Saying "rabbit" in other languages

[ave_matthew]

According to one dicctionary, http://www.creedictionary.com, which is a compilation of several written ones.
Rabbit -> wapos [wapɔs] and not [wapʰɔs] or [waʰpɔs]
the plural is waposwak [wapɔswɶk] I think that's how to write in down with the IPA.

So in summary: In cree rabbit is wapos, and rabbits is waposwak.

In esperanto, rabbit is kunikulo. pl. kunikuloj

kihci okimaw : King
~ Important person in charge. (I find this funny cause I'm just learning cree and when I saw the words kihci okimaw, the first translation that sprang to my head was "very much the manager")

[Rokue]

In Finnish it's kani, pronounced "kani" (the k as the k in kite).

[Stœnmaðr]

Apart from lapin, in French we have an old, classy word which is a cognate of its italian and spanish counterparts : connil (/kɔ.nil/or connin, /kɔ.ñe/).

It got superseded by lapin because it was then too easy to do sexual allusions with it (due to its proximity with con, etymologically « cunt », now « a stupid person »).

[Mad Cow Bomber]

In Modern Standard Arabic, rabbit is "arnub".

[Arancaytar]

In German it's Hase, Kaninchen, Karnickel or Rammler (this last one's for male rabbits only).

You could try Babelfish to find more: http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Hey, I never realized the origin of the verb "rammeln".

[tractatus]

from http://students.washington.edu/hilyeric/QED/

[Sasha]

In my current conlang, rabbit is:
Nguhümawhaso.
And that's if it's a male rabbit, a female one would be the same only with -si instead of -so at the end.
Ng as in Ana Ng.
U is a schwa.
H if you're clearing the throat, it's a glottal fricative.
Ü as in the oo in pool.
M in a normal m.
A as in star.
Wh is a fricative said from the same place the "l" is in English.
A again.
S is normal.
O as in over.

[Alexius]

(Modern) Greek: κουνἐλι (kouneli).
(Ancient) Greek: λαγος (lagos, with a hard "a" and a hard "o") means "hare", I don't know if they had a specific word for rabbit. The modern scientific name for the European rabbit is Oryctolagus cuniculus- the genus name (first part) is Greek for "digging hare", and the second part is Latin for "rabbit".
(Biblical) Hebrew: ארנבת (arnebet), I believe. In the book of Leviticus, the only part of the Bible AFAIK in which rabbits are mentioned (in the list of animals which should not be eaten), there is this word (arnebet) which is usually translated as "hare" and another word, שפן (shafan) which has sometimes been translated as "rabbit", but is now considered to mean "hyrax".

The wikipedia page for "rabbit", if you loook at the "in other languages" has some good ones- apparently the Navajo for rabbit is "Gah".

[Roĝer]

In esperanto, rabbit is kunikulo. pl. kunikuloj

Typo there. It's kuniklo.

[Schmorgluck]

In Breton, that would be "konikl", pronounced /konik/.

[anschelsc]

The Yiddish word (according to Weinreich) is "‫קיניגל‬", pronounced "kinigl" with the accent on the first syllable (and all i's in Yiddish are short, like English "is"). This is also, incidentally, the diminutive of "kinig", which is an seldom-used word for "king" (I believe this is coincidental, but with Yiddish you never know).

[Thrillho]

In Estonian, rabbit is jänes, pronounced sorta like "yeah-ness".

Children tend to call a rabbit "jänku", however. This would be pronounced closer to "yeahn-koo." It means the same basic thing, except I suppose it would be closer to "bunny".

I apologize for the way my pronunciations look, the key thing to remember is the " ä " is supposed to sound like the " a " in "hat".

[Kalathalan]

In Hawaiian, rabbit is "lāpaki". The macron (¯) over the a indicates that it's pronounced slightly longer than the other vowels.

My dictionary says that lāpaki is a Hawaiianization, so I can tell you that "rabbit" was transcribed into Hawaiian as "rābati", and using only Hawaiian vowels you'd get "lāpaki".

[dhs100]

Icelandic...kanína

kaa-nee-naa

[nike]

it's "tochtli" in nahuatl - toʃtli.

[Link]

Dutch: konijn.

It's pronounced somewhat like "co-nine", but with a shorter and harder "nine" part.

[etmorpi]

Persian / Farsi: khargoosh (خرگوش), literally "donkey-ears" (khar+gush).

[Hobgoblin]

In Korean: 토끼 , which Romanized is to-kki, like toe-key.

[VanLeeroy]

in Belorusian "rabbit" will sound the sama as in Russian "krolik" but teh spelling is different: "кролiк"

[goofy]

I can't type the characters(lacking the font), but in Malayalam it'd be pronounced 'Muyal'.

മുയല്‍

Persian / Farsi: khargoosh (خرگوش), literally "donkey-ears" (khar+gush).

Hindi/Urdu has the same word (ख़रगोश/خرگوش), borrowed from Persian.

The Greek word for "rabbit", λαγώς is usually derived from two Proto-Indo-European roots: *sleh₁g- "soft" and *h₂eus- "ear". So etymologically "floppy ears".

[Mapar]

Dutch: konijn.

It's pronounced somewhat like "co-nine", but with a shorter and harder "nine" part.

This is the explanation of the "ij" sound I like best. Say a "short", staccato "e" and draw it out. You should get something that sounds somewhat like the French è.

[tastelikecoke]

In Filipino:
kuneho.

Too bad it's just a perfectly transferred loanword from Spanish.

[tesseraktik]

Lojban: le ractu
If you want to use it as a name, you could say la ractut. or something.

No Klingon word for "rabbit", I'm afraid; don't know if they have them on Qo'noS. The closest equivalents I can think of are tribbles, and the word for "tribble" is yIH.

[modularblues]

Traditional Chinese - 兔(子), where the 子 is like a "tag-on" suffix common in colloquial speech. Pronounced roughly "Tu Tz".

[Mambrino]

In Finnish it's kani, pronounced "kani" (the k as the k in kite).

Also; IPA: [ˈkɑni]. Vowel 'a' as the a in car, not rat. (Many foreigners tend to make that mistake.)

The word itself is related to (or possibly even comes from, I don’t know that much about linguistics) the Swedish kanin.

[jano]

=P

In spanish it's Conejo, but the j sounds like an h.

Not sure about in other languages, but in Spanish "conejo" also has a slang / sexual meaning. "Coneja" may be the female rabbit or a prolific woman. "Gazapo" is a young rabbit - or a typo.

[Amelie]

'kurdgheli" in Georgian.

[Eugo]

Nyúl, IIRC, in Hungarian (ny being the palatalized n, and acute meaning length); nyszi (sz reads as simple s) would be a bunny.

In Serbian, Croatian and other previously same languages, zec/зец (z/з as z in zero, c/ц as in pizza) for a male rabbit; pl. zečevi/зечеви. Fem. zečica/зечица (č/ч = china; all vowels short). Zeka/зека (with a longer open e) is a bunny. This is related to other Slavic forms of the word. Zečić/зечић (ć/ћ being a softer, palatalized č/ч, close to gotcha).

The word kunić/кунић probably denotes the hare, or vice versa. I never learned which is which. That one probably comes from Latin roots, but by unknown route. It could have come through any neighboring language, including Latin itself back in the late first and early second millennium.

[susan12]

I have some answers for this question by some IndoChinese languages:
- Vietnamese: rabbit = "thỏ"
- Indonesian: rabbit = "kelinci
- Thai: rabbit = "กระต่าย"

hope it helpfull

[WanderingLinguist]

Someone already posted Korean, so instead, I give you the first verse of a song about rabbits:

산토끼 토끼야
어디를 가느냐
깡충깡충 뛰면서
어디를 가느냐

We had to learn this and sing it in Korean class.

Actually, 산토끼 (san-to-kki) is a wild hare or jackrabbit (literally, "mountain rabbit"). Even when I understand something in Korean, I'm rather horrible about translating it into English, but roughly, it's something like:
"jackrabbit, jackrabbit! Where are you going? Ggang-cchung ggang-cchung*, where are you running away to?"

* Ggang-cchung ggang-cchung is supposed to be the sound of a rabbit hopping, I think.

[willaaaaaa]

My languages have already been covered, but possible other themes:

- Names of startups/websites (Kickstarter, Bing, etc.)
- Programming languages (Java, Python, etc.)
- Famous cartoon rabbits (Bugs, Thumper, Roger, etc.)
- Words that rhyme with "bunny" (Sunny, Funny, etc.)
- Superheroes (Superman, Catwoman, etc.)
- Types of eggs (SunnySideUp, Scrambled, Hardboiled, etc.)
- Influential scientists (Einstein, Tesla, etc.)
- Periodic table elements (Titanium, Tungsten, etc.)
- Uncommon colors (Chartreuse, Fuchsia, etc.)
- Pokemon (Jigglypuff, Starmie, etc.)
- Pixar characters (Wall-E, Merida, Sully, Boo, etc.)
- Onomatopoeia (Bam, Whoosh, etc.)
- Supreme Court Justices (Scalia, Ginsburg, etc.)

[Sir Novelty Fashion]

This is why language is cool. The Welsh words look enough like other languages' words for "king" (like German König). The Czech word for king is král -- and ek/ik is a dimunitive, so possibly "rabbit" - králik - might be "little king". Not having a Czech etymological dictionary handy, who knows.

Of course, the Welsh word for king (according to online translations I find) is nothing at all like this; this is how folk etymologies, which are almost always wrong, start. Still, it's interesting.

A more directly relevant example is probably Anglo-Saxon, where the word for 'king' is 'cyning', pronounced "koo-ning".

[tesseraktik]

In Dothraki, mawizzi means either "rabbit" or "rabbits". mawizzish is the diminutive form of the word; "bunny", perhaps.

[Lynx Cat]

In italian is coniglio

And it's pronounced "cohn-eel-yo". The "igli" sound in Italian sounds like the "illi" in "million".

In the book Watership Down, they don't really have their own word for rabbit, but their word for doe is "marli." It would be cool if you named one of the females that! By the way, if you haven't read it, you'd love it if you love rabbits.

Damn, beat me to the punch There's also hlessi, which means a wandering rabbit of sorts.

In Portuguese it's coelho, pronounced coh-eh-lho, with the "lh" being a palatalized L. Similiar to the "gli" in Italian in fact. I guess a "ly" (as in coh-eh-lyo), with a very short "y", would be a more or less close approximation (as would the "million" thing above), but neither is quite right. It's just a sound that doesn't exist in English.

[hyunchoi98]

It's 토끼 in korean pronounced 'toe-ggi' with a hard g sound.