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Comment by jordigh | Hacker News Reader

I find it weird that people do that with language. Did you also drink agua, breathe aire, walk on calles, or sleep on camas?

Why is it we only do this for some things but not others?

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Nothing wrong with that. Is rare enough that I think the name chapulin is OK. It says a lot. It means he is probably talking about a region of Mexico and that he is maybe from Mexico. It is an actual thing in Mexico to eat a certain type of grasshoper. There is another type of insect called a xumile that is eaten. No idea how you would call that in English. I'm not even sure if I havr the spelling right in Spanish.

And we say viva Las Vegas instead to 'cheer the river banks', also.

Is because there is not an exact equivalent to the name 'chapulin' in english, and is a distinctive name, so is useful to keep the word.

But chapulín means exactly the same thing as grasshopper. Anything that an English speaker would call grasshopper a Mexican would call a chapulín.

I guess I understand why people do this. It's obviously not wrong, because nobody can speak incorrectly. It just strikes me as a bit of a cultural misunderstanding, but that's how things are.

The spanish common word for the animal is 'saltamontes', that could be translated as 'mounts-jumper'. Samely as 'grasshopper' this word (used mainly for short-horned grasshoppers) do not have any edible or culinary connotations. Is just an animal (and sometimes 'a disciple').

Chapulín have a richer meaning, can be used to name a dish, a type of insect (including some crickets), can be easily interchanged as toddler, or as 'a dishonest politic' (that jumps to another party), and is also a beloved super-antihero of a popular series for children in the mexican tv that was later photocop... parodied again in the simpsons to make fun of latino spanish speakers (bumblebee man).

I guess you believe that piscina and alberca have different meanings too...

There is a train of thought in linguistics that there is no such thing as an exact synonym.

http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/2062/do-absol...

Of course, the main purpose of an alberca is not to swimming. A piscina is a swimming pool.

Not in Mexico. They're used as exact synonyms as far as I can tell. But you seem convinced that absolute synonyms don't exist. As a corollary to this, exact synonyms between languages don't exist either, so exact translation is impossible. I'll agree that exact translation is impossible, but I think a good translator's job is to convey the closest possible linguistic experience possible. In this case, a chapulín is the closest Mexican equivalent to saltamontes or grasshopper. Although Mexicans will understand the word "saltamontes", it sounds a bit foreign and will resort to chapulín instead.

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