[simula67]

I thought this was well known in the Anglosphere.

Anyway, I have heard that this is why the words for cooked version of the meat and the name of the animal is different in English.

For example, cow meat when cooked becomes beef. Sheep meat when cooked becomes mutton.

The Norman French elites referred to the cooked version by its French names but the English servants who dealt with the animals used the English words.

[orwin]

The French 'gu' (that you hear in 'segue') was pronounced as 'w' in Norman. So 'guerre' phonetically is close to 'guer', 'wer', 'war'. There is a lot of fun words like this.

Also, there is French legalese that went into English, like 'cancellation' that gave 'cancel' in English, and now sound very English for French people.

[jwestbury]

There are plenty of g/w examples still present wholly within English, too -- guarantee and warranty is the one I usually point to.

Likewise, Guillaume and William are the same name. (And if you're into medieval lit, Gawain and Wawain.)

[jwestbury]

There are other places you'll see this. For instance, the names of most historical weapons are Germanic, but tactics are French. Tools are generally Germanic, too -- if you want to see a good list of Old English tool names and people names, have a wander through your local hardware store/ironmonger.

[thatwasunusual]

> The Norman French elites referred to the cooked version by its French names but the English servants who dealt with the animals used the English words.

This is probably one of the most interesting facts I learned by watching QI. Probably because I'm more than average interested in languages.

In Norway - there I'm from - we also use "beef" (except it's "biff"), but for the other animals, I don't think we have a differentiation;

* Pig = "svin" (ref. swine)

* Sheep = "sau" (or "får")

* Chicken = "kylling"

So, I think the only word we still use that is differentiated from the animal it comes from, is "biff" for "okse" (oxen), "ku" (cow). Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Tagbert]

It is well known among anyone who paid attention in history classes. It’s also one of the main reasons why English spelling is so irregular. The Norman scribes didn’t respect English and were always using French spellings in writing English.

[randomdata]

> For example, cow meat when cooked becomes beef.

So too does bull, heifer, and steer meat.

I have heard the same story, but perhaps beef actually came to be used because there was no generally accepted way to refer to the singular of cattle? "Cow meat" would have only referred to meat from cattle kept to produce milk; which also would have been the least likely meat source.

Eventually we got cattle beast as the singular form of cattle, but it appears it emerged in the lexicon after beef was already in use.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

Cow meat is beef before it's cooked too (hence "ground beef").

[jhanschoo]

Yeah, the point at which the terminology changes for me is at the point at which the matter is dissected from the carcass

[ComputerGuru]

I am not sure that holds because the same split is observed in other languages, too. See el pez vs pescado in Spanish, for example.

[jgilias]

Yes, but if you look at the etymology for “sheep” and “mutton”, they literally come from Old English and Old French respectively.

Does the same (different source languages) is true for “el pez” and “pescado”?

[awelxtr]

Piscis and piscari repectively, both from Latin so no

[valleyer]

Maybe there are better examples, but pez and pescado are pretty obviously derived from the same source (pescado literally meaning a thing that is fished [i.e., captured from the sea]).

[kazinator]

But the interesting thing is that in French, sheep and mutton are both mouton.

[jjgreen]

The English peasants raised the sheep, the French masters eat the mouton.

[kazinator]

Sure, but in France, the peasants were French.

[ComputerGuru]

Right, but that’s a non-sequitur.

[kazinator]

"French is an example of a language in which the meat and animal name are the same, at least in the case of the sheep (mouton)".

"The English peasants raised the sheep, the French masters eat the mouton." <-- this is the non sequitur

My comment was about French as such (being spoken in France by French masters and their French peasants).

So then in the case of English, the different meat names came about in a different way, from two languages that separately didn't have two meat names, which is interesting.

[irdc]

Dutch too: koe (the animal) vs rund (the meat)

[mmoll]

Not quite the same. Koe/rund (and Kuh/Rind in German) is a lot more like cow/cattle, with rund naming the species and koe a female animal.

[qingcharles]

I always heard the same thing, and it always rang true in my head, but of course it probably [needs citation].

[randomdata]

The story is a good one, but I'm not sure it adds up.

Most curiously, what is never explained is what the servants actually called the animal. At the time there was no singular term for cattle or sheep in English. Any reference to the individual animals was more specific, e.g. bull, heifer, steer, cow, ewe, ram, etc.

But once you've cut up the animal, that specific differentiation becomes difficult to track. For all intents and purposes the meat is the same. The idea that the servant would say "time to cook the heifer" or "time to cook the steer" seems suspect. In fact, unless the servant in the kitchen was also the butcher, it is highly unlikely they would even know if the meat came from a heifer, a steer, or what have you in order to be able to speak to it as such.

It seems likely even the servants called it "beef" or, at very least, some other equivalent term of the same intent.

[jongjong]

Boeuf (Beef), Mouton (Mutton), Porc (Pork). It doesn't work for chicken though.

[wenc]

Kinda does. Poulet (poultry)

[jongjong]

This one is a more technical/farming term but yes.