
Why God Hates German Words - bdr
http://techno-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-god-hates-german-words.html?
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keiferski
Related (and interesting):

 _A peculiarity perhaps unique to a handful of languages, English included, is
that the nouns for meats are commonly different from, and unrelated to, those
for the animals from which they are produced, the animal commonly having a
Germanic name and the meat having a French-derived one.

Examples include: deer and venison; cow and beef; swine/pig and pork; and
sheep/lamb and mutton. This is assumed to be a result of the aftermath of the
Norman conquest of England, where an Anglo-Norman-speaking elite were the
consumers of the meat, produced by lower classes, which happened to be largely
Anglo-Saxon[citation needed], though this same duality can also be seen in
other languages like French, which did not undergo such linguistic upheaval
(e.g. boeuf "beef" vs. vache "cow").

With the exception of beef and pork, the distinction today is gradually
becoming less and less pronounced (venison is commonly referred to simply as
deer meat, mutton is lamb, and chicken is both the animal and the meat over
the more traditional term poultry. (Use of the term mutton, however, remains,
especially when referring to the meat of an older sheep, distinct from lamb;
and poultry remains when referring to the meat of birds and fowls in general.
Use of the term swineflesh for pork, is also widespread, especially in
religious contexts)_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language>

~~~
scoot
Partly true. cow is beef, pig is pork, sheep is mutton (but rarely if ever
eaten), but lamb is always lamb, never mutton, otherwise "mutton dressed as
lamb" would make no sense.

Venison is still venison, (who's ever heard of buying "dear meat"?) Chicken
was always chicken as a meat, "poultry" refers to the livestock as a
collective noun.

I beg you to go to your local butcher (or butcher's counter in your
supermarket if you don't have a butcher) and order a kilo of "swine flesh" and
see how widespread that usage is!

Whoever wrote the section of the wikipedia article you quoted clearly doesn't
speak English as a native language, or was having a joke at your expense.

~~~
celoyd
_mutton (but rarely if ever eaten)_

Mutton has been a normal food in many times and places. It happens to be out
of fashion in most of the English-speaking world right now.

I grew up around sheep and often ate mutton as a child. To me, calling young
mutton “lamb” has unpleasant connotations. It would be like calling the meat
of a relatively young pig “piglet”, or the meat of a relatively young chicken
“chick”.

~~~
code_duck
> It would be like calling the meat of a relatively young pig “piglet”, or the
> meat of a relatively young chicken “chick”.

You mean, it would be like calling something what it is, rather than using a
euphemism to shield yourself from what you're doing?

~~~
celoyd
Close but not exactly. In farming contexts, piglets and chicks are often
distinguished from pigs and chickens precisely because they’re too young to
eat. So “young pig” really does mean something different from “piglet” in this
case, in the way that in many contexts “young man” clearly means something
older than “boy” does.

Regardless of your opinion on eating meat, I don’t think this is a failure of
euphemism so much as an accidental dysphemism.

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petercooper
_When the Normans came, they brought French. They enslaved the old German
speakers of Britain, and the language of the people who bathed more often was,
for centuries to come, Romance._

The overarching story is good but to respectfully nitpick, in terms of
linguistics, Germanic and German don't mean the same thing. At least, only a
little more than Java and JavaScript do.

The English were not speaking German prior to 1066 but Old English or Anglo
Saxon, a mish-mash of ancient Britannic languages, Latin, Old Norse, and some
West Germanic languages.

Also, it wasn't "French" that was brought over to England. At least, not in
any codified, official sense of the term that we now accept. The Duchy of
Normandy was still separate from the Kingdom of France (although Norman was
one of the oïl languages) until the 13th century and Norman, as a language,
had more Norse influence than other oïl languages due to prior invasions.

~~~
KennethMyers
You're right. I actually said "German" because the word is simpler and it
makes for a more sonorous title. But I've also met super-important linguists
who in conversation call old Englishes "German" and the Norman language
"French".

~~~
petercooper
Cool. I hadn't noticed that but I can imagine it happening for simplicity's
sake, especially among people who "know"!

BTW, I definitely wasn't trying to imply you didn't understand the background
since you seemed to know what you were talking about but it bristles me to
think other people with no linguistic background could be reading "German" and
thinking.. ooh, German! Maybe that's just the personality disorder talking
though ;-)

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zwp
I enjoyed this article although I suspect its factual veracity (oops, err,
truth).

For one thing LEOs don't say "individual" because they're romance language
kowtowers but rather because it's an instance of the largest valid superclass
of man/child/woman/girl/boy/teenager/infant/...

Similarly, it's not "Sir, please get out of the Porsche 911" but "Sir, please
get out of the vehicle". "Vehicle" is factually correct whatever the beliefs
of the other party ("this is _not just a car_!").

Perhaps I'm not smart enough to catch all of the nuances in the article. For
example the very first sentence's "grandmother" is splendidly etymologically
ambiguous (grossmutter/grandmere), is this intentional?

Similarly "smart" (allegedly dumb German word) is derived via German smerzan,
Latin mordere, Greek smerdnos (according to my dictionary).

~~~
KennethMyers
Post author here.

You're right about "smart." There are other minor inaccuracies that other
people pointed out. The origin of "fuck" isn't clear. Were the anglo-saxons
actually _enslaved_? (I'd say yes. Serfdom/slavery, what's the differece?) I
didn't write this thing like a researcher. I wrote it like a daytime applied
linguist with a secret passion for his crazy-ass blog. I'll do a rigorous one
if people actually want that.

~~~
zwp
Hello!

I like the hypothesis, I'm sure there must be some research on this.

There is a writing style guide written by a well-known English author,
Victorian era, that suggests using saxon over romance words for clarity. I
feel this is valid (also more concise, more punchy (more consonants)). I
thought it was Kipling but perhaps not... somebody help me out?

~~~
conanite
You might be thinking of George Orwell, "politics and the english language" (a
bit after the victorian era)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Langua...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language)

Rule 5 states: Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word
if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

~~~
zwp
Yes! Thank you. Exactly (was later than I thought).

<http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm>

"Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers,
are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander
than Saxon ones..."

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OpenAmazing
Ha ha. From the bottom of his post:

"Oh hi there, Hacker News. Someone apparently submitted this and it's doing
pretty well. Some sort of HN or reddit flare-up happens with more of my posts
than not, and it always has me wanting to find a way to capitalize on it and
become some professional writer-philosopher. One with muscles and a serious
artist face. Hey, a boy has got to dream. Anyways, I can write stuff. I'm a
little bit smart. You should totally hire me or something. kenmyers@gmail.com.
Or what if I wrote a book? Would that work? If I've got, like, 140 RSS
subscribers, but 50,000 hits a month through sites like HN and reddit, do you
think that's enough of a following to get me somewhere? Talk to me."

That's how you capitalize on success.

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biot

      > Policemen, charged with high office but often born of a commoner
      > strain, struggle with sloppy mismatches, calling a suspect
      > "the individual," in utter subconscious terror of being labeled
      > the sort of guy who uses the word "man."
    

Or combine that with incorrect terminology such as "the suspect was travelling
at a high rate of speed" when they really mean "the suspect was travelling
fast". Speed is technically a rate of distance. Rate of speed would be
acceleration.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to utilize the commode.

~~~
Natsu
> Speed is technically a rate of distance.

Actually, the scalar component of velocity, making it distance per unit of
time.

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mc32
This reminds me of Gerrard Winstanley, a Digger, who said, quite eloquently,
speaking of the Norman yoke:

"Oh, thou City, thou hypocritical City ! Thou blindfold, drowsy England, that
sleeps and snorts in the bed of covetousness, awake, awake ! The enemy is upon
thy back, he is ready to scale the walls and enter possession, and wilt thou
not look out?

By, then, of course, it was too late.

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gallerytungsten
As an amusing side note, the word "hell" in German means "light" (as in the
electromagnetic spectrum variety, as opposed to a lack of weight).

~~~
sk5t
This all reminds me of Mark Twain's essay, "The Awful German Language"; he
holds a very different view of the German language as lighter and more playful
than English.

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hussong
I'm wondering whether the usage of (allegedly less offensive) Latin terms
makes any difference to people who actually know Latin well, like priests.

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jrhorn424
This is extremely similar in content to Elliot Engle's book /A Light History
of the English Language/ and a lecture he gave semi-regularly at NC State when
I was a student there.

[http://www.amazon.com/Light-History-English-Language-
Expande...](http://www.amazon.com/Light-History-English-Language-
Expanded/dp/B000WQ91UC/ref=sr_1_2)?

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erikb
What does he actually want to say?

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fedd
i think the problem is not you using plain words, but for you mentioning the
hell.

i think in ancient times, mentioning Hell, Helheim, trolls was also only for
brave men, and Germanic grandmothers were against it

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shareme
Du Gotten Liebe?

