牛乳、ミルク、お乳

[Maxful]

Hi masaegu san, I would like to know what are the differences between 牛乳、ミルク、and お乳?

From what I know (but I could be wrong), 牛乳 is equivalent to "Cow milk", ミルク is equivalent to "Milk" and "Creamer" and お乳 is equivalent to "Breast milk".

But I am curious to know if I should use ミルク or お乳 when referring to human breast milk and milk of goat?

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by Maxful

Hi masaegu san, I would like to know what are the differences between 牛乳、ミルク、and お乳?

From what I know (but I could be wrong), 牛乳 is equivalent to "Cow milk", ミルク is equivalent to "Milk" and "Creamer" and お乳 is equivalent to "Breast milk".

But I am curious to know if I should use ミルク or お乳 when referring to human breast milk and milk of goat?

Not masaegu, but I'll take a crack at it what I can answer.

牛乳 is specifically cow milk. The two kanji there are 牛 (cow) and 乳 (milk).

ミルク is commercially sold milk, usually cow's milk, according to Wiktionary. I don't think you can use ミルク for human breast milk.

お乳 is any type of milk: human, goat, etc.

Another word for milk is 母乳 (mother's milk). I wonder how that one is related to the others.

Wikipedia authors use 母乳 from what I can tell (it's more technical/scientific than お乳 from what I gather), and in the article on 乳房 (breast), it claims お乳 is a synonym for breast as well (and if you drop the お, it's another way).

For those who are curious, the readings of all these kanji are
お乳（ちち）
母乳（ぼにゅう）
牛乳（ぎゅうにゅう）
乳房（にゅうぼう）

[RealJames]

I'd like to add one thing,
to the best of my understanding 牛乳 is cow milk for drinking, like, as you buy it, not straight from the cow, that would be the 3rd one, お乳, or ミルク.
ミルク is anything you'd call milk, that you could theoretically drink, from the tit or commercial or wherever, but not a from a whale for example.

I could be off... there is some drunken advice being thrown at me from across the room.

[evanny]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

it claims お乳 is a synonym for breast as well

i think the ちち pronunciation is more or less international thing for saying breasts/boobs.
well when here someone is immature they use slang ちち ("čiči" pronounced exactly the same) for breasts. i think i've heard it used in some movies also.
so...maybe not a good idea to use it when speaking about milk.

[chryuop]

Originally Posted by evanny

i think the ちち pronunciation is more or less international thing for saying breasts/boobs.
well when here someone is immature they use slang ちち ("čiči" pronounced exactly the same) for breasts. i think i've heard it used in some movies also.
so...maybe not a good idea to use it when speaking about milk.

???? International? In 1 country they use one word and you say international? In Italian I know for sure chichi means nothing. In English as far as I know it means nothing too and I guess same for French and Spanish. It would be interesting to hear from a German and a Chinese person and we covered the most spoken languages on earth

[evanny]

hmm. i don't know why but i had a feeling it was more or less a word that represented breasts in several languages.

[Decimus]

Originally Posted by chryuop

???? International? In 1 country they use one word and you say international? In Italian I know for sure chichi means nothing. In English as far as I know it means nothing too and I guess same for French and Spanish. It would be interesting to hear from a German and a Chinese person and we covered the most spoken languages on earth

I'm Chinese.

In pinyin it would be "jiji" (the vowel is slightly different, but that's the closest you can get), but no combination I know of corresponds to 'breast' or 'tit'.

"Cici" does mean 'tit' in Hungarian though. It also has a pronunciation [ˈt͡sit͡si]that is nearly identical to 「ちち」 [t͡sit͡si], 'though it does have a stress on the first syllable. That said, the letter 'č' does not occur in the Hungarian alphabet.

A quick check through Latvian dictionaries (note Evanny's location) gives "zīlīte", "pups" and "muļķis" as equivalents for the English 'tit', but no mention is made of "cici" or "čiči". Furthermore, in the Lavtian alphabet, 'č' corresponds to the consonant [t͡ʃ] (as in the English 'chair') instead of [t͡s] (as in 'Tsar'.). The consonant [t͡s] is written as a plain 'c' in Latvian instead.

The letter 'č' also denotes the consonant [t͡ʃ] in most Eastern European languages.

"čiči" seems to be present in Mongolian though, but in this case it has a meaning similar to 'sprout' or 'prick', but can also be used as a slang term for 'penis'. Think of it as similar to the English word "prick".

This seems to be traceable to some sort of Sino-North Caucasian etymology, and the Korean word "자지" (jaji) is also rather similar. It's also a slang term for 'penis'.

(Please note that most of the examples above can be rather vulgar, and I apologize if anyone took offence.)

Still, this is still hardly 'international', and most of the meanings are ironically different.

[evanny]

pups = tit/breast (singular form).
č alone is the sound like in the chair but či sounds like japanese ち（chi)

[File0]

Originally Posted by Decimus

"Cici" does mean 'tit' in Hungarian though. It also has a pronunciation [ˈt͡sit͡si]that is nearly identical to 「ちち」 [t͡sit͡si], 'though it does have a stress on the first syllable. That said, the letter 'č' does not occur in the Hungarian alphabet.

That's 100% right (but how did you know?) it's the children' word so it's nasty from a grown up's mouth.
I didn't want to say any more but...
English have the word titty with the same meaning. It's almost exactly said with the same pronunciation, so it's basically present there, just written different. Which of course doesn't mean it is present in every language...

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by chryuop

???? International? In 1 country they use one word and you say international? In Italian I know for sure chichi means nothing. In English as far as I know it means nothing too and I guess same for French and Spanish. It would be interesting to hear from a German and a Chinese person and we covered the most spoken languages on earth

In English, "chichis" are a slang way of saying breasts. It's sort of a more naughty-child version of "titties" or "tits." I say this with the authority of a native English speaker.

Furthemore, it's slang for the same thing in Spanish: chichis - Diccionario Ingles-Español WordReference.com