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Re: Flesh Eating Names

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Monday, October 13, 2008, 18:37
On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 12:53 PM, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> I was wondering why it is that some meat is called by the name of the animal > and some meat is not. We have fried chicken, but not ground cow. We have pork > chops, not pig chops, yet we eat fish fillet.
As others have said, this is related to the Anglo/Norman split in English. Other languages divide things up differently; for instance, in Spanish, a live fish is a "pez"; the one on your plate is "pescado" (literally: "fished"). I suspect, though I have no data, that in most languages you will not find the sort of separation we have with "beef" vs "cow", but will instead find that dishes are named either the same as the animal (like "chicken") or with a generic term for "meat". -- Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>