From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Fri 26 Aug 1994 - 10:04:05 EEST
Sanford Petersen expounds on "elk":
> Instead, he is referring to
> Cervus elaphus, which is large and potentially dangerous, and a
> small, puny, variety of which is known in England as the "red deer".
Duh, silly me. I'd assumed we were using the same word to mean the same thing, again. _Those_ "elk".
I thought the Yankee variety was supposed to be _Cervus canadensis_, a distinct species. Whatever that means. Anyway, since this has the perfectly good, and according to the notoriously Americanocentric Websters, "nore correct" name of "wapiti", why induce all the terminological inexactitude and confusion induced by the merest breathing of the word "elk"? Let's hear it for wapiti hsunchen. Three times fast, if at all possible.
> Elk are in the
> same family as mule deer, but so are moose, so your argument that
> Pralori should be moose "to make them more different than the Damali"
> holds little water.
> Yes, there are elk Hsunchen in Pralorela.
Wapiti-wapiti-wapiti. I'll settle for "red deer", if you must.
Alex.
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