FARM ANIMALS IN ROMANCE LANGUAGES

ENGLISH	LATIN/ VULGAR L	ITALIAN	SPANISH	ROMANIAN	PORTUGUESE	FRENCH
GOAT	CAPRA	CAPRA	CABRA	CAPRA	CABRA	LA CHEVRE/ LE BOUC
DUCK	ANAS/ANATEM	ANATRA	PATO/EL ANADE	RATA	PATO	CABE/CANARD
COW	VACCA	MUCCA  *	VACA	VACA	VACA	VACHE
HORSE	EQUUS/CAVALLO/ IUMENTUM	GIUMENTO/ CAVALLO	YEGUA/CABALLO	IAPA/CAL	EGUA/CAVALLO	JUMENT/CHEVAL
CHICKEN	PULLUS	POLLO	POLLO	PUI	FRANGO	POULET
BEE	APIS	APE	ABEJA	ALBINE	ABELHA	ABEILLE
INSECT	INSECTUM	INSETTO	INSECTO	INSECTA	INSETO	INSECTE
EGG	OVUM	UOVO	HUEVO	OU	OVO	OUEF
CAT	CATTUS	CANE	PERRO	CAINE	A CADELA/O CACHORRO/O CAO	CHIEN
DOG	CANIS	GATTO	GATO	PISICA	GATA	CHAT

 
    After spending seven years trying to speak Italian while living in Italy, I, Dr. Slick, came back to America and discovered language apps, as well as taking Spanish and French lessons at the local library before the COVID 19. I became curious as to how these romance languages matched up to each other, and thus began this blog on the comparative romance (of Romance languages). This blog follows my own random matching of words, based on the language lessons word content.
    This is primarily a written list to compare the words per each language, where Italian is closest to Latin and French is the most divergent from Latin, based on this order,:
LATIN, ITALIAN, SPANISH, ROMANIAN, PORTUGUESE, FRENCH

Word Commentary:
(Goat): Although English speakers may know ‘capra’ from the last name of the American film director Frank Capra, the bilabials p and b are switched between Italian and Spanish/Portuguese, while French has diverged quite a bit.
(Duck):Then, duck is quite divergent in all languages.
(Cow): Turning to cow, the Italian ‘mucca’ seems to be the combination of the verb muggire and the noun vacua, resulting in mucca. The Italian word vacca is a derogatory slang. Then the other forms are similar, with only French diverging.
(Horse): Then, Latin has three words for horse. Equus, known to English speakers via the 1973 play Equus, is the High Latin word. Cavallo is the Vulgar Latin form. Finally, Iumentum or Jumentum refers to mare. Romanian and French diverge form the other languages.
(Chicken): In Peru, I remember seeing Caldo di Pollo in the market. After seeing the soup pot, I then knew it was chicken soup. Portuguese curiously uses a completely different word, Frango, which is suggested comes from francum (see footnote below).
(Bee): The Piaggio company of Pontedera Italy made a three wheeled vehicle called the Ape, which can still be seen on the farm roads of Italy. They also have another vehicle called Vespa (the wasp). However, the forms of Bee are more or less similar, with a bilabial shift (p to b) occurring  for all languages except Italian.
(Insect):The words for insect are similar.
(Egg): In egg, Spanish adds an H to create aspiration. This reminds me of the Tuscan dialect for the word casa. The hard c is changed to an aspirated h (so that casa becomes hasa), and is a source if delight for the speakers of Italian who are not from Tuscany. (As a side note, I used to live in an area of Saudi Arabia called Hasa.) French adds an f, but is fairly similar.
(Cat): In cat, there is a similarity between all languages. Although, the velar c is substituted for the velar g.
(Dog):In dog, Spanish has the words perro and the word can, although perro seems to be more common. (see footnote below to find a detailed analysis of perro). Portuguese is very gender detailed in its forms of dog. Romanian uses the word pisica from proto-European, although Romanian does have the archaic word catusa.

Please note that the words in the chart may not be the most commonly used words.
Footnotes:

FRANGO: it is to be found in R.E.Latham's Revised Medieval Word-List, ISBN 0 19 725 891 3 under "francum", page 200, s.v., as "(?) free range for poultry or pigs, 1318,1419." The interrogation marks show that the data given are not 100% verified as yet, but it coud well be as reliable an etymology as the Arabic words, "dajâj" or "farûj`', the most common equivalents given in dictionaries today.  Hh (kosherchick) wrote in linguaphiles,
2005-11-17 18:20:00  linguaphiles.livejournal.com  accessed 12/27/2020

PERRO: For a linguistic analysis of perro, see Notes on the etymology of sp. ‘perro’
[article]
C. Hernando Balmori
Études celtiques Année 1941 4-1 pp. 48-54