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Chris -- 2018-04-11
If this African monkey had been discovered along with spuds and baccy in the New World then it may have shared the great navigator’s name. A reasonable mistake to make then, given the similarity of the two names:
The Columbus monkey has distinct features dotting a beautiful black fur and a long white mantle, whiskers and beard around the face and the bushy white tail …
The Mau forest is also home to some rare and endangered animal species including the yellow-backed duiker, golden cat, Columbus monkey, ...
I am just here to tell you about an extinct animal called the Red Columbus Monkey.It looks like a regular monkey except it is red. ...
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An interesting twist on the Lehmann theme: most of us would probably guess that Colobus was a proper name (it isn’t etymologically, but that’s relatively irrelevant), so substituting a meaningful proper name, Columbus , is certainly adding meaning to the mix.
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Almost certainly, also, this is one of those cases where the substitution is primarily graphically rather than phonologically based. I for one have no knowledge of which syllable Colobus is spozeta be accented on: I’d guess _ˈkɔləbəs_ , but I don’t know. (Dictionary agrees with me —score!) Anyhow, the written forms resemble each other a lot more than the spoken forms, and a lot of us know the written forms but have likely never said or heard the word Colobus (we’ve all heard and said Columbus of course).
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-07-09 12:03:53)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Yes, a very nice twist on the Lehmann theme. The semantic sense of “Columbus” is that of a navigator who gets his name on miscellaneous things he discovered … even when the attribution is wrong. I would argue that it makes a little bit more sense than the fictitious “Lehmann.” But alas, am I really going to reopen this can of worms? :-)
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jorkel wrote:
The semantic sense of “Columbus” is that of a navigator who gets his name on miscellaneous things he discovered … even when the attribution is wrong. I would argue that it makes a little bit more sense than the fictitious “Lehmann.” But alas, am I really going to reopen this can of worms? :-)
(1) I agree. (2) No, I already did it—you can blame me!
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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