Q&A
Q : why do you hoard Guinea pigs?
A : initially because I liked the species. I presume to think they are the cutest species in this game ^ _ ^
That used to be my only reason, until I came back to the game once again.
See, something mind-blowing I realised is that we have no idea where the word "guinea" comes from. I mean, there are
guinea pigs, there are countries Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Papua New Guinea and there are a couple of other contexts where this word is used in irrelevant to this topic... But what does this word mean? Linguists offered many variants of possible explanations but none are certain. See the explanation by Wiktionary :
Wiktionary about the etymology of Β«Guinea pigΒ» wrote:The origin of "guinea" in "guinea pig" is uncertain. One theory is that the animals, which are originally from South America, were brought to Europe by way of Guinea, leading people to think they had originated there. "Guinea" was also frequently used in English to refer generally to any far-off, unknown country, and so the name may simply be a colorful reference to the animal's foreignness. Others believe "guinea" may be an alteration of the word coney (βrabbitβ); guinea pigs were referred to as "pig coneys" in Edward Topsell's 1607 treatise on quadrupeds.
Wiktionary about the etymology of Β«GuineaΒ» wrote:Borrowed from Portuguese GuinΓ©, which is of uncertain origin; possibly from a Berber source like Tuareg aginaw "black people", or after the city of DjennΓ©.
So I set a brave and practically impossible with my abilities goal to myself, which is...
No, not to find the true etymology. I am not yet a linguist. Smh. I am not an anime main character either so that is out of my reach. I'll save this job for someone actually smart and qualified.
Anyway, my goal is to collect 839 guinea pigs and also to complete my collection.
Q : what? You didn't answer mΔ previous question. Why are you hoarding them and why exactly 839?
A : that I am about to tell you.
There are 839 confirmed
spoken languages in the Pacific country in Oceania called Papua New Guinea, which rivals India with 740 ( according to the results of People's Linguistic Survey of India ) languages. There might be more because of how linguistically vast those countries are but we might or might never find out. Most of them aren't even written! Isn't that surprising?
Q : whoa. You probably have no life if actually you know all that.
A : will that be a question or a statement? My answer is yes if the former.
Q : no but what do guinea pigs have to do with this? They are native to South America not PNG!
A : uhm...
Q : you have been evading my question this entire time. Why exactly are you hoarding them if they got nothing to do with the infodump you just gave me???
A : da memes. Cuz I got weird humour and now I collect cute-looking pets and name them using jokes a person who has no interest in linguistics wouldn't get.
Q : ...
A : ...
Q : LF guinea pigs, I guess? = P
Also check out this map of languages in PNG and Indonesia (
link for zooming in ) uploaded by u/Qx32 on Reddit!

I hope you enjoyed this little piece of information I have! Now trade me!