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Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

So, not related to the fox. Also, not a new species but rather a probable new subspecies. Other than that, the title is accurate.

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Common names of animals often have common names of unrelated animals, (elephant beetle, dog fish, tiger shark... none of these are hybrids ;) ).

Also I heard recently that a fox is cat software running on dog hardware. Seems true.

That explains our Burmese cats - dog software on cat hardware!

Also, in French bat is called "chauve-souris", which can literally be translated as "bald mouse".

I think I have a new favorite false etymology, for "chauvinist".

The actual etymology is pretty interesting:

https://www.etymonline.com/word/chauvinism

Not far from the German "fledermaus" ("flying mouse").

And in French, potato is "pomme de terre", which can literally be translated as "apples of earth" - or as I like to call them, "ground apples".

I think the translation is poor. Since adjectives usually come after the noun in Corsican and French, I think it should have been translated as "fox cat", not "cat fox"...

Ghjattu-volpe is a noun-noun compound, not a noun-adjective pair. Cat-fox is correct.

The order is still flipped for noun-noun pairs in romance languages. A "pesci spada" should be translated as "swordfish", not "fish sword".

Whatever the grammatical classification of these words though, "ghjattu-volpe" (like French "chat-renard") would clearly be translated as "fox-cat" into English. In both cases, even though "fox" might not be technically an adjective, it's functionally a mere modifier for "cat".

Gatto volpe in Italian would be best translated as fox cat.

Italian speakers often kind of mangle English pairs that way in that they'll drop the second word, like "Pulled Pork" becoming "Il Pulled" in an online group about BBQ I used to subscribe too.

OK, we've put the fox before the cat above.

Corsica

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