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As far as I know, pig is the animal while the pork is the meat we buy and eat :-)
Italian* :P Maiale is used to refer to both the animal and its meat, porco actually mostly refers to the animal, but it's considered vulgar in its base form; I believe French is closer to the English usage with cochon for pig and porc for pork.
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Ithank you very much, I meant to say Italian sorry. I remember my granma saying "porca miseria!" all the time :) or referring to someone with bad manners as porco too I didnt know it was vulgar tho. So when my answer was "the cook has a pork" probably is wrong because in this case would be "has pork" when referring to the meat. No article in that case?
"Porca miseria" is a very mild exclamation, but since the poor pig is included in so much swearing, cussing and insulting exclamations it started feeling like a bad word itself. Most farmers I've heard don't care about that and call it with its proper name (maiale was originally a castrated pig).
Yeah, pork being meat is an uncountable noun, so you can't use the indefinite article; in Italian you could use the partitive article instead (il cuoco ha del maiale).
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I learned on Memrise that "carne di maiale" is "pork" in Italian. In French "cochon" means "pig". At a place where I used to work, the boss and his wife were French. She was originally from France and he was from Quebec. One day she said something to him in French and then asked me if I understood what she said to him. I replied, "Something about pig" because the only word I understood was "cochon". Then she replied, "I called him a pig."
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"Maiale" means "pig", not "pork". Pork is the meat from a pig, like steaks or beef are the meat of the cow. If we wanted to say "The cook has a cow" , it would be "Il cuoco ha una mucca", not "Il cuoco ha una carne", since that would mean "The cook has a meat".
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I know, I know. And I sympathise. But if you are translating from Italian into English, believe me, saying "The cook has A pork" is incorrect. It doesn't mean the same thing. "Maiale" does mean both "pig" and "pork", but "pig" is the actual animal (of which you may have one or more), and "pork" is the meat of the pig. You may have "some pork", "lots of pork" or "no pork". But you cannot have A pork. Not in English, anyway.
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What @lorenagay is trying to say is that "pork", as a uncountable noun in english, you cannot use the article A.
"The cook has pork" or "The cook has some pork" are both correct.
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In Italian it may be different and we don't have any information about this.
There are many sentences in this course which are ungrammatical by the norms of English language.
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I actually think you both are right, it can't be used with indefinite article when it means "pork".
But the sentence is still misleading for me
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See also this recipe:
http://ricette.donnamoderna.com/maiale-alle-mandorle-e-vino-cotto
It is called "Maiale alle mandorle e vino cotto"
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Is "the cook has pork" a possible answer? If not, how would you say this in Italian?
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Due to the presence of the article "a", it isn't possible to translate the sentence without it, without changing the meaning. "Il cuoco ha maiale".
What is the correct pronunciation for "ha"? With an "æ" sound as in "cat" or a "a:" as in "father"? It almost seems as she speaks "è"
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Forget the pronunciation of "ha" in this sentence (Duolingo should really do something about it). In "ha", the h is soundless (ie it is not pronounced at all) and the a is the one in "father" ("a:" as you correctly pointed out)
does it make sense to say the cook has a pig? so many of these sentences are not making sense.
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But, the animal is not a food... We could say that the chef has a dog, and is not food either.
