Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
That's actually a clue as to which class ate what. In English, if the upper classes ate an animal then the food has a different name than the animal it came from, but animals which the lower classes ate are called the same thing alive or cooked. The modern English food names are derived from the French terms for the things eaten by the francophone gentry.
ie: - pig -- ham/pork
- cow -- beef
- deer -- venison
- sheep -- mutton
versus: - chicken
- rabbit
- duck
- fish
- turkey
I've always found this sort of thing fascinating.  |
Yes, although my high school English teacher explained that to me in a different way. It wasn't so much that the Francophones had one word for the meat and another for the animal .... it was that they never really dealt with the animals they ate in the field. That was the job of their Germanic underlings.
Thus, we tend to refer to the animals in the field by their Germanic names, and if the Norman French ate them in their homes, then we refer to the meat on the plate by the French based name.
But, you are right, it does sort of paint a picture of who ate what .....