When I eat chicken, I call it chicken. Chicken wing; chicken drumsticks etc.
When I eat lamb, I call it lamb. Lamb shank; lamb cutlets.
So why do I not eat pig or cow? I eat pork or beef. Is there a reason for that?
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
@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.
I guess the reason why it is “chicken” and not “poulet” or something, is because chicken was allready the poor man’s meat back than?
From what I can work out, yep it seems that way. Pork and beef were too expensive for the peasants so they just referred to them as the animals they were raising, but chickens were actually on their menu so we ended up keeping the animal words for it. We still got the word for pullet (young hen) though.
I just read a theory that poisson, french for fish, didn’t come over because it sounded too much like poison, but who knows if that’s true lol.
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.
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.
My country also has not been invaded by the Normans but we call pig a pig and cow a cow.
