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These are fun little essays. The example that I think most native English speakers learn at some point is the reason for the distinction in food words: we eat
by gumby 3y ago
These are fun little essays.
The example that I think most native English speakers learn at some point is the reason for the distinction in food words: we eat pork (porc) and beef (boef) but they are the flesh of the pig/swine (Schwein) or cow (Kuh). This reflects the elite's use of French (thus using French words for food on the table) while the English servants used their Germanic vocabulary for the animals they worked with.
In both French and German the same word is used for the animal in the field and on the plate.
And then there are innumerable hybrids (anglicized french words). With regards to food and husbandry, one my of favorites is "beeves" ("cattle" -- "beefs"): while I have never heard the word spoken aloud I have seen it in novels even as late as the early 60s.
- kraftman 3y agoFrench is pretty similar isnt it? Pig/pork = cochon / porc cow/beef = vache / boeuf chicken/chicken = poulet/poulet fish/fish = poisson/poisson
- masom 3y agovache is gendered boeuf :D We'd say "vache" when it comes to milk or the female, but all "vache" are "boeuf". Boeuf is used when the gender does not mean much (like for meat).
- Dodrekai 3y agoMore precisely, a "Boeuf" is a castrated bull which could explain the English meaning of the word..
- chrisdhoover 3y agoSteer in English
- meheleventyone 3y agoWe use Bullock in the UK.
- gerdesj 3y agoBollocks, do we!
- seabass-labrax 3y agoI have always used 'bullock' to refer to a juvenile bull, but my dictionary lists that sense of the word under 'archaic'. It wouldn't be the first time that I've discovered I'm speaking Middle English!
- meheleventyone 3y agoVery often the juveniles have had the snip so I wonder if that’s the inflection point.
- mistrial9 3y agohe meant the slang term "Boeuf" -- basically an accusation of being a feminine male.
- maximus-decimus 3y agoboeuf is also gendered, it's just that "non-gendered" in French means defaulting to male. The same way that Scarlett Johansson is an actress, but Scarlet and Chris Evans are actors. You would never say that Scarlett alone is an actor.
- williamdclt 3y agoThere’s not really the same distinction between “live animal” and “food”, no! Cochon and porc are both used for the live animal, and both used for the food as well (cochon is a bit less used for food, but still common enough). Boeuf and vache aren’t really synonymous as another commenter pointed out
- xaellison 3y agoaskbeeves.com
- gumby 3y agoI just get a response 410: Mooooooo.
- amaccuish 3y ago> In both French and German the same word is used for the animal in the field and on the plate. Ehh, in German we talk about Rindfleisch, which comes from a Kuh.
- n_plus_1_acc 3y agoWhile not same, both are germanic words
- nowafizyka 3y agoRindfleisch comes from a Rind (which may be a Kuh, Bulle, or Ochse).
- zwieback 3y agoI heard the same anecdote about the upper classes adopting French after 1066 but the farmers still calling the thing by its animal name. Trust the Germans to just continue smashing nouns together, Schweinefleisch, Rindfleisch and my American wife's favorite: "Hackfleisch" (hacked flesh). Too bad Germany didn't get invaded by the French until Napoleon.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vidarh 3y agoEnglish "smashes words together" too - English is full of compounds (e.g. shopkeeper), it's just a much slower process, often goes via a long intermediate period of hyphenation, and the implied difference in meaning is a bit smaller. The "smashing" together of words is much less interesting to most of us who use languages that does so than it seems to be to others - it does little more than placing the words adjacent to each other does in English, with the exception that it disambiguated. E.g. "hakke" on it's own is the verb to hack in Norwegian, but as part of a compound it will mean something that has been hacked, or is hacking (e.g. hakkespett = woodpecker - and there's another English compound) Funnily, Norwegian (and Danish) has imported the French boef - Norwegian as "biff" - while we still use the Germanic ku for cow - but we also "smash" words together, so hakkebiff = hakkebøf (Danish) = boef haché. But "hakke biff" would imply the act of chopping it. And so we compound to remove the ambiguity. We also have flesk, from the same origin as fleisch and flesh, but in Norwegian it specifically means pork flesh, so hakkeflesk, while it's not a term I can remember having heard, would be understandable but refer to pork because the meaning of combining the words is fairly generic.
- User23 3y agoBut you don’t see things like “Straßenbahnhaltestelle” in English where you have four words mashed together. I’d translate that something like “streetcar stop,” but literally it’s “street car stopping place.” Streetcarstop while reasonable would not be accepted English by native speakers. Tramstop on the other hand is (at least places where people say tram). So while we mash it’s noticeably more limited.
- gerdesj 3y agoOn the beef thing: French: "biftek" from the English: "beef steak", beef from boef. The borrow words come full circle! The French used to routinely boil their beef but during a lengthy Parisian siege, the locals noticed that the peoples that they came to call "les rosbifs", roasted their beef (phnaaar!) We were chucking steaks on the barbies long before Australia was even thought of ... or something jingoistic 8) These essays are a bit of fun, as you say. History and life and language are rather more messy than many would like. At one point the article witters on about France and Wessex. Both terms were valid "back then" and are still valid now but they are sodding complicated ideas and neither mean the same now as they used to. Even the notion of English (and French - obviously) is pretty tricky. Nowadays, in the UK alone we have a largely homogenised language, with some localisations ... on the surface. For example: jitty - allyway, bairn - child, skritch - cry. Then we have the collisions between the Brythonic languages (Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cumbric, Cornish and the rest) and English. So a Devonshire bird like my mum spoke what sounded like complete twaddle to a modern (!) lad like myself, when she was a child. You (@gumby) might know the difference between twaddle and twiddle but I am sure I've lost a few readers right there. My point is that language, nationality and the like are rather more fluid than people generally think. Was hal!
- fuzztester 3y ago>biftek Seen that word, with that spelling, IIRC, in Iranian restaurant menus in India.
- hackernewds 3y agoyou're thinking of Bistek, also in indonesia
- prawn 3y agoI remember biftek in Turkey also? Bistek appears to be "beef steak" in the Philippines?
- bitbckt 3y ago“Bistec a la X” for many types of X is part of the Spanish-speaking world, including the Philippines. The spelling with a “k” is a loan word into Tagalog.
- fuzztester 3y agoWhat about steer and heifer, which I've read of in English and Western novels? Their origin, I mean. I can google, but it's more fun to hear what others have to say. And argue, and put them down and up - or try to :) Attitude frowned on by HN, I know, only they don't (seem to) know they are doing it themselves, via the voting mechanism, i.e. upvotes and downvotes. Also, it's interesting that there are so many words for horses in English and Western (cowboy slang, I just made up the word :)
- canjobear 3y agoSteer is Germanic (German has "der Stier") but heifer is unknown origins.
- cenamus 3y agoIt does sound similar to Hufer (e.g. as in Paarhufer, literally sth like 'paired hoofers'), but the Wiktionary states it's indeed of different origin. Etymology is really fascinating sometimes
- LAC-Tech 3y agoSteer means something something more like Bull in modern German I think - it doesn't have the connotations of a castrated animal as in English.
- LAC-Tech 3y agoOld English had cognates of all three words: feahr (porc), swin and picga.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tnecniv 3y agoOh I’ll say beefs when referring to cows as a joke. TIL it’s an actual word!
- vijayr02 3y ago>"Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?" demanded Wamba. "Swine, fool, swine," said the herd, "every fool knows that." "And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester; "but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?" "Pork," answered the swine-herd. "I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba, "and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?" "It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate." "Nay, I can tell you more," said Wamba, in the same tone; "there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment." "By St Dunstan," answered Gurth, "thou speakest but sad truths; little is left to us but the air we breathe, and that appears to have been reserved with much hesitation, solely for the purpose of enabling us to endure the tasks they lay upon our shoulders. The finest and the fattest is for their board; the loveliest is for their couch; the best and bravest supply their foreign masters with soldiers, and whiten distant lands with their bones, leaving few here who have either will or the power to protect the unfortunate Saxon. - from Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
- kalbadia 3y agosmall correction : it's boeuf ^^ also, fun fact "taper un boeuf" doesn't mean "hitting a beef" but musicians jamming together ^^
- deadfish 3y agoI learnt the word beeves while reading the Doctrine (the PHP ORM) codebase. I assume it was in case someone had an entity called beef... So the collection would be beeves :) I wonder if anyone ever used Doctrine and had an entity called beef.
- TomK32 3y agoThe same example is mentioned in The Adventure of English, a series presented by Melvyn Bragg.