Quote Originally Posted by Glenn View Post
So what's your problem with this, then?:
The last sentence was highly sarcastic. Only a little child that hasn't had any notions of biology would put all "the animals living in the sea" under the same category. Btw, it's been a several hundreds years since we have classified whales as mammals and not fish.

I would argue that 魚 on the left of 京 to make 鯨 has nothing to do with biological classification. In fact, I think that's what I am arguing. Since 魚 (as a radical) has a broad meaning of an animal that lives in water, I don't see the problem with it.
So Japanese language does not have a term just for "fish". Wonderful !

So ネズミ should be translated as "rodent," then. It seems to have more of that meaning anyway.
...
Without going through all of the クジラ it looks again as though it's just a general name, and that more specific creatures that fall under that category are some kind of クジラ.
Even better ! Now Japanese language lacks terms for "mouse" (or "rat" ?) and for "whale".

From what I have read, skunk aren't even native to Japan, so it's no wonder they'd import the word. ミンク doesn't refer to native Japanese mink, by the way, only American and European ones. The Japanese ones are イタチ.
Are you saying that a Japanese weasel is exactly the same animal as a Japanese mink ?

Giraffes, rhinoceros, elephants, lions and tigers aren't native to Japan or Europe, and yet Japanese and European languages have unique words for them. Why not smaller mamals ? I see a lack of interest in distinguishing animal species, and thus a lack of interest in nature. It only takes one person to create new words for the above. This person hasn't been born in Japan yet (or my 2 electronic dictionaries and Wikipedia in Japanese need a serious revision).