h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The disease which is known as "Cancer" in english, is "Kanker" in dutch. "Cancer" is also the name of a zodiac-sign, which depicts a "lobster", but lobster is "kreeft" in dutch.

The german word "Krebs" means "lobster" as well as "cancer".

But what I do NOT understand is, why does the logo for cancer-research show a crab in stead of a lobster?

Could be because bothe belong to one and the same family of species, the crustaceans, all called "Krebs" in german - standing for the zodiac sign, the crab and the disease. btw, a lobster would be a "Hummer". not a "Hummel" - that's bumble-bee.
and "Krabbe" means shrimps in german, not crab like in dutch....

Ah, then maybe the name for the disease was originally a german invention. That would explain the mix-up with the picture as well

Shrimps are "Garnalen" in dutch. Are we confused yet?

no - we have "Garnelen", too - just describing larger "Krabben" or shrimps when you want to cook them - if you try to be taxonomically correct, the germans get confused all by themselves... did you now that wood-louses (*giggle*), in german "Kellerasseln" (Keller=cellar, assel is a name) are crustaceans, too? Same as sow bugs (funny, too - female pig-insects...), which I still don't have a clue what they are... - and? confused yet?


postscript maybe we should merge all those different conversations into one?

Nope, I'm not confused that easily. I can still follow you.

Hey... from you homepage it's quite easy to monitor all conversations you're in. Check the section on "recent forum-entries" or something similar

Alternatively, we might move all our other conversations to this thread too, but only as far as they relate to this topic. One problem will occur, though: each message we write may become rather large, and therefor harder to reply to. Anyway, do as you please, ok?