Linguistics

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The Foreign Language That Changed My Teenage Son’s Life (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

“Is there meat from horses?” he asked in Russian.

Nyet, the waiter replied.

“But is there horse’s meat?” Max went on. “Meat of horse?”

Nyet.

“What is this meat here?” Max indicated the dark oval.

“Konina,” the waiter answered. It was a word Max didn’t know, so he nodded, and then after the waiter left, borrowed my phone to look it up in Google Translate.

“Horse meat,” the phone reported.

I would love to know what was going on here, linguistically. Are they really not thinking of konina as being horse meat? Is it similar to beef vs cow, with a special word for the meat? That latter seems strange, because at least in English, if someone said "is there cow meat in this" and I had served them beef, I'd definitely say yes.

Anyway, thanks for sharing. That was a really beautiful story to read.