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masaegu (Offline)
永遠の愛
 
Posts: 2,573
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Central Tokyo
12-05-2010, 07:59 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin View Post
To get back to the actual question at hand...

牛乳 is cow`s milk. This has been answered pretty clearly. It`s the kind of milk people normally buy in cartons to drink. Not much of anything to add here.

ミルク is formula or powdered milk. Like the kind you add hot water to for babies.
It is also occasionally used to talk about a flavor - along the lines of "vanilla".
You will not encounter ミルク being used to talk about the type of normal types of milk people drink.

お乳 is not one you hear a lot. Breast milk is 母乳 or just おっぱい. 母乳 is not technical or scientific sounding. It is the regular term used for breast milk or breast feeding. (母乳 vs ミルク) おっぱい is the more childish way of referring to both the breasts and the breast milk. おっぱいを飲む is the standard term for babies at the breast. It`s sort of baby-talk.

For goat milk, 山羊乳 is pretty standard for the liquid form, and 山羊ミルク for powdered.
To add to Nyororin's excellent explanation, ミルク is very often used to refer to what you add to coffee. Whether it's real milk (or cream) or an artificial cream-like liquid product, it's called ミルク at most coffee shops and restaurants.

牛乳, when it's consumed at home, is almost always called as such. However, when it's served at eateries, it's very often called ミルク.

See the drink menu at McDonald's.
レギュラーメニュー | メニュー情報 | McDonald's Japan

お乳, as Nyororin stated, has been getting more obsolete every decade since I was little. I seriously recommend that Japanese learners not use it to refer to breast milk because the word (without the お) is mostly used as a vulgar word for "boobs".
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