") has its root in the Greek word 'keras', or "horn [of an animal]". You see it in English words like 'unicorn' and 'cornucopia'. You'll also recognize the root in "rhinitis" ('rinitis' in Spanish), an inflammation of the nose.

Answer: hippo

"The hippopotamus loves being underwater."

As in English, the Spanish word comes from the Late Latin 'hippopotamus', directly from the Greek 'hippopotamus', which was an irregular formation from the earlier Greek 'ho hippos potamios' ("the horse of the river"), in turn from 'hippos' ("horse") and the adjective 'potamos' ("river, rushing water").

It's not obvious, but 'hippos' comes from the Indo-European root 'ekwo-' ("swift"), whence the Latin 'equus' ("horse"), to the feminine 'equa', to the Spanish 'yegua' ("mare").

Answer: gorilla

"King Kong was a giant gorilla."

The Spanish and English words for the various apes ('los simios') are virtually identical, often adapted from indigenous languages. Spanish 'gorila' comes from the Greek 'gorillai' (by way of English, from U.S. missionary Thomas Savage) as written in accounts of the Carthaginian explorer Hanno (c. 487-399 B.C.), who got it allegedly from a word for a wild, hairy being, as spoken somewhere along the northwest African coast.

'Orangután' comes from the Malay 'orang huan' ("forest person"). Similarly, there's 'chimpancé¦' ("chimpanzee"), gibón ("gibbon"), and the orthographically identical 'bonobo' (formerly "pygmy chimpanzee" in English).

Spanish uses the same word for a female gorilla, but with a feminine article: 'Koko es una gorila famosa que aprendió la lengua de señas.' ("Koko is a famous gorilla who learned sign language.").

Answer: kangaroo

"The kangaroo hops and has a pouch."

Here's a case of a word entering Spanish by way of English (from an indigenous language). As the legend goes, in 1770, when Captain James Cook (an Englishman) arrived in Australia, he asked the inhabitants of what is now Queensland the name of the giant hopping rat he saw. They looked where he pointed and replied, "Kan Ghu Ru". So he and botanist Joseph Banks employed the word 'kangaroo' in their diaries. However, it was later determined that "Kan Ghu Ru" meant "I don't understand you"!

Australian linguist R.M.W. Dixon maintains, on the other hand, that this story is apocryphal, and that in the aboriginal language spoken along the Endeavour River, there is a word /gaNurru/ which refers to a large, black kangaroo of the area. Just the same, the Cook story is more interesting!

The kangaroo appears in a few local expressions. In Spain, "I have to babysit my little sister" would be 'Tengo que hacer de canguro de mi hermanita'. If the girl next door comes over to babysit, she is 'la canguro'. (Note that the final vowel doesn't change even though the gender is feminine; there is no 'cangura' in Spanish).

Answer: tiger

"The tiger is fierce and has many stripes."

The origin in both Spanish and English is of course Latin ('tigris'), from Greek ('tygris'), possibly from Old Persian 'tigra-' ("sharp, swift"). The Indo-European root is '*steig-', from which we get Spanish words 'estilo' ("style") and 'pluma estilográfica' ("fountain pen"), and the English word "stylus" -- in Spanish, 'aguja' on a record player or 'lápiz óptico' ("optical pencil") on a touch screen. Who knew about this curious connection?

The tigress is 'la tigresa', but my sense is that, as in contemporary English, it is not used very much in contemporary Spanish. (Native speakers feel free to comment.)

Answer: zebra

"The zebra's stripes are black and white."

The most accepted etymology of 'cebra' comes from German-Portuguese linguist Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcelos. Her theory is that it comes from the Vulgar Latin eciferus, a corruption of 'equiferus', a neologism coined by Pliny the Elder (in classical Latin), literally meaning "wild horse". He applied it to an indeterminate equine species that once roamed the Iberian Peninsula.

Eventually 'eciferus' became 'ecevro' as it entered Spanish and evolved into 'ecebro', and then 'encebro', and then the beginning syllable was dropped, thus 'cebro'. (Portuguese had an identical evolution, but spelled it with a 'z'). As the Portuguese explored Sub-Saharan Africa, they applied the word 'zebra' to the animals they discovered, as the 'eciferus' of Iberia had gone extinct. In Spanish they followed suit with 'cebra'-- just the feminine form for some reason. (To specify "a male zebra" one would say 'una cebra macho'.)

According to one Chilean word site, 'zebra' (the Portuguese spelling) and 'cebro' (the masculine) along with 'encebra' are variants in Spanish; if so, then they have gone the way of the quagga ('el cuaga').

Answer: seal

"The seal swims and eats fish every day."

'Foca' comes from the Latin 'phoca' from the Greek 'phoke'. The word would have referred specifically to the monk seal, the only seal endemic to the Mediterranean and now going extinct, and it was probably borrowed from an older Mediterranean language. The region called Phocis in central Ancient Greece embodied Delphi, and its coast was once abundant with these monk seals. And there was the ancient Ionian city of Phocaea (spelled 'Focea' in Spanish and 'Phôkaia' in Ancient Greek) on the Gulf of Smyrna (today part of Turkey), where the seals used to swim.

Medical professionals might recognize the same root to the birth defect 'focomelia' ("phocomelia" in English), caused by the drug thalidomide, in which the limbs are underdeveloped or absent, and the hands and feet thus resemble flippers.

Seals make a noisy bark. So in Chile, 'tirar foca' ("to throw a seal") means to create a scandal, to insult, or simply to scream.

Answer: monkey

"The monkey likes to eat bananas".

'Mono' looks like the Greek word 'monos' for "single, alone", but there's no relation! We can trace 'el mono' from the Arabic-Andalusian 'maymún', from classical Arabic 'maymún', which meant "lucky" or "of good omen". However, it came to be applied for irony to monkeys, which were thought to be ~bad~ luck. Then the feminine form 'maimona' was shortened to 'mona', from which the masculine 'mono' was back-formed. (So says the DRAE). 'La mona' remains the female monkey.

The word 'mono' also means "pretty, cute, adorable, or funny" in Spanish -- which is also what 'maym¨±n' means in Modern Arabic! In Colombia, 'mono' is applied to people with blonde hair, whether or not they look cute or funny. In Andalusia, it refers to effeminate men.

'El mono' is also slang throughout the Spanish-speaking world for intense craving or withdrawal symptoms. There is a similar usage in English, "to have a monkey on one's back", but in Spanish, they may just say, 'tengo mono' ("I have a monkey"). This usage may originate the Sinbad story of a simian creature who refuses to dismount from a man's shoulders.

In Mexico, another word for "monkey" is 'chango'.