The story of how the Aborigines answered the Kangaroo, not understanding the question of the first Europeans about the marsupial animal, is known to many. We checked whether this word really has such an etymology.

This entertaining fact is one of those that people will learn about in childhood from all kinds of books. Here is what, for example, the famous zoologist Bernard Grimimek writes in his book Australian Studies:

“A less successful and even to a certain extent offensive for Europeans the name of the most famous Australian animal is Kangaroo. The fact is that when one of the first Europeans saw a kangaroo, they asked the natives they met: "What is the name? Who is this?" To which they answered: "Kangaroo." And so this name entered reports and books, and only later it turned out that the answer of Aboriginal meant: "I do not understand." The answer is quite reasonable for a person not sophisticated in English. ”

It should be noted that the defendants in the story that was discussed were the traveler James Cook and naturalist Joseph Banks, the future president of the London Royal Society. They began to describe the animal in their diaries Back in May-June 1770, and the local name is also mentioned in the record of Cook on August 4-then in the form of Kangooroo and Kanguro, not Kangaroo. This period of the Indevoor ship spent on the northeastern coast of Australia, in the vicinity of the modern city of Kuktown, while the vessel, touched by large barrier reef, was repaired. Home, to England, travelers brought not only a diary, but also the skin of an animal, as a result of which the first picture with its image appeared:

18 years later, in 1788, the so -called first fleet, led by Arthur Philip, who was destined to establish the colony, New South Wales and its capital, the city of Sydney, arrived in Australia. Philip had a mini-word with him, which for him was made by Joseph Banks based on his diary entries. The word Kangaroo entered there as the name of large four-legged, met by Europeans in the northeast. However, Philip immediately faced the problem: local Aborigines took this word in bewilderment. The Briton did not suspect that in Australia there are about 250 languages and, in addition, each subspecies of the kangaroo has its own unique name.

However, the theory that the interlocutors of Banks and Cook simply did not understand the Europeans did not arise after this incident, but in 1820, when Captain Philip King visited the mouth of the Indevor River is the very place where Cook and his satellites communicated with local residents. The vocabulary of the representatives of the people Guugu Yimitir exactly coincided with the fact that Banks and Cook were recorded, except for one word - “kangaroo”. Aborigines said that this animal is called Minha.

Linguists left no attempts to figure out this situation. In 1898, ethnologist Walter Rot in his letter to The AustralAsian newspaper suggestedthat the word Gang-oo-ROO used by Guugu Yimitir is the same “kangaroo” recorded by the discoverers. However, this correspondence remained unnoticed by other scientists, and only in 1972 anthropologist John Heviland found that, indeed, the word Kangurru means “large black” individuals, which are actually representatives of the species of East gray kangaroo. Well, the word Minha Guugu Yimitir is called edible animals.

It remains to add that the sad practice of the extermination of wild kangaroo for the sake of meat today is practically stopped. However, the native speakers themselves that gave the world the word “kangaroo” to the world, only about 700 people remain on the planet. And in this language the word "kangaroo" does not mean "I do not understand." This is just a common misconception.