this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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Growing up in rural Nepal, my grandfather had 6 cows(Bos taurus) and 4 buffaloes (Bubalus bubalis) and a few goats. We owned a big forested land and the cattle and goats roamed there all day and came back in the evening. I think they also maintained the local football field sometimes. We (our cattle) were pretty much the majority milk supplier in our village.
My memory could be decieving me, and english is like my 4th language, but none of our cows had testicles.
I don't know if it would be funnier if you pulled all this out of your ass for the joke, or if it was all real.
On one hand, an elaborate troll.
On the other, a scientifically well-learned polyglot cattle-farmer from Nepal with an unreliable memory and a penchant for pedantry.
The English language is missing a gender neutral term for a cow/bull.
Cows are female
Bulls are male
Steers are castrated bulls
Cattle - the term for multiple cows and/or bulls and/or steers
It’s odd because every other animal with gendered language has a gender neutral term. Take chicken for example.
Hens are female
Roosters (or Cocks) are male
Capons are castrated roosters
It’s so nice to have a word like chicken to describe all these animals. But no word for that exists for cow/bull in English.
The writer of the tumblr post above either didn’t know the right word to use would be “Bull,” or the writer wanted to make sure they were understood so used the word Cow. Which… linguistically at this point may have become the gender neutral term for this animal because people need one.
Cow is such a common word, and bull is so uncommon that to be understood by everyone, cow might just be the best word.
Though anyone with knowledge of animal husbandry would be baffled because by the strict definition cows are always female.
I’m sorry you had to learn this nightmare language.
Which do chicken breasts come from?
And the bulls?