TIL #2 – Gendered nouns for cows vs. chickens
Many intermediate Japanese learners are familiar with the words オス and メス, but there's more…
What's a TIL?
TIL is an acronym for the phrase ‘Today I learned,’ and is often used to share a piece of knowledge or fact that was recently learned.
What does it mean in the context of this blog?
TIL is a series of short articles about a word, a phrase, or something else related to the Japanese language.
Funny/useful words or expressions that I learned which surprised me, and that I would like to share on this blog. It's a way to get myself in the habit of posting more regularly.
Don't expect daily TILs, but I will do my best to write frequently.
TIL there used to be two different kanji pairs for female and male animals
I think many intermediate to advanced Japanese learners are familiar with the words オス to describe a male animal, and メス to describe a female animal.
I always thought they were only written 雄 and 雌 with the compound word 雌雄（しゆう）meaning the two sexes, but it seems there is another pair of kanji that means the same: 牝牡（ひんぼ）
I did a bit of research, and it seems that originally, 雌・雄 were used for chickens and bird-like animals. This explains why there is the 隹 part in both of these. This part is called ふるとり (old bird), and appears in many words like 雀（すずめ：sparrow）雛（ひな：chick）雁（がん：goose）.
In 牝牡, both characters have the 牜left part, which is just a distorted 牛（うし：cow）. This is why it was used for cows, and similar animals like horses and deer.
Words for female and male animals
When talking about cows, Japanese uses prefixes like お for male, め for female, and こ for children.
This becomes 牡牛（おうし：bull）、牝牛（めうし：cow）and 仔牛（こうし：calf）(Here I use 仔 which is used for young animals exclusively, but it is also often written with a simple 子).
The same pattern applies to other cow-like animals too:
鹿（しか：deer）牡鹿（おじか：buck）牝鹿（めじか：doe）仔鹿（こじか：fawn）—notice the voicing with the added ゛.
馬（うま：horse）牡馬（おうま or ぼば：stallion）牝馬（めうま or ひんば：mare）仔馬（こうま：foal）
Finally, for birds and chicken, I found the words 雄鶏（おんどり：rooster）and 雌鶏（めんどり：hen）.
Chicks use the different word 雛（ひな）.
Cow-like animals originally use 牝牡, but they can also use 雌雄, which has taken a broader meaning and can be used with almost any noun. Birds, however, cannot use 牝牡 which is still limited to cow-like animals.