Why do we have some words for meats (such as beef, pork, venison) while for other meats we just same the name of the animal (ie chicken turkey, lamb)?
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06-16-04, 08:47 PM
maiku

quote:Originally posted by MommyTimesTwo:
Why do we have some words for meats (such as beef, pork, venison) while for other meats we just same the name of the animal (ie chicken turkey, lamb)?

You can blame this interesting phenomenon on the Norman Conquest and the influence of French which followed from it. The words beef, pork, and venison are all borrowed from French, and you can add to these veal and mutton, which follow the same rule: the animal keeps its native English name, but its flesh, dressed up and served at the Norman table had to have its name likewise dressed up--i.e., borrowed from the tonier, politer, more gracious sounding (to the ears of the Normans, anyway, who soon taught their Saxon servants to call them that way) in French. My guess is that they simply seldom or never ate chicken, turkey or lamb back then. They certainly never ate what we Americans regard as turkey, our almost-national bird being unknown. ( Interestingly enough, coq au vin just sounds nicer than chicken in wine sauce, doesn't it?)

The Norman words had greater prestige. The same thing often happens in other parts of vocabulary. The word naked to this day sounds crude to many people, who would never be caught saying anything but nude.

And that's the nude truth of the matter.

06-16-04, 08:48 PM
coldfuse
Good question, to which I don't know the answer, but here's my guess.

Beef, pork and venison are descriptive of particular meat categories, though those categories are often associated with one particular type of creature. We have additional words to describe the particular cuts and preparations of the meat such as tenderloin, ham, and salami.

Poultry, another category, requires creature-specific words to discover whether the meat in question is chicken, turkey, etc. An extremely broad category, fish, can be further broken down into, say, seafood, and then again to tuna, shrimp, etc.

All this and I'm still confused Confused

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PS:

I see that maiku posted while I was writing - we are now properly enlightened!

06-16-04, 09:47 PM
MommyTimesTwo
Thank you Maiku--that was really facinating! I'm always amazed by how we call it "English", but most of it seems to be other languages.

Speaking of sounding better, escargot sounds appetizing...snails do not Wink

Thank you also Cold Smile

06-16-04, 11:15 PM
maiku
Yes, escargot versus snails is another good example of this quite pervasive tendency in English to regard the Frenchified version as having more ton than the Anglo-Saxon, particularly in regard to cuisine. (Notice that haute cuisine is one thing, and high cooking would be something else entirely, I'm not sure what.)

My two boys, when still very young, were happy to eat escargot at the French restaurant we used to visit, but would have choked at the very idea of eating snails. The French cooks will tell you, of course, that their escargot are not just any garden-variety snails. But in this case, the difference in name (along with the sauce they serve them with) is far more important than any putative difference in species.

The Germans are much franker than us (or the French, too, even though they're named after a Germanic tribe) and are happy to eat Schnecken, which are nothing more than snails. But then these only partly civilized Huns have no problem with speaking about eating Kalbfleisch (literally, calf-flesh) or Schweinefleisch (literally swine flesh). We Americans of course are far too civilized for that, and will have veal or pork as our entré, thank you.

We inherited this quite weird notion of polite culinary language from the long ago. It is, of course, mostly a delusion. And our vocabulary, like that of no other language I know about, is absolutely permeated with distinctions between crude and "refined" ways of saying the very same thing. Let me tell you about the status of the Greek root "skatos" and its exact English cognate. On second thought, I can't do that, because I'd probably be splatted by the built-in "obscenity/vulgarity" filter, or be accused of trying to circumvent it. So it goes.

06-17-04, 12:41 AM
MommyTimesTwo
I imagine high cooking might be similar to those magic brownies I heard about back in college Wink

It is weird how we have "polite" words for food. I know that it does weird people out if you refer to your food as the animal, as in "I'll have a nice slice of cow, medium-rare please".

It seems like we distance ourselves from the reality that we consume animals. I have noticed that when people protest the consumption of meat, they make a point to use the animal, not culinary, name. What do you think of my theory?

06-17-04, 12:47 AM
maiku
I think it is no more than a restatement of what I already said, or at least implied, mmx2. So I therefore have to agree, don't I?

06-17-04, 01:36 AM
newnickname
And eggs are just 'eggs'. Or are they...

'egg (n.) - c.1340, from northern England dialect, from O.N. egg, which vied with M.E. eye, eai (from O.E. æg) until finally displacing it after 1500; both are from P.Gmc. *ajja(m), probably from PIE *owyo-/*oyyo- "egg" (cf. Goth. ada, Ger. ei, O.C.S. aja, Rus. jajco, Bret. ui, Gk. oon, L. ovum). Caxton (15c.) writes of a merchant (probably a north-country man) in a public house on the Thames who asked for eggs:

"And the goode wyf answerde, that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he also coude speke no frenshe, but wolde have hadde egges, and she understode hym not."'

She did, however, recognize another customer's request for "eyren." www.etymonline.com

And I guess the Normans didn't go in for bread, or we'd call it something like 'pan'. Maybe they were on Atkins:

'bread - O.E. bread "crumb, morsel," originally simply "piece of food" (cf. Slovenian kruh "bread," lit. "a piece"), from P.Gmc. *brautham (cf. O.N. brot, Dan. brød, Ger. Brot). Probably not related to brew, despite similarities, if the basic sense was truly "piece," but rather from a P.Gmc. *braudsmon- "fragments, bits" (cf. O.H.G. brosma "crumb"), related to the root of break. Replaced by 1200 the O.E. word for bread, which was hlaf, see loaf.' www.etymonline.com

(You can get pan loaf in the UK, but that doesn't seem to have a Norman connection. Strangely enough, the Japanese for bread is パン - 'pan')

06-17-04, 10:16 AM
MommyTimesTwo
Further question--WHY is our language designed to avoid talking about the critter? Even borrowing words to use that do not, in our language, name the critter?

(NNN--I guess the use of "pan" for bread is pandemic Wink )

06-17-04, 10:46 AM
maiku
NNN: It would have been a pain for the Saxon peasants to refer to a loaf of bread after the French fashion.

As far as egg is concerned: the Saxon peasants were used to saying, when asked how many eggs they wanted, "One egg is enough." They just found it silly, I would guess, to go around saying "Un oeuf is enough."

06-17-04, 02:41 PM
Ritzmar
Using the same reasoning, Maiku, presumably they kept 'milk' because when it was past its sell-by date they also thought it silly to say, "Du lait too late"... Roll Eyes

06-17-04, 02:55 PM
maiku
Big Grin Good point, Ritz. And carrying this reasoning further, suppose that modern photographers, instead of saying, "Say cheese," ( Big Grin) had learned to say "Dit fromage"( Confused)?

06-17-04, 03:08 PM
MommyTimesTwo
ROFLMAO!! You guys are too clever!

06-17-04, 07:25 PM
maiku

quote:Originally posted by MommyTimesTwo:
Further question--WHY is our language designed to avoid talking about the critter? Even borrowing words to use that do not, in our language, name the critter?



Sorry, mt2, for not addressing this question of yours more directly up 'til now. I thought I had already suggested an answer, in adducing our clear tendency, as speakers of English, to resort to euphemism. Why we have this tendency is really a question more for a sociologist, I'd say, than a linguist. Above, I've noted that we certainly do have this tendency, and I even said that it is clearly phony in many ways. Why are we so often so phony, speechwise? Don't ask me, that's not my department.

As some of my examples above were designed to show, our German cousins don't seem to suffer anything like the same embarrassment we do when talking about what they're prepared to swallow, which certainly shows that this endemic (not pandemic Wink) phoniness isn't built into the genius of the Germanic languages. The history of our language is quite different from that of the Germans, though, in that historical, non-linguistic events have played a much larger role in the development of our version of the common Germanic heritage. The Norman Conquest is of paramount importance. So were the prior Danish invasions of England, and the experience of British colonialism, just to name a few of the more significant external influences on the development of English.

06-17-04, 08:27 PM
MommyTimesTwo
See what happens when I try to use a 50 cent word?? lol

I think you're right, probably a question for a sociologist (or perhaps even a nutrional anthropologist?) I'll have to formulate a new question and post it in the right place!

Thanks maiku!

06-18-04, 02:18 AM
Ritzmar
A very good point, Maiku, and extremely cojently delivered, if I may say so. However, in thus abolishing all cheesy grins from photographs (were we to adopt the French command au lieu de 'cheese') at least this may lend credence to the politicians leering at me daily from the tabloids & broadsheets.

-A nutritional anthropologist...? Is there no end to the wonderful proliferation of new degree subjects being created in our hallowed academies of further education? I had no idea that such a category existed!

I have just asked Mrs. Ritzmar if she has heard of this subject (she has a Master's degree in an -ology, and therefore knows about these things) and even she has not heard of the subject...what next...? A B.Sc. in Commercial Radioactivity of Interstellar Parapsychology...?...M.A. in Nutritional Anaerobic Aquatic Lexicography...I suppose there is room for everyone on this planet... Roll Eyes

06-18-04, 02:42 AM
Ritzmar
To be slightly serious for a minute, we do seem to use euphemisms in food, and I supect it is to protect ourselves from the reality of the origin. Right off the top of my head, and therefore I stand to be shot down instantly (so what's new!) it would seem that these alternative names are all animal-oriented. If I want cheese I ask for cheese. If I want to order tomatoes, bread, onions or honey I simply say so.

Ordering pigs' testicles in a firm, clear, steady voice in the Waldorf could raise a few eyebrows (not least, those of the boars directly involved) whereas "Oh, I'll have the pigs' fries with the asparagus purée, and the chilli dip, please, my good man", carries just the right atmosphere of 'je ne sais quois'... n'est pas? Roll Eyes

PS A German chef, a huge bull of a man (and therefore someone with whom one would tend to agree, usually) whom I knew when working in the Middle East, has flawless English. His thesis is: "English is the most beautiful, varied and subtle language anywhere in the world; but food... forget it!"

06-18-04, 06:39 AM
Ritzmar
Re-reading this some time later, I feel that I should explain that my chef meant that the sounds of the words for various foods in English are almost universally ugly; pudding, dumpling, beans, eggs, etc. Their foreign equivalents are much more elegant than the English versions. In all other, ie non-gustatory contexts English surpasses all other languages in its beauty and versatility. I stress that this is merely one viewpoint, but an intriguing one, nonetheless... Wink

06-18-04, 07:48 PM
FredPuli
In England we have a pullet; it's a young hen; so French (poulet) has long been around as a word for a chicken though chicken itself is Old English and related to words in other Northern languages. The Scots have a gigot (pronounced jigott ) which is a leg of lamb as a joint (French 'gigot'). Turkeys were, of course, unknown to the Normans though the word Turk is French (from Latin).

Beef may be French in origin but steak is Old Norse. Fillet is French as is sirloin. Chop is of unknown origin but cutlet is French. A rumpsteak is some Scandinavian word added to the Old Norse one.

The best refined word for an edible plant may be that for the dandelion; itself of French origin 'dent de lion' 'Lion's tooth ' from the shape of the indented leaves; which in French is pissenlit which is , um, to urinate in the bed. The plant does indeed have diuretic properties but we have preferred even a French polite form to the one which the French use Smile

06-18-04, 08:49 PM
MommyTimesTwo
Ritzmar

You think nutritional anthropology is specific, the woman who 'found' Nefertiti's tomb was a hairpiece specialist. Seriously. She was an archaeologist who studies only wigs. (Interestingly enough, someone actually found Nefertiti's WIG and this woman used it to connect to the unnamed in a tomb. With skills like that, she should have broadened her field to at least include eyeliner!!)

06-19-04, 03:04 AM
Ritzmar
MTT... Touché!... Big Grin

06-19-04, 07:41 AM
MommyTimesTwo
Big Grin

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