Lie of the Day #230
June 25th, 2007 by FweebThe phrase “elephants never forget” in its original language literally translates to “dead yaks never forget.” However, as with many translations, some meaning got lost in the conversion. The linguist in charge could not understand how one might prove that a dead yak knows anything at all. Granted, he reasoned that it’s true that a dead yak may never forget, but death seemed like a pretty substantial barrier to communication. For that reason, he chose to modify the phrase and randomly picked elephants by looking in the dictionary under “e” and picking the first recognizable animal he saw.