30,000 pigs

[MiG]

I love it! languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2951

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/76069/dynamic/2011/02/correction.jpg

[CrazyMike]

30,000 pigs. How many angry birds is that?

[DWhite]

While I love the word play, I question the story. I am not sure if a pig farmer would refer to sows and pigs as if they were different. But unless he was purposely trying to confuse the poor reporter, he more likely would have said “pigs” or “sows and boars”. I just don’t see him saying sows and pigs.

That’s like saying mares and horses, hens and chickens, or women and humans.

[herbie_popnecker]

No he said 30 sows and pigs and was misheard as 30 thousand pigs…
1 sows and
2 sows and
3 sows and
ready or not here i come…

[mossINmyTOES]

Quick!!! Somebody send it to Letterman!!

[MiG]

[quote=“DWhite”]While I love the word play, I question the story. I am not sure if a pig farmer would refer to sows and pigs as if they were different. But unless he was purposely trying to confuse the poor reporter, he more likely would have said “pigs” or “sows and boars”. I just don’t see him saying sows and pigs.

That’s like saying mares and horses, hens and chickens, or women and humans.[/quote]

I think it’s another example where North American English probably differs … The linkmakes the claim that a farmer would probably use very precise language. In this case pig isn’t the species name, but refers to a young member of the species. So like hens and chicks in your analogy, and the reporter not knowing the difference between chicks and chickens.

piggery owner could have been amplified by the use of pig in its specific or “marked” form — that is, meaning ‘a young member of the domesticated subspecies Sus scrofa domesticus’ rather than the general or “unmarked” version, ‘any member of Sus scrofa domesticus.’ As the Oxford English Dictionary explains under sense 2a of pig, the more specific sense of the word is “chiefly used in periods when and regions where the usual words for an adult pig are swine, hog, sow, or boar.” ** (The sense is now mainly restricted to North America, according to the OED.)** So if the hapless reporter wasn’t expecting the semantic distinction of sow vs. pig as used in animal husbandry, then it would be much easier to construe the remark as referring to pigs in the general sense.

[DWhite]

Of my 15 - count em - 15 friends on facebook, one of them happens to the daughter of my wife’s cousin in Ireland. She just happened to be online just now and I checked with her. She grew up on a sheep farm so I give her credibility.

She said British farmers often refer to piglets as pigs. But she did add that the average litter is 15 so there probably weren’t many sows in the river and certainly no boars.

[MiG]

I don’t know why, but I’m reminded of this:

[herbie_popnecker]

When we first moved here we had a hobby farm. I bought a couple weaner pigs to fatten and the kids wanted to know why I got pigs you can only make hot dogs out of…