Hacker News Reader

I love when languages have funny words like that.

Like how in Japanese, "mushroom" can roughly be translates as "tree child".

Hedgehog is literally "needle-mouse" (hari-nezumi).

In Dutch, a porcupine is called a "spike-pig" (stekelvarken)

Edit: and a turtle is also a "shield-toad" (schildpad)

Porcupine is actually the same meaning, porcus (pork) spina (thorn/spike). It's just a bit obfuscated in modern English compared to e.g. Italian (porcospino)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com