English is funny

Ever wonder why did the English make up so many words refering to almost the same things?

Get the idea?

compare English with another widely used language - Mandarin.

In Madarin, logical combinations are used to describe the above names for animals.

1. there is a generic name for an animal. e.g. cattle = "NIU", Horse = "MA" etc

2. genders are expressed as combinations of words. i.e. Male = "GONG", Female = "Mu", Baby = "Xiao" (literally mean "small" or "young"), Meat ="Rou".

Thus, Bull = "Gong Niu", cow = "mu niu", calf = "Xiao niu", Beef = "Niu Rou"

Stallion = "Gong Ma", Mare = "mu ma"....

see the logic?

This can go on for all animals without the need to make up new names for every gender/meat.

For example: just to describe gender (male & female only) for the above 6 animals, English requires 18 different words. (see above table)

Madarin, on the other hand, requires only 8 words.

To describe gender, baby and meat for the above 6 animals, English requires 30 different words.

However, Madarin requires 10 words only.

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Furthermore, there are inconsistencies in English in this regards.

for example:

English doesn't have different words for beef cattle and dairy cattle.

It uses the Mandarin approach, i.e. logical combination.

cattle for meat production = "Beef" + "cattle"

cattle for milk production = "Dairy" + "cattle"

Now, isn't English funny?

and we wondered why the obvious misunderstanding between English speaking Nations and the rest of the world.