Lesson 50 Chicken little

ポイント
Michael and Taro are talking about what they did last weekend.

ダイアログ
Taro: I went to a restaurant on Saturday. I ate one chicken.
Michael: You ate a whole chicken!?
Taro: It was only small.

解説
Michael is very surprised to hear that Taro ate a complete chicken. But Taro only ate a normal-sized piece of chicken. Although chickens the animals are countable, chicken the meat is not, so Taro should just say “I ate chicken.” Some animals have different names from their meat (pigs/pork, cows/beef, etc.), but others don’t, especially animals that aren’t widely eaten, like dogs and horses. This means you should use plural nouns to talk about animals in general: “I like dogs” means you like dogs the animals, and “I like dog” means you like eating dog meat.