<story><title>Why God Hates German Words</title><url>http://techno-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-god-hates-german-words.html?</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>keiferski</author><text>Related (and interesting):&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 &quot;beef&quot; vs. vache &quot;cow&quot;).&lt;p&gt;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)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Why God Hates German Words</title><url>http://techno-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-god-hates-german-words.html?</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>petercooper</author><text>&lt;i&gt;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.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The overarching story is good but to respectfully nitpick, in terms of linguistics, Germanic and German don&apos;t mean the same thing. At least, only a little more than Java and JavaScript do.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Also, it wasn&apos;t &quot;French&quot; 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.</text></comment>