[LMB] AKICOT:L Bambi in Spanish & Italian

[James]

On 8/12/06, Richard Macdonald <don_iain at verizon.net> wrote:
Re: chili or spaghetti with venison -
>
> Babelfish gives Venison as:
> Italian: carne di cervo
> Spanish: carne de venado
>
> So the Spanish should be Chili con carne de vanado
>
> Don Iain of Rannoch, OWST


The reminds me of the story told by my Anthropology professor of his
first realization that English is one of the few languages which uses
different words for the animal and the meat we get from it (
cows/beef, pigs/pork, sheep/mutton, etc. )  He was on an
archaeological dig somewhere in the back country in Mexico, and one
night as the gringo scientists and their locally hired camp crew were
sitting around the campfire roasting a deer one of the latter had
shot, he realized he couldn't remember the Spanish word for "venison".
 So he asked the guys, "Como ce dice, carne de venado?" ( How do you
say 'meat of deer'? )  The Mexicans, said, a little puzzledly, "Carne
de venado."
No, no, he insisted, what is the _word_ for "meat of deer?"  The
Mexicans looked at him, looked at the bottle of tequila in his hand (
they were sitting around the campfire, waiting for dinner to cook ),
looked at the revolver on his hip ( for safety; they were, after all,
camped out in the back woods ), and said, very slowly, "Carne de
venado" ( clearly wondering just how crazy the gringo was ).  Luckily,
he actually hadn't had that many swigs from the bottle yet, and he
realized that there might not be "a" word for venison in Spanish, and
let it drop.
In class, he attributed this difference to the fact that, after the
Norman invasion, most of the nobility ( who could actually afford to
eat meat frequently ) spoke French, while the peasants ( who raised
the animals ) spoke an early version of English.  Therefore, people
talking about the meat used one word, and people talking about the
animal used another.

James (Khavrinen)