Once again (cf. 2016, 2019), I was looking something else up in my three-volume New Great Russian-English Dictionary when my eye was caught by an odd entry:
кагуа́н а m zool common cobego (Cynocephalus variegatus).
I had never seen the word кагуан [kaguan], and indeed it does not occur in the Национальный корпус русского языка (Corpus of the Russian Language); I had also never heard of the cobego, common or otherwise, and indeed the OED is unaware of its existence (an advanced search failed to turn it up even in the citations). But Merriam-Webster has it (etymology: “modification of Malay kubong”), defining it as ‘flying lemur’ and saying that the latter is “called also colugo” (which is “perhaps from a language of the Philippines”). Meanwhile, the Russian word is said by Wiktionary to be from Cebuano kagwang.
A Google Books search turned up plenty of hits for cobego (1901: “found that it was a female cobego”; 1905: “Thus the cobego feeds upon leaves”; 1914: “It was that curious animal, the cobego”; etc.), so it surprises me that the OED has managed to ignore it for all these years.
At your “flying lemur” link, one of the use examples is: “The flying lemur doesn’t fly and isn’t a lemur.”
What’s a body to believe ? Forget the lemur bit – is this nitpicking about what “flying” requires ? Do flying squirrels not “fly”, but “glide” ? Do birds stop flying when they glide ?
the more official шерстокрыл sounds dramatic too. As does Polish lotokot
For what little it may be worth, they are not lemurs, and they can’t fly.
“ Description
Tail Length : 24-25cm
Weight: 0.9-1.3 kg
Colugos are mammals from an ancient lineage, with just two species comprising the Order Dermoptera. Confusingly they are also called ‘Flying Lemurs’, though they are not closely related to the Lemurs of Madagascar. They can glide long distances, however, as they possess a thin membrane stretched to the ends of the tail and each limb.
Generally they are mottled grey or green-grey in colour, with dark banding, but some specimens are reddish to yellowish-orange. Their diet includes leaves and young shoots. During the day they rest high in the trees, clinging to trunks or hiding in tree holes. At dusk they become active, gliding from trunk to trunk like sheets of paper blown on the wind. The young are carried clinging to the flight membrane.
Colugos range from Burma, Indochina and Southern Thailand to Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java. They also occur througho Borneo. A second Colugo species inhabits the southern Philippines.”
There are some fine shorts of them on YouTube.
Frequent flyer credits are worthless, since airplanes only glide.
“Fly” and “jump” are expressed by the same verb in Western Oti-Volta languages (though not elsewhere in Oti-Volta.)
No great confusion seems to result from this.
Frequent flyer credits are worthless, since airplanes only glide.
Airplanes, birds, bats, and many insects fly because they provide their own energy during flight and can stay at the same height or climb till they run out of fuel or get tired. Gliders, colugos, flying squirrels, etc. can only glide because the only energy they have is the potential and kinetic energy they had at the start, plus anything from external sources such as updrafts. Albatrosses and some gliders use dynamic soaring, which is totally cool.
Through the magic of language, a bird that’s gliding or soaring is still flying. If a bird is flying on motionless wings and its wings and tail are fully spread, it’s soaring; if they’re not, it’s gliding. (There’s a half-soar too—I think the wings are fully spread but the tail isn’t.)
“Fly” and “jump” are expressed by the same verb in Western Oti-Volta languages … No great confusion seems to result from this.
A translation of “go take a flying leap!” into such a language might be ambiguous as to meaning “flying jump” or “jumping fly”.
I learned only recently that a poupée de son is not a talking doll. son here is wood shavings. France Gall can’t sing worth a damn. That’s a “tube” she’s performing.
Isn’t it ambiguous in English also? The flight is short, but the flyer may consider it worthwhile.
The fixed expression “go take a flying leap!” is not ambiguous. It means what it means.
My point of departure was DE’s statement that in WOV languages “the same verb expresses fly and jump”. Let’s call that verb “walla-walla”. The translation of the English expression might be “IMP. walla-walla walla-walla”. I imagined that could be understood in two different ways. In other words it might be ambiguous in a given WOV language, or even in fact unintelligible.
An idiomatic way to express the dismissive exhortation “go take a flying leap!” in a language other than English might not involve any flying or jumping at all. Something like “go climb a tree and stay there!” Or “scher’ dich zum Teufel!“.
In Kusaal, I think you’d disambiguate (should you wish) by just saying something like Kem sa ian’ad wʋʋ niiŋi ian’ad si’em! “Go away, jumping/flying like a bird jumps/flies!”
Or you might say Kem sa ian’ad wʋʋ ninsaali ian’ad si’em! “Go away, jumping like a human being jumps”, although in that case, the adjunct seems somewhat superfluous.
I am afraid that I do not know the Kusaal for “penguin.”
I have never made any very profound study of Kusaal invective. More research is needed.
Actually, now I think of it, Anthony Agoswin Musah’s A Grammar of Kusaal has an prolonged poetic flyting as one of the texts at the end. A sample:
“You went to the lepers’ market yesterday and bought pus and drank.”
“Your head is like your father’s front yard tobacco.”
“Your stomach is like a lizard’s porridge bowl.”
“You are tight like a bush pig in a pair of shorts.”
“You look bloated like a Bisa leper died on a farm bed.”
“My only fat female chicken!”
There is also the philosophical
“The problem is the god of your head.”
And the mysterious
‘You are straight like the thigh of a frog.”
And flying does feature in
“You are the little witch of this town who cannot fly.”
Ooh! Burn!