Ilima in Vancouver, Canada, reports not everyone understands when she tells them she’s vegetarian. Some people assume, for example, that she doesn’t eat red meat but may enjoy chicken. Part of the issue may involve what linguists call prototype theory. If you’re asked to think of a bird, the image that pops into your head is likely something that resembles a robin or a sparrow, not a penguin or an ostrich, even though those animals are birds as well. Our mental groupings often have central prototypes of very common, ordinary items, and then fuzzier edges of rarer, more unusual items, so when it comes to meat, there’s the prototype of beef and pork, but then less clearly delineated categories of animal flesh, such as fish, shellfish, and chicken. Many people avoid red meat, but make exceptions for some of the other varieties of meat. Sometimes there’s a similar lack of clarity when it comes to vegan versus vegetarian. Someone whose consumption of animal flesh is limited to fish is a pescatarian. Is there a specific word for someone who eats poultry and fish but not red meat? Pollopescatarian, maybe? This is part of a complete episode.
In English, you can express skepticism with the classic saying when pigs fly. In Tagalog, a similar sentiment is expressed with a phrase that translates “when the crow turns white, when the heron turns black,” and there’s a Hungarian phrase that...
Dax in Santa Cruz, California, wonders: Now that we’re into the 21st century, when will people stop saying that initial 20 when referring to a year such as 2028 the way we dropped the 19 in the term 1980s and just started referring to the ’80s? This...
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