"他要鱼。"
Translation:He wants fish.
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要 just means want， need， sometimes means “is going to”， '他要走了'means ‘he is going to leave’
Isn't 鱼肉 a better way to say fish as in food you eat? Thats how I learned it previously.
1714
No. It has to do with how foods are normally served. Fish and chicken are usually served whole. If you use the terms 鱼肉, 鸡肉 you refer to a fillet or the minced meat.
that makes sense. So if I eat pieces of chicken (like fried chicken from KFC) would I then use 肉?
There are several variations, perhaps even enough to satisfy Conor MacSweeney (of the Young Offenders), such as:
- 鸡肉 = chicken meat
- 鸡块 = chicken nugget(s)
- 鸡米花 = chicken nugget(s) / popcorn chicken
- 柠檬鸡 = lemon chicken
- 炸鸡 = fried chicken
- 鸡丁 = diced chicken (meat)
- 烤鸡 = roast(ed) chicken
- 宫保鸡丁 = Kung Pao chicken (aka "spicy diced chicken")
- 醉鸡 = chicken in rice wine (aka "drunken chicken")
and so forth.
A funny one that offers insight into how the Chinese language works (how words are connected together to form other words or phrases) is 口水鸡 , which indicates "steamed chicken with chili sauce," but literally, 口水 means "saliva," being a compound of 口 , mouth, and 水 , water (i.e., saliva = mouth water); hence, "mouth water chicken," or "mouth watering chicken," or "saliva chicken," if you prefer to read it that way, refers to this dish made of chicken with chili sauce. Of course, "mouth watering chicken" is the most sensible of the literal translations in English.
Then there is this man, who often has a bucket of KFC on his mind (so to speak), and tells us the truth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyQJH615KwA
