I trust we’re all familiar with the phenomenon of English names for animals being good old Anglo-Saxon words (pig, cow, sheep) while the meat from them is called by names deriving from Norman French (pork, beef, mutton); John Cowan quoted the famous passage from Ivanhoe in which Wamba describes it back in 2015. Well, my friend Mapraputa asks “whether there are other languages where the word used to describe a live animal and the word used to describe the same animal when it’s dead (and being eaten) are etymologically rooted in two different underlying source languages.” I thought this was an interesting question, and I figured I’d pass it along in case the Hattery can help her answer it.
Japanese does something similar with Chinese roots: cattle are 牛 ushi, while beef is 牛肉 gyūniku; horses are 馬 uma, while horsemeat is 馬肉 baniku. A mixture of both is used for pig/pork: pigs are 豚 buta and pork is 豚肉 butaniku, but the Chinese root appears in words like 豚カツ tonkatsu (pork cutlet) and 豚汁 tonjiru (pork miso soup). Chicken (which, like other poultry, interestingly doesn’t follow this pattern in English) is usually just 鶏 tori or niwatori, though the Chinese root does appear occasionally in words like 鶏肉 keiniku.
Korean provides an another example: 물고기 mulgogi ‘fish (as an animal)’ is a compound of native Korean words; 생선 saengseon ‘fish (as food)’ is a Sino-Korean word (cf. 生鮮, Mandarin shēngxiān ‘fresh produce’; Japanese 生鮮 seisen ‘fresh (of food)’). A quick search finds a video on just this topic in Korean on YouTube here.
Oh. Denasalization (m > b) strikes again.
Chicken (which, like other poultry, interestingly doesn’t follow this pattern in English)
Used to: fowl. I wonder why it in particular went out of fashion.
And don’t forget the Japanese usage of English loan words for the prepared food. Examples are tori → chikin, shake → saamon, and hitsuji → ramu.
Excellent parallel!
Fowl is native for “poultry”. Cognate of German Vogel, Danish fugl “bird”. Waterfowl is in some use for ducks, geese & swans.
Poultry is French, though.
Yes. (Poultry is unrelated to fowl but possibly related to foal.)
I wonder why it in particular went out of fashion.
Because of homophonous foul, I’d assumed. This from In the Heat of the Night would put anyone off fowl. Euw.
In Russian the words for cows and beef have different stems too, but both have respectable Proto-Slavic ancestors meaning “cow”, and both trace further back into PIE. How did this dualism come about? If it involved some sort of an imported upper-class vocabulary then it must have come from another Slavic source? From South Slavic, perhaps? (The word говедо is extinct in the rest of Slavic languages but still exists in the South?)
Moving from animal to vegetable, IIRC both Chinese and Japanese have different words for “rice” as a plant and “rice” as something you eat, though again without loanwords being involved in Chinese, though I think the edible-rice word in Japanese is a Chinese loan.
Kusaal is the same with “millet”, though that’s not too surprising given that even proto-Oti-Volta had distinct words for different strains of just Pennisetum glaucum, let alone other cereal species. When it’s your staple food, vocabulary is likely to be elaborate.
Japanese gohan / 御飯 means variably either (cooked) rice or food in general or a meal. (E.g. the compound word for breakfast is something like morning gohan.) The second “han” morpheme is definitely a borrowing from Sinitic, the first one is an honorific that is maybe indigenous although I’m kind of out of my depth here.
both Chinese and Japanese have different words for “rice” as a plant and “rice” as something you eat
Same in Malay: The plant is padi (whence English “paddy”) while the food is nasi (as in nasi goreng “fried rice”). I don’t know whether any of the both is a loan.
In Algerian Arabic, the distinction is made by adding nisba -i to the meat: thus bgeṛ “cows” yields begṛi “beef”, etc.
The word говедо is extinct in the rest of Slavic languages but still exists in the South?
Not really extinct. Czech has adjective hovězí “beef”, similar word is used in Slovak. The original substantive also exists even though the old meaning is obsolete in Czech. Nowadays hovado is either an expletive (“idiot”, “jerk”) or an informal name for a horsefly (standard is ovád of unrelated etymology, yet probably contaminating the meaning).
standard is ovád of unrelated etymology
Wiktionary s.v. Proto-Slavic/ovadъ:
There’s an extensive list of descendants, which include Russian овод, the translation of E.L. Voynich’s The Gadfly, which “was almost required reading for Soviet schoolchildren.”
@Noetics: When In the Heat of the Night was made, there was no real infrastructure in Hollywood for licensing popular music for films. So Norman Jewison* hired Quincy Jones to write songs in a number of different styles, to be used diagetically and otherwise. Several of the songs, including that one, were pastiches of particular songs Jewison might have liked to use. I don’t remember what inspired “Fowl on the Prowl” except that the title was inspired by “Rockin’ Robbin,” but of all Jones’ compositions for the film, it is by far the most significant to the plot.
* Jewison made interesting use of a variety of pieces that could be licensed in other films. The use of Bach’ famous “Toccata and Fugue” at the beginning of Rollerball likely seems absurdly pompous to a viewer expecting a fast-paced action sports film. It feels a lot more natural in the reprise at the end, after what has turned out to be a fairly sophisticated piece of dystopian science fiction.
(Possibly Bach’s. All I know about this controversy is from the Wikipedia article.)
Peter Williams long felt that the piece was atypical of Bach, and it doesn’t appear contemporaneously in the organ repertoire, except in a transcription by a student of a student of J. S. Bach. However, if it wasn’t written by Bach, there seem to be no other, better candidates for who might have composed it. It is an unquestioned masterpiece (one of the most admired pieces of Baroque music and arguably the greatest organ work of all time), and no other organists from the period has a characteristic style that matches better. (Maybe if Giralamo Frescobsldi had lived another half century and continued to adapt to new musical developments,* he could have written it.) This subjective impression has been bolstered in the last couple decades by computational analyses.
However, hat does seem plausible (based on the style and on analysis of that first extant score) is that the piece might have originally been for a different instrument. It could certainly be a Bach harpsichord work. A solo violin work has also been suggested. However, if it was originally for violin, it sounds to me less like a solo work and more like a composition for solo violin and continuo, for which the parts were somewhat worked together in the extant transcription.
* Frescobsldi had often-ish been noted as a composer who might have been a lot greater if he had lived a century or two later, rather than in the early Baroque. The twentieth-century composer Alexandre Tansman wrote a series of variations for string orchestra on one of Frescobsldi’s themes, updating the intricate tune with neoclassical orchestration and harmonies.
I have access to just enough Tagalog to know at least three basal rice terms: palay for the plant, bigas for rice that has been processed but not yet cooked, and kain for cooked rice (and also generically in the sense of “food” or “meal” since it basically means “thing for eating.”)
arguably the greatest organ work of all time
Hmm. It is certainly great, but suffers from being over-promoted. I’d rate the C minor Passacaglia+Fugue higher; there’s similar ‘difficulties’ in verifying the composition.
A solo violin work has also been suggested.
Yes, the Toccata’s opening flourish is very reminiscent of one of the solo Violin Partitas — but those were composed much later.
there seem to be no other, better candidates for who might have composed it.
Quite. And the Fugue subject growing organically from the Toccata’s flourish is sooo characteristic. (Same for the P+F.)
@Brett : ” the greatest organ work of all time” – sorry, but perhaps you don’t know the B minor prelude and fugue (BWV 544). And the 2nd greatest is the C minor pasacaglia and fugue.
Bach was influenced by Frescobaldi, and there’s the charming story of him being caught as a boy writing out from a Frescobaldi score when he was supposed to be in bed.
Frescobaldi’s Fiori Musicali are delightful, but whether he would have ever acquired the gravitas that infuses some of Bach’s greatest organ pieces, I don’t know.
kain for cooked rice (and also generically in the sense of “food” or “meal” since it basically means “thing for eating”)
The Gurma languages have done the same thing (with the appropriate substitutions of staple foods), but going even further, so that e.g. Gulmancema dibu, etymologically just “food”, now means “millet” (the actual plant growing in the fields.)
I thought English “meal” might be similar, but, surprisingly (to me, anyhow), “meal” in the “repast” sense seems to be of an entirely different origin from “meal” in the “grain” sense.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meal
As seen here a decade ago.
And you were active in that very thread!
How soon we forget …
The Hattery is like a favourite old sweater: you can “come to think of it” many times, and still be surprised.
Kusaal is the same with “millet”
Russian, as well, has просо for the plant and пшено for the food, though AFAICT in that case the main distinction is whether it’s dehusked.
(Previously on LH.)
I recall a different LH discussion of various languages’ words for specific foods/plants that were also generic words for food-in-general, which mentioned an apparent English equivalent – probably “meal” but not sure. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find that one, and I can’t rule out that it was actually on the Log.
@Peter Grubtal: That prelude and fugue certainly sounds more unusual (perhaps modern) than most of Bach’s other works, but I don’t think it is as rewarding to listen to as many of them. I wouldn’t argue that it makes much sense to talk about the “best” piece of artwork within a certain genre; but nonetheless, there certainly are respectable and knowledgeable people who believe that BWV 565 stands above all other organ works.
Reverting back to the question of poultry for a moment, there are also the more specialist terms capon and pullet, both for the kind of birds that might end up roasted for a fancy meal. Can’t think of any equivalents for duck or good though…
BWV 564 C major Toccata Adagio Fugue? (The Adagio is like a bonus Chorale Prelude[**]/Aria from the Passions.) Just sayin’
[**] Such as Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639, as used in Tarkovsky’s Solaris.
Thanks for background on the foul owl, Brett. Now I’ll summarily dismiss it from mind.
Has anyone linked the thread Two Animal Names, where flaxseed oil and linseed oil are distinguish as edible versus other?
I’m reminded also of neatsfoot oil, where the old word neat (“ox, cattle”) is frozen in use by context. Beeves and caples go by so many names.
As for that Toccata and Fugue, I was hugely impressed to hear its first notes spearing forth just as I stepped into the Georgenkirche at Eisenach, back in 2000. But I love the Schübler Chorales above all else.
Mosfilm works are apparently not available in Germany, but here’s another version of the choral.
where flaxseed oil and linseed oil are distinguish as edible versus other
From a different plant, there is also rapeseed oil, whose edible version had been rebranded as “canola” on account of “rapeseed” being a spectacularly unpalatable name. AFAIK the old version is still in use in non-food contexts.
I think the Chinese (& Japanese?) rice distinction is cooked/raw, not food/plant, but that’s not too much of a difference.
But speaking of canola/rapeseed oil, I just cooked a vegetable for dinner tonight called yóucài 油菜 (‘oil vegetable’) in Mandarin, which I think is that same species (though maybe a different variety than that used in North American canola?).
(Side note: the vegetable is always called yuchoy in the US in my experience, but I have no idea what language that’s from – yu could be from Mandarin or Taishanese, but not, as far as I’m aware, from standard Cantonese, but choi could come from standard Cantonese but not, I don’t think, from one of the others – the whole thing could come from Hakka, but that seems unlikely).
Anyway, my question is, is there any word in English for this vegetable that isn’t either from a Chinese language or homographic/-phonic with a word for sexual assault?
The notion popularized in Ivanhoe that the swine-pork distinction dates back to Norman French has been debunked, though it keeps being repeated endlessly. Words like ‘beef’ and ‘pork’ entered the English language around 1300, well after the Norman period, and continued to refer both to the living animal and the meat for centuries. Both Shakespeare and the King James Bible refer to beeves, for instance. It is only around the 1800s (i.e. when Ivanhoe was written) that the distinction between the words for the living animal and the meat came to be solidified.
I don’t remember where I first read this (I might have guessed in Languagehat somewhere, but probably not if nobody else remembers it), but there is a recent video treating this topic: “COW vs BEEF Busting the Biggest Myth in Linguistic History”
Korean has different words 벼 byeo (< Middle Korean 벼〮 pyé) for the rice plant, 쌀 ssal (< Middle Korean ᄡᆞᆯ〮 psól) for the hulled grains of rice before cooking, and 밥 bap (< Middle Korean 밥〮 páp) for cooked rice (I’m using the Yale romanization for Middle Korean). The etymologies are uncertain, though there is a recent paper from Ian Joo suggesting that the transcription of early Middle Korean ᄡᆞᆯ〮 psól as 菩薩, Middle Chinese bu-sat (“bodhisattva”) in the Chinese book Jilin leishi 鷄林類事 from 1103 does in fact reflect its etymological origin, and that 밥〮 páp derives from a baby-talk term for “food”.
dafuq
BTW, the Yale romanization for Korean is evil. It’s not bad, but it’s evil. Examples:
– o is absent from modern Korean, /o/ is wo;
– o, u are unrounded vowels, for /o u/ you need wo wu, which do not syn- or diachronically contain any /w/;
– e is /ə/ (modern [ʌ] or thereabouts).
The notion popularized in Ivanhoe that the swine-pork distinction dates back to Norman French has been debunked, though it keeps being repeated endlessly. […] It is only around the 1800s (i.e. when Ivanhoe was written) that the distinction between the words for the living animal and the meat came to be solidified.
Oops! And I’d probably seen this before and forgotten it because the Ivanhoe story is so seductive.
I might have guessed in Languagehat somewhere, but probably not if nobody else remembers it
Oh, it’s probably been on Languagehat — I’m no longer surprised any more by how much of what I’ve learned here I’ve later forgotten and had to relearn.
Canola on LH
The only specific mention of Ivanhoe and pork at LH was
https://languagehat.com/dictionnaire-de-la-langue-verte/#comment-2828078
Matt Anderson: Could it be what my mom called “broccoli rabe”? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapini
Speedwell: I think it’s more similar to broccoli rabe than it is to most other Brassica rapa varieties, but it’s not exactly the same vegetable. You could probably use them interchangeably, though.
mollymooly: Thanks, that was a good read!
This is not as clear cut as the pig/pork distinction in contemporary English, but Rioplatense Spanish will almost invariably use cerdo for pork-as-an-edible, while the animal itself is typically chancho
Both Shakespeare and the King James Bible refer to beeves, for instance.
…TIL. I was (vaguely) aware of the word beeves but assumed it was a recent metonym rather than a venerable archaism.
EDIT: it turns out that the archaism persisted long enough to show up in the Travis Letter (1836), which is actually later than Ivanhoe (it’s chronologically very possible that William Travis could have read the book).
I don’t know why anyone would trust Ivanhoe for linguistic information. Walter Scott couldn’t even spell “Cerdic”! (I noticed during my recent rereading of Barchester Towers that Trollope duplicates Scott’s mistake and assumes, less than forty years after Ivanhoe that his readers will know who “Cedric” was, just like they know Sarah Siddons.*)
* She is perhaps better known now as the eponym of a theatre award that was originally fictional (in All About Eve) but later became real.
The whole mise-en-scène of Ivanhoe is wholly unhistorical anyway, especially as regarding Anglo-Saxon/Norman relations. The feudal-exploiters-of-the-peasants class had long since concluded that actually being a FEotP was the important thing, not whether your forebears spoke Old English or Old French, and the former lot would have been horrified at the idea that they had any particular affinity with the peons rather than with their peers.
The peasants, in turn, had had quite long enough to meet the new boss and find that he was the same as the old boss.
It’s all a projection of nineteenth-century Romantic ethnonationalism back to half a millennium before anybody had ever conceived of such a fantastical thing.
After all, Scott is the man who basically invented Disney Scotland. (Not a sneer, really: he had a true genius for national mythopoeia, and he could tell a cracking story.)
Alon Lischinsky wrote:
“This is not as clear cut as the pig/pork distinction in contemporary English, but Rioplatense Spanish will almost invariably use cerdo for pork-as-an-edible, while the animal itself is typically chancho”
A similar thing happens in my mom’s hometown in Durango. When it’s food it’s normally called carne de puerco , at least among my relatives. When its’s the animal in the pen, it’s a marrano.
Cerdo and cochino are known too of course but cerdo is a bit bookish and what you’ll hear on T.V. (which didn’t arrive until the 80s). For a scolding or an insult you usually hear “marrano” or “cochino”. A dirty or filthy act is called a cochinada. A cute piggy bank, toy, storybook or cartoon character is almost always referred to as a cochinito.
People there also distinguish between a fresh and dried ear of corn. If it’s fresh, they say elote. If it’s dry, they say mazorca but you’ll be understood either way. Once the corn is cooked in lime it is nixtamal which is then ground into dough to make tamales and tortillas.
Mandarin has 稻 dào, the rice plant, 米 mǐ, the processed grain, and 飯 fàn, cooked rice, which often stands in for food in general. Of course, there are also combinations like 稻米 and 米飯 for extra clarity in context.
I don’t remember ever encountering the form yuchoy for the vegetable. But if that’s the common name in the US, then I would venture a guess that it’s a Taishanese-Cantonese hybrid owing to the early Taishanese-speaking immigrants who also had knowledge of Cantonese as the prestige language, and/or due to an incomplete remodeling of an earlier wholly Taishanese form due to the influence of Cantonese borrowings such as bok choy and choy sum.
Apparently, 油菜 is another name for choy sum in some parts of China (the North?), and in other parts it refers to a style of vegetable dish rather than a specific kind of vegetable. I’m guessing that in the US, yuchoy is another name for choy sum? That would explain why I never heard of yuchoy despite being introduced to Chinese greens almost a decade ago – I’ve only known it as choy sum.
Walter Scott couldn’t even spell “Cerdic”!
Of course “Cerdic” is correct for an English king, but surely “Cedric” is etymologically correct and “Cerdic” is a metathesis by ignorant Saeson? Where might Scott have picked “Cedric” up?
“yuchoy/yuchoi” is definitely what i know that vegetable as – both at my farmshare distro site (the long island farm that supplies us is owned and operated by a korean-american family) and at the big chinese-centric asian grocery in sunset park. i have wondered whether (as JP hinted) the term’s conditioned by the familiarity of “bok choy” (available under that name at every greengrocer or supermarket i’ve lived near in the past 20 years).
It’s all a projection of nineteenth-century Romantic ethnonationalism back to half a millennium before anybody had ever conceived of such a fantastical thing.
i’m grasping at my memory of christopher hill’s Liberty Against the Law, but iirc the idea of the “norman yoke” took off in the 1600s, as part of the anti-enclosure movement. certainly before fully-developed Nationalism, but also definitely part of the emergence of “nation” as a political category.
@Roger C:
Assuming that the Wessex king was a closet Briton, it’s “Cerdic” which is the etymologically correct form, cf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceretic
Scott seems to have originated the mistaken form himself, though its popularity was apparently due to Little Lord Fauntleroy (figures):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedric
but iirc the idea of the “norman yoke” took off in the 1600s, as part of the anti-enclosure movement. certainly before fully-developed Nationalism
Yes, I’m pretty sure you’re right. I spoke too soon. (I imagine this ties up with the renewed interest in Old English as a language from about that time.)
And Macpherson’s Ossian from the eighteenth century is the same kind of animal. I’d have been Less Wrong if I’d just stuck with “Romantic”, which certainly covers Scott too.
These are all roots of the later ideology, I suppose, (or were exploited for it, anyhow), but the attitudes certainly do long antedate that. (Still anachronistic for Ivanhoe, but like the man said, if you want history, read a history book.)
@David Eddyshaw: I guess Barchester Towers was written in the middle of the approximate half century when a educated British reader would naturally be familiar with Cedric the literary character but not any other Cedrics (certainly knowing no one with that name in their real life).
@Jongseong Park and rozele,
I like the idea of the -choy coming from Cantonese (or just from bokchoy) and the yu- from Taishanese (or even Wade-Giles Mandarin). If so, maybe -choy is Chinese American English or something, not even really Cantonese anymore (in this case).
And I have also seen it called choy sum 菜心 in th US, but not nearly as often as yuchoi.
I’ve never heard of 油菜 referring to a style of dish rather than a specific vegetable, but the Sinosphere is a big place. I checked a couple of dictionaries I had at hand, and only the Cantonese ones had that meaning – I wonder if it’s Cantonese only (with choysum/coi sam 菜心 used for the vegetable there?). In my experience, youcai 油菜 is the name of the vegetable in the north + Shanghai and Sichuan. Not sure if I’ve encountered it elsewhere in China.
[edit – noticed I’m using choy & choi interchangeably, which matches how I see it on signs/menus in the US]
“La Choy makes Chinese food swing American!”
Ha! I’d say that was an early example, except I don’t see any reason to believe that the people who named La Choy knew any Chinese at all (apparently the character for ‘La Choy’ is 東, which is weird, though I guess I could say the name could’ve come from Cantonese laat coi 辣菜 ‘spicy food’ or something, if I were to try to be generous)
As far as I know, the name for the vegetable is universally 菜心 coisam in Hong Kong, and 油菜 yaucoi refers to a style of vegetable dish. I looked up the latter word and found a vague reference to it being used for choy sum in the north, so I hedged in my earlier comment by referring to different parts of China. But maybe I was over-extrapolating from my two data points and Hong Kong Cantonese is the exception?
By the way, in Korean, 유채(油菜) yuchae just means rapeseed and is not used as a name for any vegetable. When we do have occasion to refer to yuchoy/choy sum in Korean, we say 초이섬 choiseom or 초이삼 choisam to imitate the Cantonese pronunciation, and I’ve also seen the Sino-Korean 채심(菜心) chaesim. But none of these have made it into the dictionary, southern Chinese greens being mostly unknown in Korea.
David Eddyshaw, thanks. I had it in my head somehow that Cedric < *kaito-ri:k- "forest king."
I suspect that Scott himself may have been misled by all those Frederick/Roderick/Dumnorix/Vercingetorix/Asterix/Obelix names too. (Maybe not Obelix.)
“Cedric” really does look like it ought to be right.
Obelix is the one actually attested, though.
(It’s a tombstone and mentions he had a son.)
So Falbala did pick Obelix after all!
Kusaal has no pig/pork contrast for the animal versus its meat, but it does have dɛɛg “wild pig” versus kukur “domestic pig.” Of these, dɛɛg has an impeccariable Oti-Volta pedigree, with some cognates just meaning “pig” in general, but kukur, implausible as it may seem, probably goes back ultimately to Portuguese porco.
A form of humour so low you must’ve been rooting for it for a while.
What can I say? The stars were in alignment. I had no choice.
@Jongseong Park
Interesting that rapeseed greens aren’t generally eaten in Korea. A lot of yuchae is grown there, right?
And for all I know, Mandarin (not HK Cantonese) could be the exception – they speak Mandarin everywhere I remember encountering youcai 油菜 as the name of the vegetable (except Shanghai, but there’s still a lotta Mandarin there). Not sure how to easily find out.
@Matt Anderson: Actually, yuchae leaves and stems are eaten in Korea, especially on Jeju Island, though that’s not the primary use for these plants. The information I found earlier about the rapeseed cultivated in Korea didn’t mention eating the leaves and stems at all, and I don’t think it’s super common knowledge throughout the country.
In the local speech of Jeju (which is either a dialect of Korean or a sister language), the word used for the rapeseed as a vegetable is 지름나물 jireumnamul or 지름나믈 jireumnameul where 지름 jireum means oil (corresponding to standard Korean 기름 gireum) and 나물 namul is a catch-all term for greens that are eaten. Bean sprouts are called 콩나물 kongnamul in Korean for instance.
So the Jeju name is similar in meaning to 油菜, which is a combination of characters for oil and vegetable respectively. But 유채 yuchae which is just the Sino-Korean rendering of this word is not thought of as the name of a vegetable. When people do want to refer to its greens, they say 유채나물 yuchaenamul to specify this. By the way, this is not included as a single compound word in the official dictionary so it should really be written as two words, i.e. 유채 나물 yuchae namul, but it is invariably found written as a single word online.
Very interesting, thanks! I just googled Jeju in this context, and I see there’s a cool-looking flower festival there called in English (officially it looks like) the Jeju Canola Flower Festival.
Also, interesting that you mention the leaves and stems – I always think of them as “greens”, but I don’t think I’ve ever eaten the leaves without the stems, or vice versa – but the stems are totally the best part
On the issue of whether music works specifically well for the organ: YouTube suggested this organ rendition of Holst’s “The Planets” to me today. Some of the movements are all right, but none of them work as well as the orchestral or two-piano versions of the piece that Holst produced himself. I think that, to get “The Planets” right, you just need at least three hands to cover the counterpoint.