When I eat chicken, I call it chicken. Chicken wing; chicken drumsticks etc.
When I eat lamb, I call it lamb. Lamb shank; lamb cutlets.
So why do I not eat pig or cow? I eat pork or beef. Is there a reason for that?
It’s because of the Norman conquest of England. Basically, the ruling nobility spoke French and the lower classes spoke English. The peasants who were in charge of livestock spoke English so pig, cow, and chicken stuck around. But it was mostly the upper classes who ate the meats so they used French words at the dinner table (beef from boeuf, pork from porc, poultry from poulet, etc.).
Chicken has Its own “Norman” word, which is “poultry”.
Same for lamb, mutton
True. I think someone else pointed this out as well. But I don’t eat a poultry drumstick. The English language is a funny thing!
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This phenomenon is far from exceptional to English though.
My understanding is that the difference in terms goes back to the Norman invasion, which is when a ton of French-based terms for things were carried over.
The peasants referred to everything as the name of the animal but the French nobles referred to it as porc, boeuf, etc. This is also where we got the words for venison, mutton, veal, poultry, and also apparently pheasant
My country had not been invaded by the Normans and we speak completely different language, yet we don’t call it pig or cow either.
My country also has not been invaded by the Normans but we call pig a pig and cow a cow.
To add to this, the rich (i.e., French-speaking) consumed the most butchered meat, by far. So, it came to be that butchered meat for sale would be labeled in French, while the live animals, which were tended by (English-speaking) peasents retained their English names.
@whenigrowup356 Yup. And then you have the New World animals where we use the name of the animal for both the animal and the meat, like buffalo.
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They are actually different (but similar) animals, from different continents.
Because of the Norman invasion. 1066 and all that. (edit: specifically, after a time the peasants spoke English and looked after the animals, the nobility spoke french and named the food, so we got the English words for the animals and the French words for most of the farm animals were used for the food made from them)
Interesting but doesn’t quite answer the question.
Boeuf is the French word for beef, not cow. So the question is still why do we call it roast boeuf instead of roast vache?
To be more confusing, cow is the term for the female of the species, in this case cattle, but female whales are also called cows.
Does vache mean cow or does vache mean cattle?
Boeuf is the male cow. Vache is a female.
The French eating it called it beef, the English raising it called it cow. The french didn’t call it roast cow because they were eating it as food, thus beef.
The above poster explained your question already.
Quand je mange du poulet, je l’appelle poulet. Aile de poulet; pilons de poulet etc.
Quand je mange de l’agneau, je l’appelle agneau. Jarret d’agneau; côtelettes d’agneau.
Alors pourquoi est-ce que je ne mange pas de cochon ou de vache ? Je mange du porc ou du boeuf.
Quelle est la raison de ceci?
Parceque un porc ou un boeuf ça design aussi l’animal.
Chicken and lamb were more commonly seen and interacted with by the people that ate them, cows and pigs were not.
Tagger below explains it but also wanted to chime in that chicken is often “poultry”, but over time, we became comfortable with “chicken”.
