"Il cuoco ha un maiale."
Translation:The cook has a pig.
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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).
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."
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.
See also this recipe:
http://ricette.donnamoderna.com/maiale-alle-mandorle-e-vino-cotto
It is called "Maiale alle mandorle e vino cotto"