Who needs ornithologists anyway? Everybody knows about the bird!
[end of the day, feeling punchy]
So am I to conclude from the OP’s location that Curious George books are unknown in Australia?
Of course not. I’m talking about making a distinction between technical and non-technical contexts. I’d use it that way in casual conversation, not in a professional context. But it’s perfectly OK for a word to have both technical and non-technical usages. And what we are discussing here is use in a children’s book.
[quote]
The fact that their common names evolved to include the word ape IMO underscores the fact that apes and monkeys are fundamentally different, or else they we’d be saying Barbary or Celebes monkey.
I don’t think their common names “evolved” to include the word “ape” - that was their original name. Nowadays, if one wants to be technical, they are referred to as Barbary Macaque and Celebes Macaque. As far as I know, the non-technical sense of “ape” to mean “any tailless non-human higher primate” preceded the technical one.
Actually, cladistically the term "monkey’ doesn’t have any real technical meaning either. The Old World Monkeys are considered to be more closely related to apes and humans (all these groups today being included in the Catarrhini) than they are to the New World Monkeys (Platyrrhini). To a cladist, if you wanted to use the term “monkey” in a technical sense you would have to refer to apes and humans as monkeys as well.
Basically, I don’t sweat too much about common names. If you want to be technically correct, use the scientific terminology. It’s wasted effort trying to make the general public use common names in the proper technical sense (even if there is one.)
Sorry. Fixed coding:
I don’t think their common names “evolved” to include the word “ape” - that was their original name. Nowadays, if one wants to be technical, they are referred to as Barbary Macaque and Celebes Macaque. As far as I know, the non-technical sense of “ape” to mean “any tailless non-human higher primate” preceded the technical one.
Actually, cladistically the term "monkey’ doesn’t have any real technical meaning either. The Old World Monkeys are considered to be more closely related to apes and humans (all these groups today being included in the Catarrhini) than they are to the New World Monkeys (Platyrrhini). To a cladist, if you wanted to use the term “monkey” in a technical sense you would have to refer to apes and humans as monkeys as well.
Basically, I don’t sweat too much about common names. If you want to be technically correct, use the scientific terminology. It’s wasted effort trying to make the general public use common names in the proper technical sense (even if there is one.)
Well, they’re unknown to me. I don’t know about Australia in general.
Checking, it seems as if “ape” is derived from the Anglo-Saxan apa. This implies that the original “ape” was in fact the Barbary Ape, since none of the true apes would have been known speakers of Anglo-Saxon.
Well I thought it was funny.
Boppa oo mau-mau; boppa: 'a mau-mau.
I would almost call them pervasive in America. I’ve known the book series and character since I was a kid, probably 1969 or so. They are a staple in kid’s libraries everywhere, teachers and parents read them to kids routinely.
There is even children’s bookstore in Harvard Square outside Boston called Curious George goes to Wordsworth (Wordsworth being a grownups bookstore that has since gone out of business, but George’s outpost is still going strong).
I never really thought about it but I would have assumed the character was at least somewhat known in all English speaking countries.
Including me, in the long-ago monkey haiku thread:
Further checking of Topsell’s History of Beasts (1607), one of the first bestiaries in English, shows that Topsell used “ape” to refer to both tailless and tailed monkeys (true apes being either unknown or sem-mythical at the time). His first account in the book is of “The Ape;” the illustration seems to me to resemble a Barbary Ape.
Topsell says, among other things:
A recent parody of Curious George is Clueless George Goes to War
Well, the city of Cambridge has always been proud of being the home of H. A. and Margaret Rey, the creators of Curious George. Of course, with Margaret having died in 1996 and Julia Child just a couple years ago, the only local iconic celebrities left are the Car Talk guys.
No: as you well know, I’m not especially interested in telling someone that the way they use a word is incorrect. However, when folks decide to make a prescriptivist judgment, they need to make sure that the folks prescriptivists turn to as authorities–i.e., lexicographers–agree with them.
Descriptivists don’t tell someone they’re using a word incorrectly (with the standard disclaimers). Prescriptivists rely on lexicographers to tell them what’s right and what’s not. I was pointing out that lexicographers allow monkey and ape to be used interchangeably, so prescriptivists ought not object to it any more than I do.
Thanks, Colibri, for putting it very eloquently! I’ll just add that scientists for the most part long ago gave up on laying claim to common word usages: that’s what Linnaeus was all about when he set up Latin nomenclature. If you want to tell me what specific creatures do or do not belong in genus Pan, I’ll respect that; but “monkey” and “ape” are not words that scientists ought to lay claim to, given the superiority of Latin nomenclature for their purpose.
Daniel
I do remember an actual Curious George book where he broke his legs, and the picture showed him with his legs all crooked and messed up. I still get the shivers thinking about that.
I have a young child, who we take to libraries and bookshops regularly - never seen a ‘Curious George’.
Maybe you guys dont get ‘Blinky Bill’ or ‘Snugglepot and Cuddlepie’ or ‘The Magic Pudding’.
Antechinus, Australia
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This is about a series of books and a movie, so let’s not monkey around any more and send it to Cafe Society.
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There was a similar gag in an episode of The Simpsons- in a flashback regarding downbeat Bart’s crappy first day of school, Marge attempts to cheer him up by suggesting he read a book- Curious George and the Ebola Virus.
Shalleck’s role in the Curious George creation has been exaggerated. The Curious George character was created by H.A. and Margret Rey in 1941. The Reys, who were Jewish, had escaped Nazi France and moved to New York City, bringing the manuscripts of a number of books, Curious George being one of them. The Reys wrote seven books in total about Curious George, which were published by Houghton Mifflin (who owns the rights to the Curious George character). H.A. died in 1977. Around this time, Margret worked with animator Allan Shalleck to create a series of new animated Curious George adventures which aired on the Disney Channel (I used to watch these as a kid. I can still remember the theme…“Curious George, the curious little monkey…”) Around 24 or so of these animated shorts were adapted into storybooks published by Houghton Mifflin in the late 1980s. Margret died in 1996, and Shalleck was found dead outside his house earlier this week. You can learn more about George and the Reys at Houghton Mifflin’s official Curious George website.
The text of the books refers to George as a monkey. However, H.A.'s illustrations show him without a tail. The producers of the film actually considered giving George a tail, but they decided not to, keeping in the style of the original illustrations.
So, is Curious George the same species as Goofy?
Yeah? We have them here in NZ.
Curious George is a dog?