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Comment by mtkd | Hacker News Reader

Since the 11th century Norman conquest we've had pig/pork, cow/beef, sheep/lamb

As I understand it, this has to do with who was asking for a thing and what they wanted.

The upper class spoke French and when they asked for beouf, they wanted meat, not a cow. Likewise when they asked for poulet, they wanted a cooked chicken, not a live one.

The lower classes spoke German and gave us cū (kuh in modern German) for a cow and cīceb (Küchlein in modern German) for chicken.

As English grew from both of these roots, the different words remained.

Don't let Shia fool you, it's bœuf.

Almost: Küken means chick. Küchlein would be the diminutive of Kuchen (cake) so a small cake or sweet pastry.

Minor nitpick, at least in North America sheep meat is mutton. Lamb is the word for a young sheep and also the meat from the animal.

I thought this too for the longest time - turns out it's actually not true (assuming Wikipedia is to be believed). There aren't any age restrictions on what can be sold as 'lamb', so most American 'lamb' is what the British would call mutton.

interesting, thanks for informing me! I checked wikipedia before commenting but I didn't read far enough, didn't know there was no legislation on lamb age. I wonder how old the "lamb" in the grocery store is? Might explain why there is so much variation in flavor. I can't remember if the lamb was "younger" tasting when I lived in Canada.

Thanks for this! I've been wondering for many years why "lamb" in the US is so tough. Wikipedia citation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_and_mutton#United_States

Nevertheless, s0rce is correct on the original linguistic point: that the Norman food-word is "mutton", whereas "lamb" is the Germanic word for the young animal.

sheep/lamb

Captain Pedantic, checking in: it should be "sheep/mutton" and "lamb/lamb". Lambs are baby sheeps.

You might find this interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_and_mutton#United_States

I, indeed, did find it interesting and to which I respond, "'dafuq?" I grew up in the U. S., and growing up actually raised sheep. And when you are served adult sheep, you are served "mutton". IOW, the term "mutton" was not "uncommon in the United States" in my part of the country at the time I was growing up.

But that's another time and another place; I'm kind of curious about when the change came about. Partly because, were that article written thirty years ago I would have argued that it is wrong. But I've since become a vegetarian, and might not have gotten the memo when the change came about. Or maybe I've always been wrong, along with all the other hicks I grew up with. :-)

Interesting. I don't think I've ever heard an American use "mutton" or seen it on an American restaurant menu.

This has more to do with classist beliefs than it does with dehumanization. The origin of those words relate to the aristocracy using the french/latin forms, while those poor farmers used the orginal english/germanic forms. Notice what the french words are for a pig or oxen/steer.

At this point you might be right, but the origin is about wanting to fit in with the new french overlords.

For some reason, in the French language itself the same distinction eventually appeared.

In regular language, you would call porc the meat that comes from a cochon, and bœuf the meat of a vache.

It's not as clear cut as in English, as a bœuf is also an ox, and you can also call a pig a porc, but I think it indicates that the linguistic distinction between an animal and its meat is indeed at its core a dehumanizing process, it might just have been helped by the French-speaking rulers of England, but it still happened in France eventually, more recently and without exterior intervention.

You're right. For example, there's a similar distinction in Russian.

"but I think it indicates that the linguistic distinction between an animal and its meat is indeed at its core a dehumanizing process"

Why? I feel absolutely no emotional difference between "cow meat" and "beef", and would be surprised to hear that it really made a difference to pretty much any non-vegetarian... Further, it seems nobody has felt the need to introduce a different word for 'lamb' - it's still an extremely popular meat despite the word literally meaning 'baby sheep'...

I think it's drawing a really long bow to think it's desensitising language (dehumanisation isn't really the right word, since cows, sheep etc. aren't human). At the end of the day, I think it's just a quirk of language development...

"Dehumanizing" isn't the proper word here, since we're literally talking about non-human entities. If you want to talk about inter-species empathy, it should be pointed out that most predatory species aren't relating to their prey animals (they typically go after the weakest prey; young, elderly or sick animals which humans would likely empathize with). The odd behavior is that we ascribe human traits to things we plan on killing and eating which aren't objectively demonstrating them.

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