Wow I just learned this word was brought to europe by Britain and was borrowed from indo languages (precisely the word jungal from Hindoustani). It's a fairly recent word too (in French it appeared in the late 18th century) .
After some thinking I guess it makes sense we didn't have a word for it as it is something that does not exist in europe. But then I thought, wait a minute, european nations probably encoutered jungles before the 18th century in america and africa... Mostly Spain and Portugal though... So I wondered if they had a different word for it, and guess what, they do ! In Spanish and Portuguese they say selva, while almost every other european nation uses a variant of the english word jungle (even the other romance languages, jungle in French, jungla in Romanian and giungla in Italian). Crazy heh ?
Here was your useless fact of the day... You don't have to thank me...
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Wow I just learned this word was brought to europe by Britain and was borrowed from indo languages (precisely the word jungal from Hindoustani). It's a fairly recent word too (in French it appeared in the late 18th century) .
After some thinking I guess it makes sense we didn't have a word for it as it is something that does not exist in europe. But then I thought, wait a minute, european nations probably encoutered jungles before the 18th century in america and africa... Mostly Spain and Portugal though... So I wondered if they had a different word for it, and guess what, they do ! In Spanish and Portuguese they say selva, while almost every other european nation uses a variant of the english word jungle (even the other romance languages, jungle in French, jungla in Romanian and giungla in Italian). Crazy heh ?
Here was your useless fact of the day... You don't have to thank me...