Why does English make everything so complicated?

You've only scratched the surface of cow terminology. The animal in general doesn't have a singular name at all, but the plural is cattle. If it is raised for its meat, it can be called a beef, plural beeves. The meat of a calf is called veal. A castrated male is called a steer, unless it's older than about 4 years, then it's an ox, plural oxen. Unless it was castrated as an adult, then it is a stag. A young uncastrated male is a bullock. A female who has not yet had a calf is a heifer.

I would argue that Chinese is also a very difficult language for an English speaker because it has so many different characters and their meaning can change depending on your tone, which English doesn’t really do.

Also, a castrated male cow is a steer and a female cow who has not given birth to a calf (baby cow) is a heifer.

Because English is a mixture of a germanic language and old french, with a ton of other loan words.

You can just say cow though. Thats the beauty of the flexibility of the English language. You don’t have to say “bull”. If you say cow, most English speakers already basically know what you’re talking about. English is a very context heavy language. If you say cow though”look at those two cows over there mating, nobody is going to immediately think it’s two females. Yes, we don’t say “cow meat”, but if you did say cow meat, people would be able to understand you. It’s very obvious from the context. You’re at a butcher, you ask for 500 grams of that cow meat, while pointing at a Sirloin steak. They will know what you mean or ask for further context. It’s really not a difficult language, it just has a very large vocabulary

Every language is complicated in its own way. History and many borrowed words have made lots of spelling irregularities in English and lots of different vocabulary from different root languages. That's why English has spelling bees and as far as I know, other languages don't. I wouldn't argue that it's inherently more complicated than Chinese or any other language though. Mandarin learners complain of the thousands of Hanzi to learn, counters, and tones. Japanese learners complain of learning Kanji readings and Katakana and Hiragana. Romance language learners complain about conjugations upon conjugations. I could go on about what makes every language "difficult", but the point is that English is not unique in having difficulties and irregularities.

The simple answer? The French. A lot of the "stupid" rules we have come from other cultures and *usually* French in particular. If you run into a word and go "but *why*?" It's probably that. There was a period of time where the ruling class in England spoke predominantly French. So, some of the words were adopted into English. Because English is Germanic in origin and French is a Romance language the grammar isn't shared, so they don't work great together. English "borrows" a lot of words from other languages in general though. Other countries are doing it more too, as cultures interact more and more.

"Because English beats up other languages in dark alleys, then rifles through their pockets for loose grammar and spare vocabulary." --pilgrimkitty

>it feels like it’s just making things harder for no reason. I would argue that it's harder to have to use two words when you could use just one. Don't the Chinese languages have a different character for every word? At least English only has 26 characters. That feels like it's harder for no reason to me! I think these things are a result of our upbringing in our native language and culture. It shapes how we think and describe things. Of course a native Chinese speaker will find Chinese simpler, just like an English speaker find English easier. It's how we have programmed our brain's language centers from a very young age.

For the same reason Japanese makes everything so complicated. Or Mandarin, or spanish, or italian, or . . . blahblahblah. It only seems excessively complicated because you're learning a new language and are now forced to think harder about the actual "rules" and exceptions for the language.

It is the same in Italian: Male cow: Toro Female cow: Vacca (or often Mucca) Baby cow: Vitello, and Vitella for female baby cow. Cow meat: Manzo Moreover, both in Italian and English, there is more to it. Cows, bulls, etc... are bovines. A domesticated bovine is a cattle.

It's because you're learning a language that followed an entirely different evolution to yours. English didn't have an empire that focused on beating it into standardization, whereas China did at least for the written form. When some aristocrats tried standardize English in the late 1800s, they just caused more trouble than they fixed; you've probably read one of their "rules" at some point in an English lesson. Using pictograms as a written language versus letters to form sounds doesn't help the situation either. As pointed out elsewhere, "cow" is Germanic origin while "beef" is French, as opposed to just taking the symbol for "cow" and "meat" and putting them together. And, to increase the chaos of your examples, the plural of "cow" is "cattle."

You forgot about the special words for baby cow meat, a female cow that hasn't given birth yet, and a castrated male cow (veal, heifer, steer)

To be fair, it could be worse. At least we don't have gendered nouns and matching articles like in romance languages 🥲

Much of the answer is historical. English, in general, has two vocabs: Latin and Germanic. So, often vocabs are doubled, as in moon and lunar, sun and solar, water and aqua-, house and dom-, father patri-, etc. Cow, bull, calf are Germanic, while beef is latin. This is why English is so very large and interesting...imho.

English draws a lot of these sort of words from a variety of ancestral languages, why some were kept and others were not is a much longer discussion -- we would need a linguist. But the short answer is that English evolved from many languages over the past 1,500 years and continues to steal new vocabulary even today. A partial list of languages include: old English, old Norse, old German, French and old French, Latin, Greek, Celtic English tends to keep vocabulary, spelling, plural forms, grammar rules, etc for specific words from the parent language which is why there is so little consistency. Also: all the words you list related to cows have multiple synonyms, and the name for the species of animal is "cattle" though "cows" is a common slang due to most domestic herds being principally female with the bulls being moved from herd to herd to help with the calf-making process; at least in most English/European countries.

If it makes you feel any better, the girl who lived in the dorm room next to mine in college was absolutely livid and she got a question on her economics test wrong. The question had to do with supply and demand. The teacher ask something along the lines of a lot what would happen to the price of steak (a particular cut of beef) if 3/4 of the world's cows suddenly dropped dead?" This girl was born and raised in the southern US, and she had NO idea that steak comes from cows. And this was in the 1980s, long before many edible flesh started being referred to as "steak," like a tuna steak, etc. I've taught English as a second language to adults often on for the last 30 years. I frequently find myself apologizing for what a crazy language English is! I vividly remember one student who was a native Spanish-speaker you thought the words mustache and mustard were the same thing. It took a little while to get him straightened out, but, again… It's a crazy language! Since you said you're interested in learning, and you mentioned cows/calves/beef/cow meat: specifically, "veal" is the meat of calves. And it's delicious! BTW: I mean baby cows, since baby whales, buffaloes, giraffes, elephants, hippos, yaks, antelopes, and several other baby animals are called "calves". I applaud you for tackling the English language with all of it Tricky bits! Good luck with your continued studies!

it's not an English thing, a lot of languages work this way. bull - Stier (German), toro (latin root languages), bik (slavic), 牡牛 oushi (japanese)

It feels like Chinese invents a completely new logogram for every little thing, even when there’s no need!

I mean… I struggle with all the Chinese words for uncle. There isn’t even a flat neutral one that can be applied to all uncles - you *must* know that man’s exact relationship to his niblings in order to pick.

English is not really 1 language. It is an amalgamation of several languages. There was a point in history where the English speaking territory of Britain got conquered by the French speaking Normans. The Normans became the aristocracy and nobles while the conquered population remained as peasants. The nobles kept speaking french, while the commoners spoke english. French words became a mark of high quality and wealth, so a butcher would rather sell their meat under the french "beef" than under the english "cow meat."

Cow v Beef is thanks to the Battle of Hastings, when the French ruined our language.

The reason for the *hundreds* of unique words for male, female, baby and groups for animals came from the aristocracy and the hunting tradition. Basically, they made it complicated on purpose to separate themselves from the peasants and a way to separate the in-group from the out-groups. If someone knew to call a female fox a “vixen” or a group of swans a “bevy”, you could assume they were educated. Most of the unique group names are more of an antiquated curiosity now but the female/male/baby vocabulary has stuck around.

Because modern English stems from the British Empire, which covered a a huge number of territories and picked up loaner words and unique quirks from nearly every other language it was exposed to.

English is just 8 languages in a trench coat. Also, you missed one! Cow meat is beef but *baby* cow meat is veal. So. Jot that down I guess lmao

As someone who learnt English at the same time as Chinese (Singaporean), Chinese is definitely more complicated. Memorising thousands upon thousands of characters is far more needlessly difficult than words you can sound out.

Personally, I like using one word instead of 2 whenever possible.

Funny enough, "cow" is Germanic and "beef" is French.

my guy you have a different character for every single word

A lot of people don’t know this, but English is actually a bunch of other languages stacked on top of each other in a trench coat

Bull / Cow / Calf / Beef = 1 syllable. How many syllables are "male cow", "female cow", etc in Chinese? >Why does English need so many different terms for things that could easily be described by combining basic words in a logical way? Sounds like you need to study German. They have plenty of compound nouns that almost seem exactly like someone thought "Hey let's combine basic words in a logical way". I definitely understand the confusion with English though. But that's half of the fun. Even natives muck it up half of the time. If you want complex animal words, try deer; Fallow, White-tail deer : Male = Buck. Female = Doe. Young = Fawn. Red, Rusa, Sambar, Sika deer : Male = Stag. Female = Hind. Young = Fawn/Calf. Wapiti deer (elk) : Male = Bull. Female = Cow. Young = Calf.

We have a lot of nouns. It's so we can call people bullish, or porky which is different to being a piggy (although if you're a piggy then you might be a a bit porky too), or beefy which is different again.

If you think that is hard, maybe you shouldn't try to learn Spanish.

Why does standard chinese have 两 to convey 2 in counting, when 二 exists? Every language has quirks that make no sense to outsiders. English has many words for animals and the meat that comes from them because it is a west Germanic language that is functionally a creole of north Germanic with heavily influence from French, Latin and Greek for formal words. Britain was invaded and conquered a lot in its history, and the language is reflective of that.

On the other hand we use the same word for being high up a mountain and for being high on drugs, so that makes things nice and simple.

Wait until you get to sheep. No plural. Ewe, Ram, Tup, Hogget, Lamb, Shearling, and more.. Greetings from Australia.

Every language is different. Every language does things that seem unintuitive and strange to natives of another language. I'm learning Spanish. Why do we need multiple words for "the" or "a"? Why do words have to be gendered and have gender agreement between nouns and adjectives? It seems strange and nonsensical to me because English has no equivalent. But that's just how the language is. English feels so complicated to you partly because your native language is so far removed from English that there are very few linguistic or cultural similarities. It works the same way around. Chinese is often very difficult and unintuitive for English speakers to learn. On the other hand, if your native language was German or French, you'd likely have an easier time as English is more closely related to those languages.

to be honest i just say male cow female cow and baby cow

Doesn't Chinese have words like 犊 for "calf"? I really don't think this is as outlandish as you're making it sound. Honestly, this is just part of language in general. It's fairly common for there to not be a one to one translation. For example, I could ask a similar question of Polish and wonder why they need to distinguish niebieski from błękitny, instead of just calling the latter *light* blue (or jasnoniebieski) Also, if you really want something weird, there... isn't actually a good singular term for the species in general. "Cow" is technically specifically female, "bull" is specifically male, and "cattle" only exists in the plural. You'll occasionally see words like "bovine" used. But in common usage, and especially outside of farming, most people will just call them all "cows" as a general term

Aside from what others have said, I think English is also very averse to repetition of words. Culturally, it's seen as important to avoid repeating a word too much if you want to write well, and all kinds of synonyms allow for that kind of flexibility.

English is really just 3-5 other languages in a big trenchcoat

To be fair, most people just call all grown cows “cows”. Yes, there are more exact terms, buy everyone would understand you fine if you pointed to a male cow and called it as such.

I agree completely even though I'm a native English speaker with a vocabulary in the 99.9th percentile. You haven't mentioned our spelling yet....

Now, let’s see how do you name every relatives in Chinese.

These damn cows and their woke pronouns

Well welcome to indo-European languages :D Germanic languages specifically. English does often build new words out of other words, but there is a lot of French/Latin and Norse and Greek influence on the language and so a lot of times, the basic Germanic word stays for the generic meaning and we use the French or Latin or Greek words for the fancier, more complex meanings. But Chinese has a lot of specificity in places that English doesn’t, which can be quite tough for us too haha.

English has a variety of influences. Specifically for many animal food products, the food-related word comes from French, influenced by the Norman invasion of England in the 11th century. The 'high class, sophisticated' Norman word became used for the food, while the 'vulgar' English words remained for the animals themselves (I suppose because the commoners were more likely to work with animals and the upper class was more often able to eat a variety of meats). Interestingly, I've read that in England some people still retain an awareness of which words have Saxon/Germanic roots and which have French roots. Winston Churchill famously preferred Saxon words and used them strategically in his speeches (https://rhetcanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Rhetor-Fox-3.pdf) One of my favorite tidbits from the varied history of English is the word "man", which can mean either all people or a human male. Growing up I assumed this was due to a patriarchal influence, However, the former meaning is Germanic in root and meant exclusively that in Old English. The latter meaning comes from a different root (I can't find an easy answer for which one) and doesn't appear until at least the 14th century. In Old English, the word for a male human was wer, which survives only in the word werewolf.

Yet only one word for love, whether romantic, familial, friendship, etc.... Kind of tracks

As a native Mandarin Chinese speaker I'd say classifier is so much harder for foreigners to learn and they're even less necessary than those 'extra words' in English. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Everyone’s talking about how English picked up these terms from different places, which is definitely important to consider when thinking about the differences in these terms, but I’ll also say that in modern English, most people just differentiate cow and beef. Maybe they’ll use bull if you’re on a farm or talking about bull-fighting, and maybe calf if you’re taking care of the animal, but as long as you talk about cows as the living animal and beef as the food, you should be fine!!

A lot of the English distinction between "food" words and "animal" words stems from the era after the Norman conquest (1066 led by the Duke of Normandy, France. The man was later "William the Conqueror, King of England.") The new nobles were from France, and the entirety of the noble class spoke French. They also mostly dealt with animals as food. So when they were going over the menu with their servants they were using the French terms, and the French terms for those things stuck. The Anglo-Saxons (Germanic people who had previously fought the native Britons, and had settled and ruled Britain for about 500 years before being defeated by William and the Normans,) spoke English, a bastard language that mixed their native German tongues, some of the native British languages, and any other language that it could steal vocabulary or grammar from. Anglo-Saxons made up the farming ranks at the time. They dealt with animals on a daily basis as both livestock and food. The trend to call their meat by the posh French terms became the fashion, but it didn't change what they called their livestock. So now we have cows and beef.

English can also English in such a way that you'd think the brain wouldn't brain, but the brain brains the English perfectly. And most native speakers will understand you without thinking too hard.

Every language has something that seems crazy to learners but is perfectly natural to native speakers

You forgot "heifer", a young female cow that has not given birth to young.

Every language has cultural aspects, more they feel something as important, then they will diversify toward that concepts, making to adopt new words. Whereas, Chinese is somewhat homogeneous language in terms of native speakers, even its’ differences between speaks are still non-negligible. English has been introduced many words from foreign languages, reflecting their own social dynamics. For example, after Norman people conquered England, they kept using their native word, “beef”. Since they rarely met live-cattle, beef became a word for meat of cow, not a live cow. And it’s not about English, but Chinese also did same effect at some foreign languages too. Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese have many loan-words from Old Chinese, stratifying with their native words. Plus; even Native Speakers often forget important facts, English have been absorbed horrendous vocabularies from foreign languages, please remind of how many countries have(had) been spoken, or what they did in history.

You make it out like this was by design. It wasn’t of course. English is a bastard language. It’s got a simplified Germanic grammar with a mixed Germanic & Latinate vocabulary & then all sorts of words picked up from everywhere.

English is what happens when a Norman knight tries to chat up an Anglo-Saxon barmaid...and her Danish boyfriend starts an argument. One of the weird\* things about English vocab and "all its words" is... for that horned animal that goes "moo", we have a word for a young/baby (calf), male (bull), female (cow), young female that hasn't yet borne a calf (heifer), a castrated male (ox), even a bunch (cattle). But we don't have a *commonly used* term for a generic specimen of indeterminate age or gender: i.e., "cattle" has no singular. Closest we can come is the archaic term "neat", which generally only survives in the term "neatsfoot oil". \*relatively, anyway

English grammar is undoubtedly more complex than Chinese grammar, but Chinese words, written and spoken are infinitely and unnecessarily more complex

You should try French! I've just started learning Japanese, and while it's early I think Asian languages tend to be more direct and literal.

English is multiple languages stapled together. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING is consistent.   There are so many inherited quirks from the languages it steals from that nothing makes sense.  You simply have to get used to the idea that you have to memorize everything and that there are no rigid rules to rely upon 

"Cattle" would be the gender neutral term for the species as a whole

That's why English language is so expressive. There is a particular word or phrase for everything and cannot be replaced by another. When using English you cannot escape by using substitutes because substitute is usually substandard.

This is not a good example how English is complicated. This is just languages being different in a normal manner. I can tell you though, that we get the separation of meat names from the animals from French. We use the French words for the animals for food, and the English words for the animals.

On top of what has already been said, English is a language that has developed itself to be most efficient. That's why contractions like "don't", "hadn't", "you're" etc, exist. Less syllables is considered better. Look at those words : cow, bull, calf, beef. Notice how they all have one single syllable. One single syllable that conveys all the information that you need. "Baby cow" is three syllables. Of course over time we found a word to describe it quicker and more efficiently. That's how words happen.

It’s like three and a half languages crammed into one.

There is a lot of linguistic diversity for things that were important parts of everyday life at the time the language was evolving. Most English speakers between 1000 and 1500 years ago were farmers in England, so words relating to crops, farm animals, how to go from farm to food, and similar, have specific words. In terms of cattle, there are different words for these things because to someone living and working in a farm environment, they are very different things. Adult females are kept because they produce milk, and can breed to produce more offspring. Adult males are much less useful because they don't produce milk. You need a few for breeding, but not many, so because they are not useful in the way a cow is useful, they have a different name: bull. Males can, however, be used as a work animal, to pull a plough or a wagon. Because a male pulling something is used differently from a male being used for breeding, it also gets a different name: ox. Calf as a name for a baby is derived from cow, it is just an old way of saying "little cow", where the language no longer uses that form of "little" anymore. A female calf is useful to become a cow, a male calf is less useful alive, but is useful for meat (veal), velum (a product from its skin that was used for writing before paper making was introduced) and other things. Beef and veal, for the meat of an adult and a young animal, are a result of the interaction between old English and Norman French. There are a lot of word pairs in English like this, where the Old English name is used for one thing and the Norman French for a slightly different one. Often the Old English word is more "plain" and the Norman French one is more "refined" or polite. In the case of animals, the living animal has the Old English name but the meat has the Norman French name. In modern French, "bouef" is both the animal and its mean, in English "beef", related to bouef, is the meat while cow is the animal. For things that were not a feature of everyday life for ordinary people in England 1000 years ago, this kind of diversity of words is less common.

English has thee times as much vocabulary as it needs (Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and French) so its speakers have come up with lots of fine distinctions. For instance, the English word demand, comes from the French “demander” which simply means “to ask”. Demand is a bit stronger than “ask”.

Fair point, but in English, my mother's or father's sister (both younger and older) is my aunt. Whereas in Chinese you have _four_ different words depending on which parent, as well as if they're older or younger.

A cow is always a word for a female animal unless you are speaking colloquially. A bull is always a male of breeding capability. So a male cow is an oxymoron. The breeding male bovine is a bull. The castrated meat male is a steer. The working castrated male is an ox. The female bovine is a cow. Just thought I’d clear all that up. lol.

History of English podcast

When it comes to these animal based words, don't pay them mind.  As you use the language more and more you'll pick up on their differences. Also you are free to use and 100% will be understood (and natural) to say things like male/female/baby cow. The only thing that really matters is the words for meat since it is Slightly unusual to say Coe meat 

Collectively they're not called cows though, they're called cattle. A male cattle is a bull, a female cattle is a cow, etc. But, weirdly, there isn't a singular form of the word 'cattle'

A male adult bear is a boar. A female is a sow. A young bear is a cub (it's a common term for young animals). A boar is a male adult pig. A sow means a female pig (after giving birth). A young pig is a "piglet". ..but I came here for this: \- 1kg is singular (kilogram).. 2kgs is plural (kilograms).. & the middle is also plural: 1.1kgs (kilograms); ... sadly I seem to have found the Reddit post I was looking for in this thraed (well, all the others were 'Archived'), yet I can not remember where the singular stays constant (not litres, nor volume ..). I'll be back (but not in Terminator terms, I just want to add to the mystery of the Queens English).

every language has these oddities, but English is a mixture of lots of influences, dialects and languages. Until AD 900 english is thought to have been almost runic, and early english and middle english are not the same as modern english You can see : Cow is the working man's reference but the meat was eaten by rich, who spoke French after 1066 and so Boeuf becomes beef pork (anglo norman) pig (saxon ?) veal ( from veau) poultry comes from Poulet English isn't logic, but neither is French! courge and a small one = courgette Cacahuette is not a small caca!! salopette is not a small..... also i think in Chinese if you get the pronunciation "妈妈骂马吗?" (Māma mà mǎ ma?), which means "Is mom scolding the horse?" so even Chinese is weird.

We set it up a thousand years ago just to annoy you.

People in here are saying it has to do with the history of English, which has some truth, but there's also the fact that there is no central English authority like other languages (French).

English is complicated, in the sense that you're talking about, because Old English merged with Old Norse, then Norman French, and derives most of its technical terms from Greek or Latin. In Old English, we would have said "cow meat", but the French nobility called the food they ate "beef". The peasant English kept their names for animals (cow, hog, deer) and the nobles provided the names for food preparations (beef, pork, venison). This merging of languages is one of the reasons we have so many words for the same things. (e.g.what is the difference between "joy" and "happiness")

In Ukrainian we also have different words for those things (cow example), it's not only english.

"Cow" is the female animal. The word you want is "cattle".

You chose to learn this language, so approach it with just a little humility. To anyone who takes up learning something and tries to complain that its inconsistencies are unfair, take a long, hard look at what you already know and count the exceptions.

Every language has things that are baffling to speakers of other languages. I assure you Chinese had plenty of things that make no sense whatsoever to English speakers.

The issue is that English doesn't have a singular term for cattle. "Cattle" is always plural. Lacking a singular word we end up using gender for the general type of animal instead, and it's just understood that you're probably talking about cattle unless you've specified another type of large mammal, like whales or deer, which are also subdivided by gender and age into "bull", "cow", and "calf".

FWIW I completely agree with OP. English is a complete monster of a language and Chinese is relatively simple. It's not even the myriad of different words we have for stuff. But seriously and respectfully, fuck verb conjugation and subject verb agreement. I will take *all* your measure words and particles in exchange. I studied French for years. Picking up Chinese feels like activating cheat mode in a video game it's so easy by comparison. That's not to say that there aren't hard things about Chinese. Needing 5000 hanzi to be conversant in daily life is... intimidating to say the least (I know \~500 so far!) but at least I know how the stuff I know always works. It's not going to suddenly change because now I'm talking about the possibility of my mother thinking about doing it before dinner last Tuesday.

>A male cow is a *bull*. >A female cow is a *cow*. Well, that too is complicated, because there are also Steers, Oxen, and Heifers. And the generic term for all of them is cattle.

Also, in English: * A male cow is called a "male cow." * A female cow is called a "female cow." * A baby cow is called a "baby cow." * The meat of a cow is called "cow meat."

I feel the same when learning Chinese 😂 many Chinese words are so easy and logical. It’s a hard language to learn but that aspect is awesome

I complained about learning Chinese on 卫星 and all my Chinese friends complained about English. Learning languages is tedious. English has more words but a simpler grammar. It took me forever to learn A把B sentences! I definitely like Chinese naming conventions, though.

It developed naturally over a long time, drawing from other languages. Cows are quite a fundamental and historic thing in human society which makes this more likely. Every language would have something like this, except maybe Esperanto.

I think you might like this, [https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/](https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/) It will help you better understand how English came about

English has been stapled together from a bunch of other languages, most of which were the languages of people who conquered England at some point in the past (Norse, Norman French, etc.) This leads to some “fun” features of English, like the fact that it’s the only language that uses different words for an animal (pig, sheep, cow) and the meat that comes from that animal (pork, mutton, beef). This is due to the fact that the commoners who raised the animals spoke Anglo-Saxon, while the people who could afford to eat meat spoke French.

To answer your question about animals, English has had many influences form different European languages during its developed. Historically it was quite common for the ruling classes of England to speak a different language to the common folk. So the people eating food used the french terms for food, and the people rasing animal used the old English terms. Which is why modern England has very different words for the animal and the meat of that animal. I think most language learners have the same feeling of why a simple thing in their naive language is so complicated, it's just how languages tend to be.

Don't forget heifer (pronounced heffer). A female cow that has not yet borne a calf. If I remember correctly, a cow that has borne only 1 calf can be referred to as a heifer also. Not really necessary to use 'heifer' if one is not a farmer.

English is a amalgomation of other languages brewing together in the aristoracy of historical Britian. specifically beef, pork, etc... are french words that the aristocracy used to refer to the meets. Happened during the Norman conquest.

As a German speaker, I can relate. Why say "turtle" when I can say "shield toad"? Why say "umbrella" when I can say "rain screen"? Why say "glove" when I can say "hand shoe"? 😉

It's mostly because of the French.

Because English is actually 3 languages in a trench coat

To answer your question, English is about 4 different unrelated languages stickytaped together Beef for example is from the French word for cow, and because when the French conquered england the French were ruling class and the English were peasants, the farmer ended up using the british word for the beast in the field, while the gentry used the french word for the beast on the plate in their dining rooms where they would eat it. We then have words from German, Italian, Greek Latin, French , Spanish. English as a language finds languages in dark alleys and mugs them for spare grammar. The language has no consistency because about half of it is lone words from other languages.

>As a native Chinese speaker, I find English absolutely wild sometimes. It feels like English invents a completely new word for every little thing, even when there’s no need My brother, you literally invent a new letter for every single word in your dang language. >Why does English need so many different terms for things that could easily be described by combining basic words in a logical way? Why does the average Chinese person need to know 3000+ individual characters to read a newspaper? Can you not just write down what you're saying instead? You know... Logically? While we're at it, why do you have 5 tones with a bunch of rules for how to change those tones if they happen to bump into eachother? What purpose does sandhi even serve? Why do you need a bunch of noun quantifiers to use numbers? If I wanna say "3 cat", why can't I just say "3 cat?" Why do I need a completely random word in the middle? Why "3匹马" but "3只猫" and "3名男士"? >Don’t get me wrong, I love learning English, but sometimes it feels like it’s just making things harder for no reason. My guy, multiple countries use your language's name as a stand in for something that makes no sense. You are one of the last people allowed to be making these claims. Everything is relative. All languages have complexity. It's part of how they function.

English is 10 languages in a trench coat.

Mostly, blame the French. The Normans and the Francophiles in the British nobility and intelligentsia kept importing French and Latin words.

Mandarin does this so much though. If I ride a bike, I have to say 骑, specifying that one leg is on either side of it, i.e. I’m bestriding it. If I ride a skateboard, I have to say 滑 because it slides. If I ride a bus, it’s 乘 because it’s a passenger vehicle, or 坐 because I’m sitting on it. If I ride an elevator, it’s also 坐, even though I’m not sitting. Of course, I can convey the concept of “ride” by saying 在一个东西上面依赖着它移动, but it’s not exactly convenient.

My native language is traditional Chinese/Mandarin, and my colleagues major is Chinese literature. I have to say that Chinese is complicated in its own way for new learners. The tone, the measure word...etc. No joke. I always admire those people whose mother tongue is not Chinese but who have worked very hard to learn Chinese because I think Chinese is one of the most difficult languages in the world!

Because English was once the language of agricultural peasants. Those terms were important for everyday life.

It's the history of the language. English was simpler at its beginning, when Old English was spoken. Then the Danes conquered England and ruled it for a few decades and a bunch of Old Norse words got borrowed or adapted into English. Not long after, the Normans came and conquered England and made Old French the court language that the royalty and nobility spoke and official state business was conducted in. This lasted for a few hundred years, and at this point the better part of the French language found its way into English, and for a time many things had two different words you could use.  Many of the duplicate words were also used for more specific meanings where the original was a general term. Then, much later, some time after the printing press was invented, some people decided that English should be codified and they started writing grammars and dictionaries that were largely arbitrary, recommending grammar and spelling that the authors preferred. Because most of these authors found the Latin-origin words to sound more dignified than the Germanic ones, many of the words that had been in English since the beginning in one form or another were pushed into disuse. Even though this was during the Modern English period, because this was hundreds of years ago, these words are considered archaic or obsolete now. Over the remaining centuries until now, English borrowed from many other languages, moreso than most languages do. A lot of these were from Latin and Greek, due to the preference for those languages by academics. All these things conspired to make English the language that is widely considered to have the largest vocabulary, and thus we have specific words for things other languages do not. We tend not to borrow a word and have it mean the same as its original language if we already have a word for it, we use it for a more specific function.

Well it works both ways. It is perplexing to English speakers how to specify something that is expressed by a singular general concept in Chinese. A Chinese student struggled with this sentence in a test: The elevator is out of order so you will have to take the escalator. She explained Chinese only has one word for both of these things and so speakers have to resort to descriptive phrases for each in sentences like the example. I also believe there are many words like this in Chinese that cover a general concept. So the word for mind is also the word for psychological, and the word for lively, animated, and psyche, spirit, spiritual, soul as well as mental and mentality. It presents a very complicated situation to English speakers if the conversation turns to a spirited discussion about the psychological impact that a spiritual life can have on the mind, a discussion which can lead to a lively debate about the fundamental differences and tension between Freud's theory of the psyche and Jung's theory of the soul. It would seem such a conversation would be a Chinese version of the English 'rhubarb, rhubarb'. There are also untranslatable Chinese words like the different words for 'we' when referring to everyone present, or a specific group of people of which the speaker is a member, or the exclusive pair of speaker and listener. And don't get me started on Chinese words for family which specify maternal/paternal, male/female and older/younger... 😉 Learning another language is always going to be extremely challenging if your mindset and approach is to think of your native language as a conventional standard over which you attempt to trace and map equivalence. The potential for excitement and joy and fascination in your journey into English lies in how willingly you seize the opportunity to create new ways of thinking, to make new connections (not just linear ones) . It's not about simple lexical swapping- just having a Chinese word and looking up the English equivalent. It's about discovering a new mode of symbolic thinking, together with a new mode of abstract thinking, and then figuring out how to bring those into some kind of systematic order. Once you have that foundation then you can start to experience the ideas English speakers are sharing with you and share your own ideas with them. Allow yourself an alternative frame of reference that doesn't view English as a defective and illogical language because it fails to reproduce the same linguistic characteristics as Chinese languages. English speakers probably don't really understand why in Chinese you need to specify that the son of the eldest brother on your mother's side just got a job at NASA, when making small talk at the bubble cup shop. But they don't need to. The opportunity to discover the variation, contrasts and eccentricities of the two most spoken languages in our world offers an invitation to develop insight, empathy and broaden and reorient how we think about and see ourselves and others, and where we position ourselves in relation to them and why.

A friend's Korean wife was trying to talk about a book she had read, but she didn't know the name of the book in English, only Korean, so he couldn't figure out what it was. Finally he said, just translate the title into English. She said, "The bird that could lay no eggs." The book, it turned out, was "The Sterile Cuckoo."


English is a bastardized language, Germanic in origin with a heavy inducement of Romantic languages. All our animals have Germanic names but the words for their meat are derived from Latin languages.

I dont think you should worry or stress too much about them, most natives (including me) just refer to all of them as “cow” !!

yes,lmao,I have same question

#BlametheNormans

Defenestration means throwing someone out of a window. There's no common word for the day after tomorrow.

Because English has roots in so many other languages. For example, "beef" comes from the French "boeuf".

So... how do you say "cousin" in Chinese?

It's because English has incorporated vocabulary from many different sources. In English, words relating to livestock generally come from Germanic / Norse / Anglo-Saxon sources, but words relating to \*meats\* come from French. This is in large part because of the Norman conquest in 1066 AD, when the French-speaking descendants of Norsemen took political control of England, and the new Norse nobility all spoke French. So the farmers would call it a "cow" or "bull" or "calf" (all words of Germanic origin) but the meat is called "beef" (from French "boeuf"). Same can be seen with swine: "pig", "sow", "boar", "swine" are all Germanic words, but "pork" comes from French. TL;DR: meat words are from French/Latin because rich people spoke French. Animal words are from Germanic sources because that's what the common people spoke.

The explanation I heard, is that the Norman (French) nobility that ate the meat called it "boeuf" (beef), but the english peasants that raised the animal called it "cu". Hence beef and cow.

1) English is not one language. It's several languages smashed together due to the complex societal and political history of the British Isles. The word "cow" is from Proto-Germanic; the word "beef" is from Old French. 2) Chinese has its own difficulties; having a writing system using hundreds and hundreds of symbols has some definite downsides.

Why does Chinese use different tones that are hard to pronounce whereas English isn't a tonal language at all? Look, in English you can speak without them, isn't it simpler? Well, languages are different, every language has some aspects that are more difficult than in others. I personally think that the fact that you can use different words to describe things makes its vocabulary more diverse. Also, following your logic, you can describe any word like this. Why do we need the word "cow" when we can say "a big milk-producing farm animal"? Why do we need the word for "water" if we can say "that liquid stuff we drink?" I am pretty sure Chinese also has words that cannot be translated to English in one word. My native language definitely does, just like there are one-word concepts in English I need a sentence for describing in my native language.

Because English is not actually a language but an amalgamation of different languages. And btw Chinese is waaaaaaaaaay harder than English, it is considered one of the hardest languages in the world. Like top 10 hard for sure.

For the examples you gave, it's quicker (saves a word) to use the noun (bull / cow / calf / beef) than adjective + noun.

It's pretty confusing but to be fair we've been invaded by Romans, Vikings and the French, and then we spread across the planet, and then the internet happened. English has seen some sh** in the past 1000 years or so. So all things considered, it's holding up well enough.

Eh hem, may I interest you with some spicy [cattle-related terms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cattle_terminology?wprov=sfti1)?

Mandarin speaker (as a second language) Whats the word for a younger sister and why is it older than elder sister? Complaining about other languages is a dick move, learn the why of the differences and you learn about the culture and history, otherwise you just sound like a whinging dick

To be fair, you can blame the French for a lot of it. They do the same thing.

I am from China, and I seem to have seen your content on Zhihu, which also complains about the complexity of English words.😏

Most English words come from Latin, German, Greek, Sanskrit, and Goth. A Chinese word is specific to Chinese, as is Korean and Japanese. China was untouched for 14,000 years. During that time the rest of Europe Rome, and the Middle East east just wandered around the other 7/10 of planet Earth exploring, partying, and exchanging DNA. shay shay.

So, how do you say grandparents in your language?

When there's something weird about the English language, you can usually blame the French. This is a joke, but it does have some truth to it. There was a point in time after William the Conquerer from Normandy, France became King of England where a lot of French words were adapted into the English language. English is an old Germanic language that has had old Celtic languages and old French mashed into it.

Because it's dumb. I've solved the question everybody We can all go home now. Nice night for a knight knife fight

I once heard that it's German with a French (not modern french) accent.

As a native/bilingual speaker of both English and Mandarin, I'd have to tell you that Mandarin is without a doubt the harder language. You probably find English "unnecessarily" complicated because you're stilling learning it and getting used to the rules and vocab. But Mandarin has its quirks too, like the myriad of idioms (成语) that make me question whether I can even call myself a native speaker. Another thing that learners find difficult about Mandarin are the 量词 (measure word?), which, if you think about it, are also complex and theoretically unnecessary. And I haven't even mentioned the writing system.

English is an Indo-European language and they tend to all have separate words for those kind of things, far as I know. The IE people were pastoral, relying on sheep, geese, chickens, cattle, pigs, etc. and lived in close proximity with those animals. So the language they spoke probably reflects a close connection with animals and that’s why we end up with unique terms for all the different types. At one time it was relevant. Especially when it comes to making cheese and dairy products, you need to have a female cow that has given birth recently, so we have a word for that too.

As an English speaker I can say the same about Chinese.

We have another word for Chinese people too.

Each language has things that make it needlessly complicated compared to other languages. I think having 26 characters to learn to form every word is much simpler than spending years learning thousands.

Respectfully, I think you’ll find that Chinese tends to do the same thing with familial relationships. Just as English words for cattle are specific and explanatory, so too (as I understand) are the Chinese words for your mother’s brother, father’s older brother, father’s younger brother, etx (whereas in English, they’d simply be your “uncle” regardless of which parent’s sibling he is or their birth order). Every language has different patterns. I think it’s fun to see each language’s quirks :)

A Chinese speaker complaining that English is complicated is what’s wild to me! The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence I guess.

And a castrated bull is a steer. As an English speaker, I love how direct Chinese translations are. It's a lot like German. I learned that violin was 小提琴, and was immediately like "oh, I bet the viola is 中提琴, and the cello is 大提琴". Anyway, the answer is that English has the backbone of a Germanic language which was simplified because Vikings showed up in England and married English women but never learned the language fluently, and then the Normans conquered England so English had European languages grafted onto it, specifically French. The nobility in England used to mostly speak French, while the peasants spoke Old English. So the peasants raise cows (a German word), but the nobility ate beef (a French word). I'll point out that this happens with a lot of more modern Chinese words that came from another language. 西班牙，可口可乐，因特网（I know that's not used all that often anymore), 维他命。Those characters are... not super descriptive, they're just about pronunciation. Coca cola is clever, but you wouldn't know that it's a drink. Why is Spain the land of teeth? I don't know.

Part of the many names of animals has to do with French influence. In the 1100s French Normans took over a lot of southern Britain and started using their words, but they werent working in the fields, they were buying meat in the markets. So farmers would say cow, but the noble would say something like French boeuf (beef). Farmers have hogs, nobles eat porc (pork). Farmers have chickens, nobles eat poulet (poultry). Not only do we have different words for sex  if the animal, but we have words for their reproductive capacity: Cattle -Bull - male cow -Cow - female cow -Steer - male cow with testicles removed, raised for meat -Ox - male cow with testicles removed, raised for work -Heifer - female cow that hasn’t had calfs yet -Calf - baby cow Pigs/hogs -boar - male pig -sow - female pig -barrow - male pig with testicles removed, raised for meat -gilt - female pig that hasn’t had piglets -piglet/hoglet - baby pig

It's super easy. Chinese or Spanish are way harder to learn! Dont give up

We don't hear a lot about Chinese poets.

In case you are unaware, all those “cow” terms also relate to some other animals. For example elephants. Male elephant - bull Female elephant - cow Baby elephant - calf I’m sure there are other animals too. Probably hippo etc but it doesn’t really matter as unless you work in a zoo you don’t really need to use the terms in that context (in northern hemisphere at least). I would suspect these terms were/are super useful when farmers sell their animals at a market. If an auctioneer can call out distinct terms for male cow or female cow it probably has a lot of benefit to the language. Same with sheep (ram or ewe etc).

Natural English speakers have no idea either. Not to make things more complicated, but A male castrated cow (typically used for beef production) is called a steer A young female cow is called a heifer I worked in the beef industry for 4.5 years so I'm forever cursed with that knowledge 😀

I'll more or less guarantee that Chinese has a similar level of complexity in other areas. Languages all tend to have a similar general level of complexity. Actually, linguist John McWhorter argues that English is somewhat less comple/interesting from a linguistics standpoint because a lot of the complexity got chopped off by the Vikings when they took over England and refused to spend the time to learn peoper English and since they were in charge their simplification stuck. For example, English used to have a counter system similar to Japanese, an inflection system similar to Latin, and more! But the Vikings ended all that fun stuff and made English more boring. EDIT as for your specific issue, that's because English took vocabulary from many languages, especially French. When the French conquered England, their language became the language of aristocracy. English used to call it cow meat. But in French that's "bœuf". And English mangled that to make "beef". We kept the word cow for the animal but adopted the French word for the meat because that's what rich people called it.

Others have already pointed out that Chinese has its own examples of being 'so complicated', but something that seems to be missing is why languages complicate things. The reason is simply that more specificity was needed by the language's culture to avoid miscommunications. Cows (and other livestock) used to be almost equivalent to money in ancient England. So much so that the Old English word for cattle *"feoh"* later became the Modern English word fee. A male, female, and young cow were so significantly different in that early culture, that they felt that they needed individual names, and those names stuck even when it became less relevant to the English culture. Same with Chinese. There was enough of a hierarchy within families in ancient China that they felt they needed words to distinguish that hierarchy. Most Chinese families are much smaller than they were historically, yet that lengthy list of words for the English "cousin, aunt and uncle" are still used. As for beef, blame the French for that one. England was ruled by the French for quite some time, so there was a split in the language: French name of the animal for the food on the plate, because the ruling class were the ones actually eating meat, and English name for the animal because the peasants were the ones taking care of the live animals. Beef and cows, pork and pigs, mutton and sheep, etc. You see this with many other things too. French and Latinate words dominate official spheres while Germanic roots dominate the home. A complex history leads to a complex language.

Is the same in Portuguese, we have different words for each, so it's not like I see much of a complication

Hey hey at least our counting system isn’t all over the place, if I wanna say I have three cows that’s what I say, I don’t need a counter word specifically for large animals

The fact that Chinese has different words for older brother and younger brother is crazy for me. Or that English and Chinese have different words for nephew and grandchildren. Tbh this post just reeks of an ignorant judgemental approach to me ngl

You can call them baby cow, male cow, female cow, cow meat etc. and be understood. Bull, calf, cow, steer, beef are just accurate names for them.

I’m no linguist, but I do know that many of modern English’s complexities are because it’s a hodgepodge of different older languages adopted and smashed together over time. So it has the vocabulary and rules of many various languages thrown together. We had no problem using French, Spanish, Welsh, German words and picking the ones we liked over time… Also side note, contrary to the common joke, English DOES has very strict rules. They are usually simply not taught or known by even the native speakers

It’s because we’re a merger of several languages. To add to this a lot of higher class words are French loan words while lower class words are Germanic House - Mansion Shirt - blouse Betrothed - Fiancé Are the ones that come to mind. Most indo-European languages are gendered. So for example in German: Die Katze ( female cat) Der Kater (male cat) To return to the cow analogy: Bull comes from Norse Cow comes from old English Calf comes from the Saxon word for young hoofed animal Beef comes from French meaning “ox” Ox comes from old English and just mean “any of the above, normally adult”

Every language has its complexities. I'm still asking why Russian needs to have different verbs for going by foot vs going by vehicle, yet here we are.

i dono't think thats just english. At least it's not a gendered language like french or german.

All those words for different cows don’t even need to be used as funnily enough you managed to explain *in english* how you would say it in Chinese. A baby cow is… a baby cow, if you’re learning and you hear calf for the first time it won’t take much explaining when someone responds “baby cow”

I speak English natively and sometimes I struggle with it. Although, I think we get most our terms from other places? I know that a *lot* of the terms we use have pieces that are Latin and some words originate from another country but we're slightly changed. This is just what I've seen from some etymology.

Saying cow, bull, calf, and beef are FASTER than adding an extra word. Saving time adds up, and is therefore logical. Hope that makes you feel better

I think the reason is, because the language just can have so many shapes and colors and smells of words. You can describe a lot of things in more details, if the language has a lot of words. Also interesting thing is, that we people thinking in words. And people who know more words are able to think deeply. And people who cannot speak, thinking in images not in words.

To be honest, when I started learning Chinese I found its structure pretty funny and kind of fun. To make an analogy, it felt like I was a kid playing with building blocks while learning vocabulary. However, Chinese and every language has its own complexities. Kinship words, measure words, etc. Since you feel this way about English, which is natural, given your language works another way, other Indo-European languages would be even more of a challenge, since English usually feels way too simple in a lot of cases for their speakers when it comes to word formation. In other aspects, English feels harder, like in the relationship between pronunciation and spelling. Ultimately different languages and even more so different language families with no retraceable genetic relationship in linguistics work in extremely different ways and are usually counter-intuitive for other language families.

Welcome to European languages all mingling together. The words don’t sound similar? That’s because they all have different etymologies and origins. What seems more complicated to me as a dyslexic person is how absolutely bs the spelling is, and how phonetics change literally on a whim. Why did it have to take so much from French? If English had stuck to its Germanic roots more, it could have been much easier. 😂

I mean you can just say male cow, female cow, or baby cow in English and no one will notice or care.

Oh if you want even more frustrations: Male cattle (technically they're all called cattle not cows) are bulls when they're intact, steers when they're castrated Female cattle are cows when they've been pregnant, heifers when they haven't Baby cattle are called calf/calves (just calves, they're all calves) And slaughtered cattle meat is beef But, the lower part of your leg is also a calf, other male species are also called bulls, and bulls are actually quite nimble when you put them into a china shop (Mythbusters showed a bull running around and he didn't break a single thing)

All languages are complicated But if you want a real answer, it's because English is uniquely influenced by French, German, Danish, and to some degree Greek and Latin. French and German are complicated, now combine them. Beef is french, cow is german. Venison is french, deer is german.

To be fair, the only one of those that you actually have to memorize is *beef*. Unless you're going into cow husbandry, you don't really have to specify the sex of the cow. You can say "baby cow" or "male cow" and no one will think that's odd. Although female is seen almost as the "default" for cows, so "female cow" might be a little odd.

There are a few reasons. 1: English absorbed many languages from different areas, and one word from one place ended up being used more than another word for another place. Trade was a major part of this exchange, since one region would call its products by one term, while another region specializing in something slightly different would use a different term. 2: Distance causes disturbances. Over time, English has changed due to words evolving in one place differently from another. When the printing press came about, there was a debate about calling an egg "æg" or even "eyren". These dialectic differences caused by melding cultures introduced variations to many words, though in English, most variations are still acceptable (such as how male cow, female cow, baby cow, and even cow meat are all acceptable, though less common). 3: English is a sledge hammer. English is based on lower level logic without much syntax. It blatantly hammers out the associations of words with all nuances literally spelled out. Instead of "can go pool", you may say "can we go to the pool". This blunt approach prioritizes function to the point that other values are often left out. If it works, people use it without questioning it. Some of this is a cultural phenomena, wherein the speakers tended to prioritize clarity and purpose over beauty. 3.1: In any case, this does allow English to absorb other words more fluidly. English can technically incorporate any word from any language since it can technically construct any concept before and after any other word. In the English version of the book "Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanel Kant, the preface actually covers several German words that will be used since a direct translation does not exist. Rather than make up a word, it's easiest to simply add it to the lexicon in the preface and use it as is.

At least we don’t gender everything. 

Not to be a yeah but... But Chinese is so complicated y'all mugged the European alphabet (Pinyin) to make it easier for Chinese people to learn Chinese.

As a native English speaker, I find it to be an absurd language much of the time. Seriously, I can't have a conversation without making puns based off what the other person is saying.

Each language has its own disadvantage. English due to mixing many languages ​​should have complications in grammar, pronunciation ... Chinese and Japanese language, also due to the meager syllable, they have to depend on Chinese characters: very difficult to remember. My native language is Vietnamese without using Chinese characters because of the diversity of syllables and tones but this is also a difficult point for those who want to learn.

The old Indo-Europeans 5000 years ago (give or take) were horse riding ranchers. Cows, horses, sheep and the like were integral to their lifestyles, hence they developed a large vocabulary relating to those animals. These are the cultural ancestors of the English, among others, and the effects of which remain to this day.

As a native English speaker, I find English absolutely wild sometimes.

Why don't we call mittens hand socks? Why don't we call umbrellas hats on a stick? Why don't we call leaves tree hair?

While the terms may be correct, English speakers will still call a baby cow a baby cow. Bulls initially aren’t seen as male cows, they’re seen as Bulls, some people to this day aren’t aware that they’re in the same household lol! Buuuut the beef thing, you got me on that one lol