Reminder to everyone that we are officially transitioning from the Year of the Rat to the Year of the Ox, so update your diets accordingly
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Anyway yeah the current year is the year of the 牛 (niu), which sounds better as "ox" I guess but it's just "cow" Or "bovine" (annoyingly, if you're a farmer all of the common words for bovines are specific, like "cow" is female)
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I mean the word 牛 by itself in Chinese can also just mean "beef" Which is the case in most languages that didn't develop the distinction between the names for animals and their meat that English did
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Anyway this is a whole thing because technically the distinction between an "ox" and other kinds of cattle is a matter of function and not biology - an ox is usually a castrated male (a steer) but all it means is that it's been trained to pull a plow and is for work, not food
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An ox can technically be a cow or a bull too, in a pinch And in more ancient farming cultures that hadn't bred animals as extensively as in later years, the distinction between working animals and meat animals wasn't nearly so sharp
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Especially with ancient China not being much of a dairy culture (lactose intolerance being much more common) compared to Europe or India And the original 牛 they kept were probably water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) not Bos taurus It's a whole complicated thing
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Anyway the English translations seem to be trying to pick the more masculine word for the animal whenever possible, although I guess they picked "Ox" instead of "Bull" because "Bull" was TOO masculine
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Like, ranchers only keep intact bulls around at all for stud purposes and no one wants to be thinking about that Then again, that's also generally the only reason people keep roosters around, but they had fewer good choices for how to translate "chicken"
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Anyway the zodiac sign really is just "cow", not "ox", "pig", not "boar", "chicken", not "rooster" What I find most interesting is 羊, "caprid", which we don't have a common word for in English
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There are two famous kinds of domesticated caprid - sheep and goats And the problem is in our culture sheep and goats have almost exactly opposite cultural connotations Hell the Bible has a parable to that effect
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So whether the translator picks "Sheep" or "Goat" as the name of the zodiac sign is this whole fraught thing, a typical Westerner will have very different reactions to either one I think you can safely call this the result of Christian religious influence
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Although, yes, there's plenty of other species the word 羊 applies to, like antelope, Ibex, musk ox, etc
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End of conversation
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