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Limbs (media.piefed.world)
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[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 121 points 5 months ago

Now do one for who has a word for "glove" vs "hand shoe".

[-] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 35 points 5 months ago

German Word for mittens is Fäustlinge, literally fistlings.

[-] ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Okay but that's kinda adorable

[-] vaionko@sopuli.xyz 8 points 5 months ago

Byt then you also have Handschuhe (I bet I typed that wrong)

[-] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 6 points 5 months ago

Handschuhe ist korrekt. Perfekte Rechtschreibung. Gratuliere.

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[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 90 points 5 months ago

Germany not calling them "feet fingers" was unexpected.

[-] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 34 points 5 months ago

I'm wondering if they got France and Germany mixed up. I don't remember all the French I was taught growing up, but it didn't sound right. So I googled it and got "droigts" and "orteils" for "fingers" and "toes".

[-] Anafabula@discuss.tchncs.de 37 points 5 months ago

German has "Finger" and "Zehen"

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[-] HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works 20 points 5 months ago

Both "orteils" and "doigts de pied" are used in French, the former sounding less childish than the latter.

[-] hansolo@lemmy.today 10 points 5 months ago

The same language where ninety-two is "four twenties and a twelve"?

[-] Uruanna@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago

Just four twenty twelve, that's enough. We're not savages.

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[-] idegenszavak@sh.itjust.works 63 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Language maps shouldn't be country maps, as language boundaries rarely overlap country borders. And it's also wrong, in Hungarian toe is "lábujj" literally means "footfinger"

[-] yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 5 months ago

Sociocultural boundaries are almost entirely grounded in language. Nation states are almost entirely grounded in imagination.

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[-] fluckx@lemmy.world 50 points 5 months ago

So the Flemish part of Belgium has "tenen", which is not toefinger. The french have "orteils", which is also not fingers of the foot( finger is doigt ).

So the map is at least wrong for those two countries.

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

You can also use "doigts de pied" in French, so you can be whichever colour you like.

[-] georgette@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Are you really telling me that cookie clicker was made by a french toe?

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[-] msantossilva@sh.itjust.works 34 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Nope. In portuguese we do not call the toes "fingers of the feet". In fact we do not have a word for fingers. Or toes.

What we have instead is a word for those little appendages that one can find at the end of one's arms or legs. We call them "dedos". Most of the time we do not feel the need to specify if we are talking about fingers or toes. Context is usually enough to distinguish between the two. But when do have to be specific, we call the fingers "dedos of the hands" and the toes "dedos of the feet".

Now, that may seem weird to some, but to me what is really surprising is that some languages found it necessary to use two words to describe what is essentially the same fucking shit.

[-] Klear@quokk.au 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

"Digits" would be the English equivalent of "dedos", and the words are indeed related.

[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 7 points 5 months ago

to me what is really surprising is that some languages found it necessary to use two words to describe what is essentially the same fucking shit.

I mean, you can start calling all sorts of body parts the same shit, and some of them even have words already. Like we say arms and legs, but we could also say upper and lower limbs. We've got knees and elbows and shoulders, but they're all just joints.

Now I'm wondering what languages have the fewest words that could describe the entire body, as in once you break down the word "body" into any number of parts (without using the word "body", like upper and lower body), how many other words are needed? I think in English you couldn't get away with anything less than head, neck, torso, and extremities (although one might argue that the latter refers only to hands and feet so you'd have to put limbs back in as well).

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[-] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 7 points 5 months ago

Now, that may seem weird to some, but to me what is really surprising is that some languages found it necessary to use two words to describe what is essentially the same fucking shit.

Sucking on fingers is an entirely different kink from sucking on toes. So somewhat different I suppose.

[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 5 points 5 months ago

Sooo.... "nubbins"?

(German "Nubsis" comes to mind as well)

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[-] tino@lemmy.world 32 points 5 months ago

in French, les orteils but also plenty of slang: les nougats, les arpions, les radis, les haricots...

[-] Obi@sopuli.xyz 14 points 5 months ago

Well we definitely have both, we do also say "doigts de pied".

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[-] Bonsoir@lemmy.ca 21 points 5 months ago

French supports both designation.

[-] rapchee@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago

hungary is the wrong colour too: "lábujj" lit. "footfinger". more confusingly, the middle is "lábfej", which is "foothead"

[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 9 points 5 months ago

Hungarian has a word for the middle toe and it is "foothead"?

[-] halvar@lemy.lol 6 points 5 months ago

No it's the part that includes everything below the ankle. Basically the foot.

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[-] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

Hungarian here, we're in the "fingers of the feet" group!

[-] muzzle@lemmy.zip 11 points 5 months ago

So, Germanic and Uralic languages vs. Latin and Slavic languages.

[-] hansolo@lemmy.today 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Ok, so Albanian and Greek are the outliers here. Albanian is its own language group.

Though, to be fair to Greek, the word is for toe and finger is δάχτυλο. Dachtylo. Which is kind of like "digit." Even in Koine Greek. Also, arm and hand are the same word, and leg and foot are the same word.

My Greek isn't good enough to say for sure, but a pre-Google language manuals call both finger and toe dachtylo. Then specify hand or foot. Or...specify arm or leg? Arm digit? Leg digit?

Greece should be a grey "N/A"

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[-] Michal@programming.dev 10 points 5 months ago

Why is this a map? Some of these countries have multiple languages, like Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, Wales, even Spain has Catalonian.

[-] Finofilipino@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

In catalán it's "dits del peu", so the same as in spanish. There is no equivalent to toe.

[-] skisnow@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 months ago

In certain Austroasiatic languages, your wrists and ankles are your hand-necks and foot-necks.

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[-] shneancy@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

i always use this as an example of how deeply the languages we use shape how we understand the world

even the answer to the question "how many fingers do you have?" changes depending on the language, and that's a physical fact that seems to not have any degree of subjectivity to it

[-] Samsy@lemmy.ml 6 points 5 months ago

Eight. A thumb is not a finger.

[-] Lumidaub@feddit.org 6 points 5 months ago

I've never seen an explanation why though.

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[-] KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 8 points 5 months ago

In Polish, "ręka" can mean both arm and hand and which one it is is context dependent

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[-] realitista@lemmus.org 7 points 5 months ago

This unites the Germanic and Uralic languages in by far the most important cultural way.

[-] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

False, italian has a word for toe that is separate from the fingers of the feet (alluce)

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[-] davidagain@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I don't know much about it, but I suspect this is not far off from being just a map of the 'Germanic" language family.

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[-] istdaslol@feddit.org 5 points 5 months ago

So it’s basically a map of the Germanic languages ?

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[-] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

I just can't get over how in Japanese, 足 means from like thigh, all the way down to tippy toes. Drives me nuts.

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this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
845 points (100.0% liked)

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