How Chinese flavours our
language
by
Howard
Richler
This year, February 19th
marks the first day of the Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring
Festival or the Lunar New Year. Chinese civilization dates back at
least 4,000 years and is the source of many of the world's greatest
inventions including paper, printing, and the compass, not to
mention china (porcelain) itself.
However, if you were to ask people to name an English
word that derives from Chinese, the responses would probably remind
you of a Chinese restaurant take-out order and would likely include
chow mein, chop suey, and won ton. The first word in this grouping to
make it into the OED
is chop suey, an adaptation of the Cantonese shap
sui, “mixed bits” which entered in
English in 1888. Actually, the “chop” in chopsticks, also has a
Chinese origin, but here the meaning is “quick.” The word
chopsticks is a corruption of k’wâi-tsze,
“the quick and nimble ones.”
Missing from the above is perhaps the greatest gustatory
Chinese delight. Whereas Arabic brought us
intoxicating beverages such as alcohol and coffee, Chinese can take
credit for the mildly inebriating libation tea. British slang for a
cup of tea is “cuppa char,” “char” being a corruption of cha,
which derives from the Mandarin ch’a.
This reflects the first OED
rendering in 1598 with the spelling “chaa”; its first mention in
Europe is as “cha” in Portugal in 1559. Under the name te,
or thee, it was
imported by the Dutch from Java, where it had been brought by Chinese
merchants from the province of Amoy. It was introduced in France in
1635, Russia in 1638 and England by 1655. Tea was first sold publicly
in England at Garway’s Coffee House in London ; in 1660, Samuel
Pepys recorded in his diary, “I did send for a cup of tee (a China
drink) of which I never had drank before.”
Chinese has been nourishing us with food words for
centuries. “Tofu” joins our lexicon in 1880. The word is
rendered in Chinese as dòufu;
dòu meaning “beans”
and fu meaning
“rotten.” Tofu is made from a soybean extract and the word “soy”
(or soya) is a 17th century Chinese extract. It comes from the word
shi-yu;
shi in Chinese meaning
“salted beans” and yu
meansing“oil.” Joining our language around the same time is
ginseng, a plant whose root is credited with medicinal properties.
Its Chinese name jen
shen, literally means
“man root,” a reference to the root's forked shape, which is said
to resemble a man.
The word “ketchup” flavours our language early in
the 18th century and is generally seen as deriving from the Malay
kechap. But this word
itself comes from the word kê-tsiap
in the Chinese Amoy dialect, where it refers to “pickled fish-brine
or sauce.” The original condiment that Dutch traders imported from
Asia appears to be a fish sauce or a sauce made from special
mushrooms salted for preservation. A 1711 OED
citation states, “Soy comes in tubs from Japan and the best ketchup
from Tonquin, yet good of both sorts are made and sold very cheap in
China.” The English added a “t” to the Malay word, changed the
“a” to a “u” and started making ketchup themselves, using
ingredients like mushrooms,walnuts, cucumbers, and oysters. It
wasn’t until American seamen added tomatoes from Mexico or the
Spanish West Indies that the quintessential tomato ketchup was born.
Of
course, Chinese contributions to English transcend our palates. The
rhyming words “tycoon” and “typhoon,” for example, are both
of Chinese vintage. Tycoon ultimately comes from the Chinese words
ta, “great,” and
kiun, “prince.” It
was rendered in Japanese as taikun,“great
lord,” and was the title by which the shogun would be described to
foreigners. Typhoon comes from the words ta,“big,”
and feng, “wind.”
The word “kowtow” in English bears a taint of
obsequiousness but its origin in Chinese doesn’t connote an act of
servility. It comes from the words k’o,
“knock” and t’ou,
“the head” and derives from the Chinese custom of touching the
ground with the forehead as an expression of extreme respect. The
word “gung-ho” comes from the words kung,
“work” and ho,
“together.” It was adopted in World War II by US Marines under
the command of General Evans Carlson. The Nov 8, 1942 New
York Times reported that “borrowing an idea
from China, Carlson frequently has what he calls kung-hou
meetings…problems are threshed out and orders explained.”
Probably owing to the practice of some Marines in showing the same
enthusiasm in picayune matters such as white glove inspections, the
term gung-ho acquired a connotation of overzealousness.
As late as the 1990s, another word of Chinese pedigree
became popular : feng shui, which refers to the relationship of
people to the environment in which they live, and in particular their
dwelling or workplace. Surprisingly, the word dates back in English
to 1797 where we find it referenced in the Encycolpaedia
Brittanica.
You will not, however, find an old citation for the word taikonaut,
thus proving that our lexicon is still being enriched by Chinese. It
found a home this millennium in the OED
to refer to a Chinese astronaut; taikong
meaning “outer space.”
Howard's book Wordplay:
Arranged & Deranged Wit
will be published in 2015.
