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Comment by mongol | Hacker News Reader

Yes and is not meat animal flesh? So it is double interesting.

Technically speaking, tomatoes and chilis are fruits, while strawberries are not fruits (they are fruit clusters - each "seed" is an individual fruit). This is such a point of contention (apparently) that there's a whole "culinary" vs. "botanical" fruit distinction made.

Logically, eggs are meat. It's a giant animal cell. Culinarily speaking, meat refers to the tissue of mammals, particularly muscle tissue from pigs and cows and other ungulates. Fish usually excluded, poultry is often excluded, and offal may be excluded as well.

It's for the same reason why we call blackberries and strawberries both fruits (even though they are not). Culinarily speaking, they're similar. Used in a similar way. Deer, beef, and pork are interchangeable in many recipes. Beef, chicken, and salmon, are not.

Your overall point is valid and very well explained, but potatoes are not fruits in either sense.

Indeed. I mixed up my nightshades. Tomato! Not potato! Fixed.

You're dead on about there being different botanical and culinary definitions, but I have never heard fish or poultry being excused as being meat. They are just different types of meat.

I agree it's a weird distinction, but it's by no means an uncommon one. Christians in the US, for example, often consider fish not to be meat.

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/good-question-why-isn...

In a religious context, that doesn't surprise me, but that's about the only context I think it would hold true for.

Most product taxonomies will categorize them separately. Here's two examples trying to categorize tilapia.

Google Product Taxonomy:

Food, Beverages, & Tobacco > Food Items > Meat, Seafood & Eggs

Note the distinction between meat and seafood.

GPC:

Food/Beverage/Tobacco > Fish - Prepared/Processed (Frozen) > Attribute: Type of Fish = Tilapia

Whereas meat in the GPC is defined separately:

Food/Beverage/Tobacco > Meat/Poultry/Other animals - Prepared/processed> ...

Your local grocery store probably is organized the same way. Many people think of fish flesh and meat as being different things. Words are made up and all categories are artificial, whatcha gunnuh do.

And “San Jose” translates into English as “Saint Joseph”, a title associated with Catholicism. So was the practice of not eating meat Fridays for much of the 20th century. In this practice, fish was not counted as a meat, just as it wasn’t in the comment you’re referring to!

The more closely you examine it, the more interesting you can make this sentence become :)

Is it though?

I have to imagine that the way this person describes fish is the least interesting thing about them, I don't know why we are subjecting them to such microscopic scrutiny.

It doesn't seem kind or curious to me, it seems like we're mocking them for having a slightly different conception of what category fish go into.

You can speak for yourself, but I certainly didn’t mock anyone.

I’ve had a multi-decade interest in languages, though. IMO, it’s very natural to find patterns and associations like this and finding different ways of organizing taxonomies is fun.

I’ve also thought about why watermelons, pumpkins, cucumbers and bitter gourds all have the character 瓜 in them in Chinese. Not to mock speakers of language, but because I was nerdsniped. Have a nice day.

I understand being nerdsniped dissecting language, but doing it in front of them and amid jeers is kinda different imho. While I understand you weren't jeering, the context of this subthread makes it pretty weird to me.

Have a good one.

I don't feel mocked. I feel people are being pedantic. The Hacker News comment section isn't biology class.

"I went to the San Francisco zoo and aquarium and enjoyed the animals and the fish" is a perfectly acceptable sentence is it not?

I would agree, yes.

I certainly didn't intend to presume to speak for you, apologies if I was overbearing.

No problem. I'm a crusty old ex-Navy guy, but if I were a young person intimidated by Hacker News your support would have been appreciated greatly.

It's a redundant sentence. Fish are animals.

It's like saying "I went to the San Francisco zoo and aquarium and enjoyed the animals and the big cats"

It's not like saying "enjoyed the animals and the big cats". If English is your second language then perhaps this will help you speak colloquial English.

Functionally it is the same. Fish are animals, big cats are animals.

English is my first language, which is why I understand the analogy I gave is accurate, both in colloquial and technical forms of English.

Fish are animals, and only the extremely uneducated would think otherwise. Now that this has been pointed out to you, perhaps you will start to speak correctly from this point on, and educate your friends and family to do the same.

Knowledge and education in the US is bad enough. The last thing we need are people advocating to use incorrect language and spreading misinformation.

People using language differently isn't misinformation.

I think maybe it's time to let this disagreement go. The stakes are so small, their immediate response to someone pointing out that were animals was "you're right," it's been 18 hours, and it's been a difference of opinion this entire time.

Saying fish are not animals is 100% misinformation.

I'm happy to let it go, but if I get a reply that I feel warrants a reply, I will.

I would also find that sentence weird, for what it's worth. I don't think it's pedantic to point out that fish are animals.

I've never heard anyone speak like this, but I'm Canadian, so maybe things are different in the Bay.

I made the initial comment and I was not mocking anyone, I just think it's different how so many people think of fish as separate from "animal meat".

Even just "meat" by itself wouldn't have been interesting to me as that often is short for "red meat", but "animal meat" is.

Some religions use a different system for naming different kinds of edible muscle.

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