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I had to stop and think about that one for a while. Are there any cases that you know of where a Japanese word is anglicized before becoming an English word? It
by burke 16y ago
I had to stop and think about that one for a while. Are there any cases that you know of where a Japanese word is anglicized before becoming an English word? It seems like english speakers have an easy enough time guessing at Japanese pronunciation that we normally keep the direct romanization. This is why "typhoon" seemed weird to me. It makes a lot more sense that both languages would have imported it from Greek.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- chc 16y agoActually, there are several like that. The most salient one in this case would be "tycoon." A few more: - skosh - bokeh (a photography term referring to a certain kind of blur in English) - rickshaw
- Paulomus 16y agoYou can see the etymology of tycoon at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_magnate#Etymology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_magnate#Etymology The borrowing pre-dates the Hepburn romanization system which wasn't developed until the 1880's.
- jrockway 16y agoUnlikely. The first character in taifuu means "big", and the second means "wind". They came up with this on their own; and it's simply a coincidence that other languages have a word that sounds similar.
- chc 16y agoBesides that, I'm pretty sure the original Greek word was pronounced something like "to fawn." It's only once English speakers bastardized it that it started to resemble the Japanese word.
- angus77 16y agoActually, the first character in typhoon is 「台」, which means something like "stand" or "platform". It's also the first character in "Taiwan". I've read before that the word "typhoon" was of Arabic origin and came to Japan from Chinese, but the word spread to the West via Japan.
- Umofomia 16y agoThe original traditional Chinese character is 颱; the Japanese adopted the character 台 as a simplification of the original character (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjitai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjitai). Therefore, the "stand" or "platform" meanings of the 台 character are unrelated to that of 颱.
- angus77 16y agoIf you follow the link to 颱 from the wikipedia page to the wiktionary entry, you'll find that: a) 台 is the simplified version of 颱 in modern Chinese b) there is nothing in the entry that suggests it means "great" or "big", and that, in fact, the one character translates as "typhoon" Also, if you check out the Japanese wikipedia page for 台風, you'll find that the Japanese spelled it 颱風 up until 1956. There's also a rational for the 台風 spelling suggesting that it may have meant that typhoons were great winds that came from the direction of Taiwan, which is why the 台 character was used (although none of the suggested etymologies are yet proven).
- Umofomia 16y agoI only disputed that 颱 was related to the meanings of "stand" or "platform". As for the meanings of "great" or "big", the OED and etymonline entries actually refer to a different character, 大, from the Cantonese pronunciation of 大風 (IPA: taːifʊŋ). The Japanese and Chinese etymology of 颱風 is as convoluted as the English one that _delirium mentions above in a previous comment. It may have originated as a Western borrowing, be related to Taiwan as you have suggested, or be related to Cantonese 大風; it may have perhaps even been influenced by multiple sources.
- kelnos 16y agoWrong character for the first. Going back to the Chinese (which is presumably where Japanese got it, given that it uses Chinese characters), the "tái" (颱 or 台, depending on whether you prefer traditional or simplified script) in "táifēng" is first-tone (ascending); the word that means "big" in Chinese is actually "dài" (大), fourth-tone (falling). Japanese also uses 大 for "big."