Honestly though, how difficult can it be to walk into a butcher’s and to ask for beef, veal, mutton or pork?
Come ON! A seven-year-old child could do that?
Just in case you’re wondering, that’s the meat of the cow, the calf, the sheep and the pig.
Here’s the thing, however.
Shopping in another language is tricky.
I know, I KNOW!
It’s not only tricky.
It’s terrifying.
Maybe not as terrifying as going to the dentist in another language, but it IS terrifying.
And, I know just what it’s like. Remember, I live in Spain. I have to speak a foreign language every day. So, you can imagine what kinds of trouble I get into.
I mean, how the hell do you say lamb chop in Spanish?
Or chicken fillet?
Or pig’s trotters, for that matter!
I mean, even the word hamburguesa is a challenge when there is a queue of 20 impatient Spaniards behind you.
But let’s back to the butcher’s. That is the shop which specialises in selling dead animals.
That is, meat.
I still get sweaty hands before I go to the butchers. I try to write everything I want to say down on a piece of paper before I go, or at least have all the vocabulary ready to roll off the tip of my tongue... but, it doesn’t always work.
And one of the main stumbling blocks is that the names for meat and the names of the animals they come from are often THE SAME, in Spanish.
It’s logical, isn’t it?
But that’s NOT how it is in English. Is it?
Oh no!
NO.
NO.
NO!
Because English, despite being quite a simple language to learn, is not really THAT logical.
SORRY!
But keep reading!
If you go any butcher’s or the meat counter of your local supermarket you might see:
BEEF
VEAL
PORK
Or even
MUTTON
But, when you visit a farm or watch Peppa Pig, what you do NOT see are beefs, veals, porks or muttons running around, (oblivious to the fact that they will soon be sitting on somebody’s plate).
No matter how hard you want to believe it.
These names for animals do not exist.
Is that clear? NOT!
What you DO see are cows, calves, pigs and sheep.
So, what’s the story?
Where did the names of our domestic animals and the meat they produce come from?
And, why the hell are they different?
Here comes the history part.
Let's look at why we don’t use the same words for animals and the meat they give us.
Before the Battle of Hastings, in 1066, the Anglo Saxons were living relatively happily, rearing cows, calves, sheep and pigs. Obviously, they had their own Anglo Saxon names for these animals that they reared although, back in the day, they were probably a bit different from the words we use today.
They called sheep, scēp.
And pigs, pigca.
So, yeah. They were just a little bit different.
Animal Origin Meat Origin
Cow cū (Old English) beef boeu (French)
kuh (Old German)
koh (Old Dutch)
Calf (baby cow) cealf (Old English) veal veau (French for calf)
kalb (Old German)
Sheep scēp, scǣp, scēap mutton mouton (French for sheep)
(Old English)
schaap (Dutch)
Pig pigca (Old English) pork porc (French for pig)
bigge (Early Dutch)
Then came 1066.
With it, came THE NORMANS, from Northern France.
And they weren’t sightseeing.
And they weren’t picnicking.
They meant business.
They were taking over.
And that was that.
Soon, England was completely under Norman control and the power dynamic shifted. Now, the Normans were the lords and masters and they had all the power.
Everything changed.
The language became an early form of French.
For just over two hundred years to be precise.
Long enough for confusion to set in about what to call the meat they ate for the dinners.
Castles were built and cathedrals were consecrated, and when the rich, Norman ruling classes were hungry, what did they do?
They sent their servants to buy meat from the local Anglo-Saxon peasants.
SO, WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE NORMAN SERVANTS MET THE ANGLO-SAXON FARMERS?
- Greetings, dear sir, how can I help you today? We have some lovely picga and some fresh cū just in. It’s really top quality
- Bah, oui... mais, oh... I’m not sure. It sounds fantastique but I think I will just get some porc and some boeuf, if you don’t mind.
- (Anglo Saxon farmer puzzled look) Okay, if that’s what you want. Right... so, you’ll have some “boeuf” as you called it and some... hmmm mmmm “porc”. Let me just go and check if I have any...
Why go to the Anglo-Saxons for their meat?
Why didn’t they have their own?
Well, the local Anglo-Saxon population were the ones who were working as farmers and rearing animals.
The local Anglo-Saxon population had always reared animals on their farms. And they quite happily continued to use the words they’d always used to describe live animals.
A cow was known as a cū
A calf was known as a cealf.
A pig was a picga
A hen was known as a henn.
And a chicken was a cicen
A dove (if you like that kind of thing) was called a dūfe.
Not a lot has changed, really.
Meanwhile, the Normans were too busy running everything, so they only saw an animal when it was dead. That is, cooked and served up on a plate on their dinner table.
Sorry, vegetarians and vegans... but this is how it was.
And realistically, they were the only ones who could afford to buy meat on a regular basis.
But they didn’t know the words the local Anglo-Saxon people used. They had no interest in learning the Anglo-Saxon “peasant language”. When, when they wanted meat, they ordered it using words for the animals from their own language: boef, veau, mouton and porc.
To them, a cow was a boef.
A calf was a veal.
A pig was a porc.
A sheep was a moton.
They even had a word to describe different kinds of birds: pouletrie. This would be adapted into English as poultry.
In little over 200 years, the Old English and Norman-French languages merged into Middle English. English won.
But it had been changed forever.
- Changed by an invasion.
- Changed by a different language.
- Changed by the way people shopped.
- Changed by how people ate.
So. Don’t forget! If you are going to buy meat, ask for beef, veal, mutton or pork.
If you read this and decide that you want to set up a livestock farm, then you´ll be using cows, calves, sheep and pork.
For a free worksheet on the commonest English collocations using the words for animals and the words for different types of meat, subscribe today. It’s free!
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