6 ms·
Beef is cow, lamb is sheep, etc. are there languages that have the same word for the food and the mammal?
by throwaway2202 4y ago
Beef is cow, lamb is sheep, etc. are there languages that have the same word for the food and the mammal?
- kenneth 4y agoChinese is simple like that: beef is "cow meat," pork is "pig meat," etc.
- hef19898 4y agoGerman.
- Bogdanp 4y agoRomanian also.
- dehrmann 4y agoLanguages that didn't have a Norman invasion.
- barry-cotter 4y agoAlmost all of them. English doesn’t because the word for the animal is Germanic from Old English (pig, cow, sheep) and the word for the meat is from Norman French (pork from porc, beef from boeuf, mutton from mouton).
- karaokeyoga 4y agoJapanese.
- rippercushions 4y agoWhile this is the case for almost all animals and their meat in Japanese, oddly enough lamb meat is ラム肉 ramu-niku, where ramu is loaned from English "lamb". The animal is 羊 hitsuji, but while 羊肉 youniku is possible, you'd rarely if ever use that in speech (and I had to look up the onyomi reading!). That said, lamb is quite rare in Japan, it's eaten primarily up north in Hokkaido.
- the-unknown-dev 4y agoI know that 'beef' is derived from the french word 'boef', but isn't lamb simply the juvenile form of a sheep? I was under the impression that 'lamb' meat was from a juvenile sheep, and 'sheep meat' would be from an adult animal, or is 'lamb' the general term for sheep meat in english?
- defrost 4y agoHere in Australia we have more sheep than many. Lamb is meat from a young sheep - raised to be eaten young. Mutton is meat from an older sheep, generally from sheep no longer good for wool production, too old to bear lambs, etc. Mutton is a relative rarity outside the farm gate in shops and city butchers .. in an economic sense as soon as a sheep is big enough and well fed enough to be sold on to super market chains, why invest further time in that animal? Unless, of course, wool production and| lamb production (ie. older ewes and some rams).
- the-unknown-dev 4y agoThanks for the clarification!
- r_hoods_ghost 4y agoMutton is the term for meat from a mature sheep, but it is rarely sold outside of halal and speciality butchers in the UK these days, which is a pity as it's better for stews.
- justincormack 4y agoHogget is between lamb and mutton in age.
- irrational 4y agoI thought it was this way in English because the wealthy aristocrats (Norman invaders) spoke French, so they used the French words for the meat on their plates (beef, lamb, pork, etc) while the poor peasants who raised the animals called them by their Anglo-Saxon Germanic names (cow, sheep, pig, etc.)
- gbalint 4y agoHungarian
- WithinReason 4y agoSo "Mary had a little lamb" actually means she only had a bite of food for dinner? I never knew.
- schwartzworld 4y agoThe Far Side addressed this very issue https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d2/f6/cf/d2f6cfcd435e55742b19529d2954595a.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d2/f6/cf/d2f6cfcd435e55742b19...