Am wondering if anyone else is being blessed with an "invasion" of beautiful butterflies in their region. We have never seen such an array of different varieties and in such numbers. They are simply gorgeous and striking. Some are very multcolored and very big. I wish I were a photographer (even a rank amateur one). Breathtaking!
Our part of Northern California is not so blessed. Now, let me see if I can make the topic relevant to this distance learning discussion. It was in an informal correspondence course on etymology, many years ago, offered by the wonderful author Dmitri Borgmann, that I learned that "butterfly" is one of the rare words that seems to have few or no cognates. Mariposa. Schmetterling. Papillon. Vlinder. What else?
"the word for 'butterfly' was different for every European language, including those most closely related -- such as Spanish and Portuguese. [...] the 'butterfly problem' is one of those linguistic curiosities that has lurked at the edges of scholarship for some time without much in the way of a full research effort -- the linguistic equivalent of the study of yawning by biomedical researchers. The first well-known linguist to note this phenomenon was Emmon Bach" -- http://www.trismegistos.com/IconicityInLanguage/Articles/Beeman.html That Website also gives words for "butterfly" in 89 languages.
"Bustamante" sounds like it could be a variety of butterfly, no? Of course then there could be the "Terminator," the butterfly of all butterflies, the one most feared by all others.
Spent the weekend in Tijuana, and saw some butterflies for the first time in a long time. They have nothing to do with butter, and they're not flies. When my sister was little, she used to call them "flutter-by's". That's much apter.
I saw a lot of butterflies this weekend. We went to Stratford-upon-Avon (Shakespeare's birthplace). In the town, there is a place called the Butterfly Farm. It is a large greenhouse that full of butterflys. My two-year old got a kick out of having them land on us. Not exactly a natural setting since it was 40 degrees outside of the greenhouse but still pretty neat for February.
