kake: The word "kake" written in white fixed-font on a black background. (Default)
Kake ([personal profile] kake) wrote 2010-04-29 06:26 pm (UTC)

Ramblings on the subject of default species

Like 肉 without any modifiers is so obviously pork to me that I would never even think to explain it.

I have been thinking about this, and I suppose it's not quite the same thing, since eggs are more uniform than meat, but I've noticed that a lot of Chinese menus specify "chicken egg" as in 雞蛋, whereas I would never do that in English — the default egg is that of a chicken. I'd not think to mention that if I was telling someone about British food though! I get the (perhaps mistaken) impression that 蛋 on its own is usually/often a duck egg, e.g. 鹹蛋黃 is salted duck egg yolk, but I rarely if ever see the 鴨 in there.

Not sure what my default "meat" would be in English... probably beef.

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