Different conventions for animal meat

Question

After reading this awesome question, I got to thinking about different animal meat. Upon researching a little, there seems to be different conventions in referring to different meats.

Using 訓読み

（鳥・鶏）肉　→　とりにく
豚肉　→　ぶたにく

Using 音読み

牛肉　→　ぎゅうにく
羊肉　→　ようにく
豚肉　→　とんにく
鶏肉　→　けいにく

[Animal] + の + 肉

子牛の肉　→　こうしのにく　(veal)
かにの肉　→　crab meat

Why is there not one consistent way of doing this?

Answer 1

There is no convenient rule you can use. The different pronunciations come from the different origins of the words.

There are basically three kinds of words that are written in kanji in Japanese.

• 和語 were developed in Japan, 訓読み words are likely to be 和語
• 漢語 originated in China, 音読み words are likely to be 漢語
• There are also combinations of 和語 and 漢語, and those words are called 湯桶読み.

For more information: http://www.iwanami.co.jp/moreinfo/0802060/top3.html .

By the way there are 鹿肉(しかにく), 馬肉(ばにく) also. Personally I never heard of 豚肉 as とんにく.

Answer 2

It's even more inconsistent than that. Gairaigo is sometimes used for meat. Apparently, the animal is still typically referred to with a non-gairaigo word, but the meat is sometimes (but not always) referred to by a gairaigo word.

• ラム is sometimes used for lamb (the meat)
• マトン is sometimes used for mutton (meat of an old sheep, hence the English expression mutton dressed as lamb)
• チキン is sometimes used for chicken (the meat)
• オージービーフ for Aussie beef

This inconsistency isn't unique to Japanese, though. In English, the words for animals come from different languages than the words for the meat: the animals are of Germanic etymology, whereas the meats are of French etymology, according to this answer on Linguistics Stack Exchange. The Germanic words would be older than the French words.