• Funny how English has

    “Beef”, “Pork”, “Lamb”

    when in some languages its just

    [The Word for the Animal]+[The Word for “Meat”]

    Literally, your language influences how you think.

    My “native” languages are Cantonese and Mandarin and I always knew where the meat came from, like its literally in the word itself. [牛肉,豬肉,羊肉]

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Lamb just means young sheep. The diner version for sheep is mutton.

      This language quirk for calling the meat version of an animal different comes from French influence, when the English aristocracy spoke French in court. Beef, pork and mutton comes from the Old French words buef, porc and moton. Which just means ox, swine and sheep.

    • Rooster326@programming.dev
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      4 hours ago

      You say that but so you have any idea how long it took my daughter to realize Chicken, the animal, is the same as Chicken, the food?

      • howrar@lemmy.ca
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        3 hours ago

        I think mine already figured out by 2. This kid keeps making the animal noises of any animal we happen to be eating. They’re also doing “woof woof” at hot dogs.

    • Hadriscus@jlai.lu
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      5 hours ago

      in french it’s just the name of the animal. Here’s a cow. eat cow. A pig ? eat pig.

      Maybe it makes it easier to mentally link together the live animal and its meat.