Re: More about the chicken

Tristan wrote:
> > However, I cannot find *anyone* - not even in Melbourne - who agrees
> > with Tristan that "a chicken" sounds odd. Everyone else is unanimous
> > that an article before "chicken" is perfectly grammatical in
> > Australian English.
>
> I didn't mean to claim that was true by anyone other than me, and for
> me it's only true with an indefinite article, much the same as 'the
> beef' is okay, but 'a beef' is odd.
>
Well, that's because "beef" is not ordinarily(1) a count noun, along with
pork, veal, mutton, venison...maybe a few others.  Otherwise I think if the
name of the animal = the name of its meat, there can be some variation,
sometimes with subtly different meaning.

Do you like chicken? [to eat]
Do you like chickens? [the animal]

We're having chicken tonight. [could be in any form]
......a chicken ...... [IMV implies a whole bird, probably roasted]

And also: roast lamb [probably a leg or other part]
a roast lamb -- the whole animal

Similarly: (a) roast pig -- the whole animal (actually quite delicious,
though not a very pleasant procedure to watch...)

At the market:
Let's buy chicken. [at least this suggests pieces IMV]
Let's buy a chicken [implies a whole bird]
Don't buy the chicken [it's past its due date :-( ]

But perhaps (some) Aussies don't make these distinctions, especially if, as
I gather, (some of) you use chook for the live animal, chicken for the meat.

Indonesian avoids these problems by compounding "daging" ('meat') with the
animal name-- daging babi 'pork', daging sapi 'beef', daging ayam 'chicken',
and usually using a classifier for the animal-- seekor babi '1 pig', dua
ekor sapi '2 cows' etc. (ekor 'tail').  OTOH, I recall seeing a cookbook,
entitled something like "Makanan Tiong-hua tidak pakai babi" = Chinese food
not use (=without) pig/pork
-----------------------------

(1) The form "beeves" does occur, and I've heard it-- but limited to the
world of commercial agricultural lingo, or perhaps commodities trading.
Possibly to distinguish "beef cattle" from "milch cows"

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