@whenigrowup356 Yup. And then you have the New World animals where we use the name of the animal for both the animal and the meat, like buffalo.
Comment on Why do we not eat pig or cow?
whenigrowup356@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My understanding is that the difference in terms goes back to the Norman invasion, which is when a ton of French-based terms for things were carried over.
The peasants referred to everything as the name of the animal but the French nobles referred to it as porc, boeuf, etc. This is also where we got the words for venison, mutton, veal, poultry, and also apparently pheasant
monsterlynn@kbin.social 11 months ago
Ajen@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
And then we have foods like Buffalo wings. English is fun.
BLAMM@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Buffalo wings are named for Buffalo, NY, where they were invented.
Spliffman1@lemmy.world 11 months ago
And what was the city named after?
Ajen@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I know.
Butters@lemmywinks.com 11 months ago
I thought this was named after the city.
Like a Chicago dog.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Buffalo in english is a weird word, because it’s an animal, a city and an action, which is why the phrase “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard, but completely correct english.
neuromancer@lemmy.world 11 months ago
[deleted]ymhr@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They are actually different (but similar) animals, from different continents.
UnknownQuantity@lemmy.world 11 months ago
My country had not been invaded by the Normans and we speak completely different language, yet we don’t call it pig or cow either.
bigkix@lemm.ee 11 months ago
My country also has not been invaded by the Normans but we call pig a pig and cow a cow.
UnknownQuantity@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Where are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?
bigkix@lemm.ee 11 months ago
South-Eastern EU. Not going any more particular than that :)
whenigrowup356@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If you don’t mind my asking, which language is yours?
It’s an interesting question to ponder which different languages ended up with distinction words for the meat vs the living animal, and maybe what that says about the culture.
The distinction is not a feature of French, from what I understand, and English ending up with this distinction seems to have been entirely accidental.
UnknownQuantity@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s Czech. It also applies to Slovakian.
Fondots@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Piggybacking off of this, “venison” comes from a Latin word meaning “to hunt” and was originally used as more of a catch-all term for game meats. You might have deer venison, boar venison, rabbit venison, etc. Over time it came to mostly be used to refer to deer
zzzz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
To add to this, the rich (i.e., French-speaking) consumed the most butchered meat, by far. So, it came to be that butchered meat for sale would be labeled in French, while the live animals, which were tended by (English-speaking) peasents retained their English names.