Chapter 3, turtle or tortoise?

[Umiman]

Add oil Mr. Hikki-turtle! *Sakura Wars drama sequence on!*

[Kinny Riddle]

I think they can be inter-changeable. Kyon may be referring to a tortoise, but it doesn't mean the reptile that he bought is not a turtle. After all, in Japanese they use the same word and it is possible Kyon (or Tanigawa for that matter) may have confused the two since they aren't native English speakers. Hell, even I'm confused.

In that case, I'm going to have to change all my "turtles" into "tortoises" for my portion of the translated text. I chose mainly "turtle" because it has less letters than "tortoise".

[HolyCow]

Turtle does sound better, but when you take into consideration that Kyon said "Did we find one instead of buried treasure?" and stuff like hwo cruel it would be to dig up the poor fella from under the ground when he's busy hibernating, it seems that tortoise fits better.

I had originally started with turtle too but when I read about the hibernating part I decided to switch everything to tortoise.

[Smidge204]

Oddly, I remember reading that part but I didn't think much of it.

Maybe, in the context of the story, it doesn't matter which? Given the part that HolyCow pointed out, I think we should wait to see what happens to the little guy when they throw him in the water.
=Smidge=

[Nutcase]

Some relatively terrestrial turtles dig holes and hibernate much like tortoises. Skimming through some

I can see good reasons to go with either turtle or tortoise. Maybe the solution is to substitute "turtle or tortoise" into the original instructional note, amplifying the "species doesn't matter" point, make allowances for Kyon not being an expert in chelonian taxonomy, and cut some slack for using "turtle" and "tortoise" as circumstances warrant. That would certainly work for me. Once it's clear that the turtle/tortoise distinction is totally inconsequential to Kyon, I don't expect complete consistency in his usage.

Preliminary results of some googling of Japanese chelonians indicate no native tortoises, but a very tortoisy yellow-margined box turtle. Which, as we see in our discussion already, is often called a tortoise in common usage.

[HolyCow]

So I think we'll just leave it as "tortoise" for the time being, to avoid confusion for now.

But I'll be darned, as I think you will, after learning that in one of the later chapters,

Spoiler! :

THAT DARNED THING CAN SWIM

P/S: Nutcase you should apply for the post of editor. I've seen your editings in chapter 3 and they're pretty good. Same goes with Smidge

[Nutcase]

Thanks for the feedback. What's the drill? Contact Onizuka-gto?

[HolyCow]

Yea, you can either PM him, email him, or just leave a note in his user talk.

[Umiman]

Yay! Turtle 0 = Tortoise 1