Adventures in the English language; AkaThe YGS thread

[Hermit]

That's a lot of work for a little tidbit, by the standards of the last 10 milennia. I could be mistaken for a fussy eater, but that's due to the food allergies. I like to try new things as well. I'd be weary of the caterpillar, I could be allergic to that tree. I'm assuming the tree was doomed before he hatcheted into it?

That was an unusual abode for witchetty grubs. They are more typically found hollowing out the roots of a particular shrub, the name of which escapes me now. You dig out the root and normally find a dozen or more grubs in it. Keep in mind that they are usually just one part of a meal. They are quite nice roasted too.

Trees and bushes are pretty much doomed once grubs bore into them.

As for allergies, I understand. I know someone whose gums become inflamed by walnuts. One of my sisters can't eat tomatoes for the same reason. But again, you don't usually know until you tried.

[surreptitious57]

We have live grubs being offered up for contestants to eat on so called reality television programmes
I really like my food to be completely dead before it passes my lips but I would still not eat any grubs

[surreptitious57]

Another delicacy being offered up on the same programme was ostrich bollock if memory serves
The ostrich in question was quite dead so on balance the choice was somewhat more preferable

[don't get me started]

On the subject of animal based foods and plurals (if that is an allowable segue) the way that English goes about pluralizing animals and the meat of animals is another pitfall for my students.

Japanese is like German in that the one is simply derived from the other.
Schwein (Pig) Schweinefleisch (Literally, Swine flesh)
豚　(Buta) = Pig. 豚肉　Buta Niku = (Literally pig meat)

English buggers around a bit.

Pig = Pork
Cow = Beef
Deer = Venison

But when we get to poultry, the animal and the meat use the same word.

Chicken = Chicken
Turkey = Turkey
Goose = Goose

The difference is that the animal word is countable ( one chicken, two chickens) but the meat word is not countable (I ate a lot of chicken)

Now, as I mentioned up thread, Japanese doesn't really do plurals and plurals in English are one of those things that often get forgotten in the stream of speech. ' I bought two new book' is a fairly common type of error.

So, when the students are talking about pets, they may come out with 'I like dog', meaning they enjoy the companionship of those animals (What Milan Kundera once beautifully described as 'Those merry ambassadors from the world of animals'..but I digress.) But seeing as they forgot the plural, what it actually means, is they like eating the flesh of canis familiaris.

Another one of those things that native speakers of a language know, but don't know they know, but language learners have to attend to.

Ah. Now if, for the sake of argument, a Japanese speaker does like to eat dog (I don't know of they do or not, but bear with me), how does one tell the difference, or is there a separate way of saying that? Or am I just very stupid, and they just add the word for 'eating'?

To take your hypothetical situation where a Japanese actually meant that they liked eating the flesh of man's best friend, I guess that they would say something like ' I like dog meat'. ( 犬肉が好き。Inu niku ga suki).

You bring up an interesting point with the verb for 'eating'.

In English, there is a division between 'eat' for solid food items and 'drink' for liquid items. So far, so good.
But there is another dimension to be considered when putting things in your mouth (for the purposes of ingestion. What were you thinking? ... )

This is in the case of medicine. Now, whether the meds involved are liquid, like cough syrup, or solid, like pills, English used the word 'take'. One doesn't really 'eat an asprin' and normally one doesn't drink cough syrup.

Hmm...come to think about it, I'm a but grey about soup. If you have it in a cup and bring the cup to your lips and tilt the cup, you are drinking soup. But if it is in a bowl and you use a spoon to raise the soup to your mouth, do you 'eat soup'? I dunno.

Anyways...

Japanese similarly makes a difference between solid and liquid ingestibles ( 食べる- taberu and 飲む - nomu respectively) but it does things differently when it comes to medicine. Regardless of whether it is liquid or in pill form (or also in powder form, which is one way medicines are administered here) the Japanese use the word for drink (nomu) to refer to what English speakers would term 'take medicine'.

In English you might remind someone to 'take their medicine', in Japanese you would remind then to 'drink your medicine. 「薬飲んで」　(Those marks 「　and 」are the way to set off reported speech in Japanese text.)

I'd be interested to know from Ratskepers who speak a language other than English or Japanese if the same thing applies to food, drink and medicines in that language.

(And, no Falible, I don't think you are stupid. Quite the opposite in fact. It was a good question )

[Hermit]

I'd be interested to know from Ratskepers who speak a language other than English or Japanese if the same thing applies to food, drink and medicines in that language.

Yes, that's the case in German.

Iss dein Brot - Eat your bread (nom. (yes, nom. essen )
Trink dein Wein - Drink your wine (nom. trinken)
Nimm deine Medizin- Take your medicine (nom. nehmen)

[surreptitious57]

It seems strange that in English soup is referred to as something to eat when it is a liquid
I wonder if this is because it originally comes from food : chicken / mushroom / tomato ?

[The_Piper]

That's a lot of work for a little tidbit, by the standards of the last 10 milennia. I could be mistaken for a fussy eater, but that's due to the food allergies. I like to try new things as well. I'd be weary of the caterpillar, I could be allergic to that tree. I'm assuming the tree was doomed before he hatcheted into it?

That was an unusual abode for witchetty grubs. They are more typically found hollowing out the roots of a particular shrub, the name of which escapes me now. You dig out the root and normally find a dozen or more grubs in it. Keep in mind that they are usually just one part of a meal. They are quite nice roasted too.

Trees and bushes are pretty much doomed once grubs bore into them.

As for allergies, I understand. I know someone whose gums become inflamed by walnuts. One of my sisters can't eat tomatoes for the same reason. But again, you don't usually know until you tried.

I'd bread them and dip them in ketchup. If I had to eat them at all, of course. I've never heard of that reaction with the gums, but I guess people experience adverse reactions to things in different ways. At low doses, my reaction is an unbearably itchy throat and mouth salivating continuously, so I have to keep spitting. Mildly queasy stomach, and I usually have little desire to eat anything else for the next several hours. Hey, that's how I could stop gorging on sweets late at night! The more I eat it goes from there to upset stomach, and vomiting, to being bed-ridden in 2 instances. I'm allergic nuts and eggs. I can eat other legumes, and chicken. (People tend to ask me that a lot)

[Hermit]

It seems strange that in English soup is referred to as something to eat when it is a liquid
I wonder if this is because it originally comes from food : chicken / mushroom / tomato ?

From under ten minutes before you came up with yet more rubbish:

...soup. If you have it in a cup and bring the cup to your lips and tilt the cup, you are drinking soup.

[The_Piper]

On the subject of animal based foods and plurals (if that is an allowable segue) the way that English goes about pluralizing animals and the meat of animals is another pitfall for my students.

Japanese is like German in that the one is simply derived from the other.
Schwein (Pig) Schweinefleisch (Literally, Swine flesh)
豚　(Buta) = Pig. 豚肉　Buta Niku = (Literally pig meat)

English buggers around a bit.

Pig = Pork
Cow = Beef
Deer = Venison

But when we get to poultry, the animal and the meat use the same word.

Chicken = Chicken
Turkey = Turkey
Goose = Goose

The difference is that the animal word is countable ( one chicken, two chickens) but the meat word is not countable (I ate a lot of chicken)

Now, as I mentioned up thread, Japanese doesn't really do plurals and plurals in English are one of those things that often get forgotten in the stream of speech. ' I bought two new book' is a fairly common type of error.

So, when the students are talking about pets, they may come out with 'I like dog', meaning they enjoy the companionship of those animals (What Milan Kundera once beautifully described as 'Those merry ambassadors from the world of animals'..but I digress.) But seeing as they forgot the plural, what it actually means, is they like eating the flesh of canis familiaris.

Another one of those things that native speakers of a language know, but don't know they know, but language learners have to attend to.

Ah. Now if, for the sake of argument, a Japanese speaker does like to eat dog (I don't know of they do or not, but bear with me), how does one tell the difference, or is there a separate way of saying that? Or am I just very stupid, and they just add the word for 'eating'?

To take your hypothetical situation where a Japanese actually meant that they liked eating the flesh of man's best friend, I guess that they would say something like ' I like dog meat'. ( 犬肉が好き。Inu niku ga suki).

You bring up an interesting point with the verb for 'eating'.

In English, there is a division between 'eat' for solid food items and 'drink' for liquid items. So far, so good.
But there is another dimension to be considered when putting things in your mouth (for the purposes of ingestion. What were you thinking? ... )

This is in the case of medicine. Now, whether the meds involved are liquid, like cough syrup, or solid, like pills, English used the word 'take'. One doesn't really 'eat an asprin' and normally one doesn't drink cough syrup.

Hmm...come to think about it, I'm a but grey about soup. If you have it in a cup and bring the cup to your lips and tilt the cup, you are drinking soup. But if it is in a bowl and you use a spoon to raise the soup to your mouth, do you 'eat soup'? I dunno.

Anyways...

Japanese similarly makes a difference between solid and liquid ingestibles ( 食べる- taberu and 飲む - nomu respectively) but it does things differently when it comes to medicine. Regardless of whether it is liquid or in pill form (or also in powder form, which is one way medicines are administered here) the Japanese use the word for drink (nomu) to refer to what English speakers would term 'take medicine'.

In English you might remind someone to 'take their medicine', in Japanese you would remind then to 'drink your medicine. 「薬飲んで」　(Those marks 「　and 」are the way to set off reported speech in Japanese text.)

I'd be interested to know from Ratskepers who speak a language other than English or Japanese if the same thing applies to food, drink and medicines in that language.

(And, no Falible, I don't think you are stupid. Quite the opposite in fact. It was a good question )

Interesting.
I can't remember anyone ever saying that they took cough syrup, it's always drink, iirc. If you search you'll find references to eating aspirin, but take is the more common way. Of course, popping is another way to describe it. I eat soup, then drink the broth at the bottom of the cup.
And speaking of allergies again, I'm allergic to nsaids, including aspirin. Or reactive, if it's not technically an allergy.

[The_Piper]

Another delicacy being offered up on the same programme was ostrich bollock if memory serves
The ostrich in question was quite dead so on balance the choice was somewhat more preferable

I think I'd eat a grub before I ate an ostrich testicle. I didn't know they had testicles.

[don't get me started]

I'd be interested to know from Ratskepers who speak a language other than English or Japanese if the same thing applies to food, drink and medicines in that language.

Yes, that's the case in German.

Iss dein Brot - Eat your bread (nom. (yes, nom. essen )
Trink dein Wein - Drink your wine (nom. trinken)
Nimm deine Medizin- Take your medicine (nom. nehmen)

Thanks Hermit. That is good information.

[don't get me started]

It seems strange that in English soup is referred to as something to eat when it is a liquid
I wonder if this is because it originally comes from food : chicken / mushroom / tomato ?

I'm wondering here if the liquid versus non-liquid distinction isn't placed alongside the purposes of ingestion.
For 'eat' the purpose of ingestion is nutrition, but the basic liquid intake fluid is surely water, in which case, the purpose is not nutrition, but hydration. This would also go some way to explaining the 'take' setting in English for medicines as they are a third category of ingestion, neither nutrition nor hydration but curative.
Once I get thinking about these things, my mind goes off at all kinds of tangents.

[The_Piper]

It seems strange that in English soup is referred to as something to eat when it is a liquid
I wonder if this is because it originally comes from food : chicken / mushroom / tomato ?

I'm wondering here if the liquid versus non-liquid distinction isn't placed alongside the purposes of ingestion.
For 'eat' the purpose of ingestion is nutrition, but the basic liquid intake fluid is surely water, in which case, the purpose is not nutrition, but hydration. This would also go some way to explaining the 'take' setting in English for medicines as they are a third category of ingestion, neither nutrition nor hydration but curative.
Once I get thinking about these things, my mind goes off at all kinds of tangents.

I was thinking chewing.

[Hermit]

It seems strange that in English soup is referred to as something to eat when it is a liquid
I wonder if this is because it originally comes from food : chicken / mushroom / tomato ?

I'm wondering here if the liquid versus non-liquid distinction isn't placed alongside the purposes of ingestion.
For 'eat' the purpose of ingestion is nutrition, but the basic liquid intake fluid is surely water, in which case, the purpose is not nutrition, but hydration. This would also go some way to explaining the 'take' setting in English for medicines as they are a third category of ingestion, neither nutrition nor hydration but curative.
Once I get thinking about these things, my mind goes off at all kinds of tangents.

I was thinking chewing.

And another tangent: I never drink anything. I slurp. Let the discussion about manners begin.

[The_Piper]

I slurp broth, and coffee. I glug beer.

[don't get me started]

Ahh... slurping. A well-practiced manner of eating in Japan when you are eating (having!) noddles.
Head over the bowl, chopsticks into the strands, one end in your mouth and then slurp away at full volume. It is not considered in any way rude or déclassé in this culture.

Oh, and another oddity.
English differentiates between 'bite' and 'chew' but Japanese can use the same verb 'kamu' (噛む) for both. (Try it on Google Translate)
Even when you get to something as human universal as gaining nutrition, it seems that languages can make distinctions or conflate senses willy-nilly.

[don't get me started]

:lol: I slurp broth, and coffee. I glug beer.

But if I'm in a rush I 'neck beer'...

[laklak]

I like to quaff mead.

[Fallible]

On the subject of animal based foods and plurals (if that is an allowable segue) the way that English goes about pluralizing animals and the meat of animals is another pitfall for my students.

Japanese is like German in that the one is simply derived from the other.
Schwein (Pig) Schweinefleisch (Literally, Swine flesh)
豚　(Buta) = Pig. 豚肉　Buta Niku = (Literally pig meat)

English buggers around a bit.

Pig = Pork
Cow = Beef
Deer = Venison

But when we get to poultry, the animal and the meat use the same word.

Chicken = Chicken
Turkey = Turkey
Goose = Goose

The difference is that the animal word is countable ( one chicken, two chickens) but the meat word is not countable (I ate a lot of chicken)

Now, as I mentioned up thread, Japanese doesn't really do plurals and plurals in English are one of those things that often get forgotten in the stream of speech. ' I bought two new book' is a fairly common type of error.

So, when the students are talking about pets, they may come out with 'I like dog', meaning they enjoy the companionship of those animals (What Milan Kundera once beautifully described as 'Those merry ambassadors from the world of animals'..but I digress.) But seeing as they forgot the plural, what it actually means, is they like eating the flesh of canis familiaris.

Another one of those things that native speakers of a language know, but don't know they know, but language learners have to attend to.

Ah. Now if, for the sake of argument, a Japanese speaker does like to eat dog (I don't know of they do or not, but bear with me), how does one tell the difference, or is there a separate way of saying that? Or am I just very stupid, and they just add the word for 'eating'?

To take your hypothetical situation where a Japanese actually meant that they liked eating the flesh of man's best friend, I guess that they would say something like ' I like dog meat'. ( 犬肉が好き。Inu niku ga suki).

You bring up an interesting point with the verb for 'eating'.

In English, there is a division between 'eat' for solid food items and 'drink' for liquid items. So far, so good.
But there is another dimension to be considered when putting things in your mouth (for the purposes of ingestion. What were you thinking? ... )

This is in the case of medicine. Now, whether the meds involved are liquid, like cough syrup, or solid, like pills, English used the word 'take'. One doesn't really 'eat an asprin' and normally one doesn't drink cough syrup.

Hmm...come to think about it, I'm a but grey about soup. If you have it in a cup and bring the cup to your lips and tilt the cup, you are drinking soup. But if it is in a bowl and you use a spoon to raise the soup to your mouth, do you 'eat soup'? I dunno.

Anyways...

Japanese similarly makes a difference between solid and liquid ingestibles ( 食べる- taberu and 飲む - nomu respectively) but it does things differently when it comes to medicine. Regardless of whether it is liquid or in pill form (or also in powder form, which is one way medicines are administered here) the Japanese use the word for drink (nomu) to refer to what English speakers would term 'take medicine'.

In English you might remind someone to 'take their medicine', in Japanese you would remind then to 'drink your medicine. 「薬飲んで」　(Those marks 「　and 」are the way to set off reported speech in Japanese text.)

I'd be interested to know from Ratskepers who speak a language other than English or Japanese if the same thing applies to food, drink and medicines in that language.

(And, no Falible, I don't think you are stupid. Quite the opposite in fact. It was a good question )

Thanks! Incidentally, it's archaic, but we have used 'take' with reference to food and drink in English, eg. 'I never take wine', or 'we take our meals in the dining room'. I think occasionally it's still used.

In French, you boire (drink), manger (eat) and prendre (take) medicine (I think).

[Scot Dutchy]

In Dutch medicine is drunk or taken but never eaten.