Sheep,Yang. Goat, Shan-yang. Pig, Zhu.
I’ve got horse and cow and dog and cat down, but sheep and goat and pig remain elusive, so I wanted to write them down here, in hopes that they’ll stick.
Saying the sounds to Emmy, I realized how close the sheep and goat sounds are — I maybe bleet a shorter “baaah” for the goat, but basically they’re the same as far as I know — so it’s interesting that “goat” in Mandarin translates to “mountain sheep.” Having never given them much thought, I guess I didn’t realize how closely related they are, beyond each being sources of delicious cheese.
You can hear the Google Translate woman — who has a very Beijing accent — say goat here. Her pronunciation is very shh — shan-yang Though Rich’s pronunciation (and so the pronunciation in our house) is more san-yang.
Now, for a nice joke involving a yang, a san-yang and a zhu…
