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I am constructing a maths word problem and I would like to have differently coloured lambs as the main subject. However, I am not sure about the following points:

  • What language level is "ewe" and "lamb"?
  • Is it preferable to write "fleece" or "wool"?
  • Is it correct to say "brown fleeced lamb" at all? Or better "brown-fleeced lamb"?

The target audience is young adults (20+) in an ESL environment.

Aftermath (pun intended): My initial question is indeed a very bad one. Introducing real world examples and trying to express it in a rather fancy way with rather uncommon words does not help any student. I now realise: Word problems in maths should be devoid of any applications, since it diverts attention from the intended computation exercise. As you see in the comments and answers, it was more interesting to contextualise my initial question in an unrelated way or interpreting more into it than intended or necessary. Same would go for students, I think. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see how complicated the rules are for such word constructs and what the expectations are. Thanks to anyone who invested in this discussion. I learned a lot.

Peter Strouvelle
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    Do not answer in comments. If you have an answer, write an answer. Comments are for clarifications (all received so far have been incorporated into the question). – Andrew Leach Feb 13 '23 at 10:50
  • There are multiple questions here, but regarding hyphenation of "brown fleece" see this question and maybe this one: probably you should hyphenate but it's not required. – Stuart F Feb 13 '23 at 12:50
  • Why not choose another animal? And, if I may, if your context is ESL why are you doing math? What kind of math problem are you trying to construct? It sounds to me like the basic arithmetic language issues could be presented using a more young-person friendly context. Sheep makes me think of little kids [haha]. – Lambie Feb 14 '23 at 16:55
  • That is maybe a misinterpretation (someone edited my OP and I thought it to be correct). I am teaching a maths course at a university. My mothertongue is German, but we are obliged to teach our international students in English language. Most of them do not have B2 and English is not their first language. I did not think my question would make such a stir. However, I have reformulated my word problem. The question why lambs and not anything else, is a good one. – Peter Strouvelle Feb 15 '23 at 12:40

4 Answers4

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Based on thirty years of teaching English to Italian learners, I would expect students at an Intermediate level (B1) to be very familiar with the terms:

  • sheep
  • lamb
  • wool

Learners at Upper-Intermediate level (B2) might be familiar with the following terms if they have studied the vocabulary of agriculture and farm animals; not all reference/course books cover this topic. The OP might have to translate these terms in the students' mother tongue, which is the quickest way, but not necessarily the best. However, since the list is short, and the class is made up of 20-year olds, it shouldn't be a problem.

  • ewe
  • ram
  • fleece

The easiest way to describe the colour of sheep wool is just saying the colour of the wool or animal.

Three black sheep/lambs = black wool/ fleeces
Three brown sheep/lambs = brown wool/ fleeces
Four white ewes/rams = white wool/ fleeces

Mari-Lou A
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    This is not quite the answer I was hoping for. I explicitly asked how to say "lamb with black fleece", not just "black fleece" or "black sheep" (I do not want to use the latter expression). And, whether "black-fleeced lamb" is a proper way to shorten "lamb with black fleece". – Peter Strouvelle Feb 13 '23 at 12:28
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    A lamb with a black fleece is (by definition) a black lamb, because it's the fleece which gives the lamb its colour. If you don't want to use "black sheep", even though it's entirely correct, choose a different colour. By accident or design, you can even find pink sheep! – Andrew Leach Feb 13 '23 at 12:59
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    @PeterStrouvelle The right was to say "lamb with black fleece" is "black lamb" (which conveniently avoids "black sheep"). – Martin Bonner supports Monica Feb 13 '23 at 13:57
  • If it seems confusing to see why "a black lamb" means "a lamb with a black fleece", think of "a blonde woman". Although this doesn't work for all hair colors! – oerkelens Feb 13 '23 at 17:18
  • I don't think I've ever seen fleeces in plural form. I'm guessing if it's sheep shearing season, and you have the fleece of 5 sheep beside you, you might have a stack of fleeces. But in general, I've only ever seen fleece as a singular noun. – Flydog57 Feb 14 '23 at 02:00
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    @oerkelens fleece covers the whole lamb, thickly enough that we can barely see any of it's skin. That is not the case with humans (even hirsute ones). – RonJohn Feb 14 '23 at 03:58
  • If it's only the body that's black, we can be more specific by adding adjectives such as "white-faced" (and although it's a long time since I kept sheep, I vaguely recall some breeds are even named that way). – Toby Speight Feb 14 '23 at 06:50
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    @oerkelens Sorry. "Black lamb, black ewe, black ram" etc. are the conventional English terms used by people handling them. "Coloured", in animal management, typically means piebald. And don't even dream of writing "sheep of colour"... – Mark Morgan Lloyd Feb 14 '23 at 09:20
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    Saying things like "[color]-fleeced [animal]" sounds overly flowery and poetic to me. The normal wording for most animals is to simply pair the color of its visible surface with the type of animal. Black sheep, brown dog, blue spider, white lamb... these are normal. If you're trying to avoid "black sheep" due to its metaphorical usage to describe the member of a family who stands out as different, I would say don't bother. That derives from the fact that black sheep do visually stand out from the herd. No one will mistake your math problem for a commentary on an odd brother or sister. – bubbleking Feb 14 '23 at 16:53
  • Everything you say is spot on but I question the OP's basic premise about teaching math (constructing a math problem) with sheep to 20-year-olds? – Lambie Feb 14 '23 at 17:00
  • @Lambie Is there something particularly childish about sheep? I don't see why you couldn't ask a complicated stats problem about different colored sheep. And while there's not as many places where you'd have discrete quantities of things, calculus too. – Radvylf Programs Feb 14 '23 at 19:51
  • @RadvylfPrograms You didn't get the joke. – Lambie Feb 14 '23 at 20:32
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    @MarkMorganLloyd - 'writing sheep of colour' - that would be really baa - d. – Michael Harvey Feb 14 '23 at 20:43
  • @Lambie That's probably the least useful thing you could've replied with – Radvylf Programs Feb 14 '23 at 20:48
  • @RadvylfPrograms He said a math problem in ESL. You think that means statistics? In any case, sheep and colors and numbers makes me think of children. The fact I made a joke doesn't mean that kid in my comment didn't have two meanings. But I guess someone with a handle name of program might not be so willing to laugh. As they say in Yiddish: useful, smuseful. – Lambie Feb 14 '23 at 20:49
  • @Lambie I'm not sure what you're trying to say. First you say that it would be childish to teach math to 20 year olds with colored sheep. Then when I reply that there's perfectly reasonable places to use sheep as examples in the sort of math that 20 year olds learn, you say you were joking. But what was the joke? If was just "sheep make me think of children" then I don't get it (I mean, you could use them in a math problem for little children, but different colors of sheep would be perfectly reasonable as a subject of an, e.g., statistics word problem). – Radvylf Programs Feb 14 '23 at 20:56
  • @RadvylfPrograms The joke is that the word kid is a baby goat. And children. And yes, for me, math + sheep in a math problem = children. This is what it evokes for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoOv7TcnqBM – Lambie Feb 14 '23 at 21:05
  • @Lambie You literally didn't use the word "kid" in your comment on this answer. I wasn't replying to, and hadn't seen, the one on the question. – Radvylf Programs Feb 14 '23 at 21:25
  • @Flydog57 When a sheep is expertly shorn its fleece retains its structure. If several fleece were laid out for inspection (e.g. because the shearer wanted to demonstrate that there was a mix of breeds in the flock with significant difference in fleece quality) experience suggests that they would be likely to be referred to as "fleeces", while if they'd been folded by the shearer's assistant and put into a pack for shipping either "fleece" or "fleeces" might be used. Apart from that, "fleeces" is invariably used if talking about fleece-like jackets from e.g. Berghaus. – Mark Morgan Lloyd Feb 15 '23 at 08:30
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Having lived in four different (non-English speaking) European countries, I can attest that reasonably fluent speakers of English as a second language:

  • almost always know the words lamb and wool;
  • absolutely cannot be relied upon to know the words ewe and fleece.

Therefore, I would recommend either avoiding the latter two words or including an explanation. Accordingly, it is better to use wool than fleece in a case like this. I can't think of any connotation of fleece that is not carried by wool and that is of importance when the information conveyed is simply the colour.

This also means that black-woolled (or -wooled) is preferable to black-fleeced. I believe I’m correct in saying that sheep farmers, for instance, are more likely to refer to their animals as white-woolled, black-woolled etc. than as white-fleeced etc.

Edit (on 2023-02-14, to add example):

The following example is from the ‘Farming’ section of the Irish Independent (February 08 2022):

Fifteen years ago, John Parke decided to add a pop of colour to his Texel flock when he bought his first black-woolled sheep.

As for using a hyphen or not, both are correct but the hyphen is usually recommended.

Segorian
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  • Even native English speakers cannot be relied upon to know ewe and fleece (except in the sense of the synthetic fabric). – user3634 Feb 14 '23 at 11:05
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    @user3634 — I guess you’re right, although it depends on where you live. In places like Ireland, Wales and New Zealand, where sheep outnumber people, ovine terminology is probably better known. – Segorian Feb 14 '23 at 11:18
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    @user3634 - When I was a kid in the 1950s and 60s, in an inner London school, we learned all about ewes, rams, cows, bulls, stallions, mares, and, yes, fleeces. We had educational films about farming. Oh, and hens and cockerels. – Michael Harvey Feb 14 '23 at 20:47
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As a native speaker, I would find it odd to refer to a sheep/lamb/ewe as "black-fleeced" or "black-wooled", particularly the latter (since I don't think I have ever heard "wooled" used in any context). Normally you would just say "a black sheep", and it is understood that you are talking about the colour of the fleece, being the predominant colour of the animal (as in "Baa baa, black sheep"). If you wanted to indicate the colour of the skin instead, you would say e.g. "a black-faced sheep".

FWIW, for me if it's still on the animal, or has been removed but is still all in one piece, it's "fleece" and otherwise it's "wool". However, I would not be confident that "fleece" is widely known in an ESL context.

Especially Lime
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With your clarification that the target audience consists of English-language learners (ELLs), I would submit that the word "ewe" is unlikely to be familiar to most of them. A few will have encountered the word if a teacher emphasized animal names, and a few may have seen it in a list of homophones ("you"/"ewe"/"U" -- which may have taught them the pronunciation more than the meaning of the word). Apart from these possibilities, the word has little exposure in everyday English.

That said, by all means feel free to teach it.

Regarding the hyphenation question, "brown fleeced lamb" appears to me as if a comma was dropped, and implies the brown lamb had been fleeced. Saying "brown-fleeced lamb" makes more sense, because now "brown" is shown to be connected to the fleece, and not to the lamb, i.e. the lamb's fleece is brown.

Note: I have fewer than 20 years' experience teaching ELLs, largely in Asia where sheep are rarely seen.

Biblasia
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  • You missed "yew" from the homophone list - is that not normally included? I'd guess it's around the same learning level as "ewe". – Toby Speight Feb 14 '23 at 06:47
  • @TobySpeight I knew there was one I was forgetting! I was going from memory and could not remember the other one...all that came to mind was "yule" and of course that was not right. – Biblasia Feb 14 '23 at 07:16
  • I guess there's not many yew trees in that part of Asia? :-) – Toby Speight Feb 14 '23 at 07:41