loan words/ near cognates/ transliterations, or whatever...

[sjcma]

餛飩／雲吞？？We are now including borrowing from Cantonese

(If we are, then I think loans like 'cigar -> sit-ga -> 雪茄 are moderately interesting. Another one is Sydney. Anyone know any others?)

Sweden
Switzerland
All the country names that uses 加 to transliterate a hard G or K sound is due to Cantonese influence. Canada, for example.



BTW, here's a humourous video on Mandarin-to-Cantonese transliteration:

[Jive Turkey]

BTW, here's a humourous video on Mandarin-to-Cantonese transliteration:

That was hilarious!

[Changjiang750]

How about these?
Zsa Zsa Gabor = perhaps, sha1sha1 jia1be3'er2?
Eva Gabor = ye1wa3 jia1be3'er2
Rupert Murdoch = liu1pa3ti3 mo1'er2da3ku1

~Ben

[bob]

I don't know. Did you hear them someplace or just make them up?

A bit too low frequency to make the list I think. Anyway, it's all good.

Today's additions:
Taichi - Tai4ji2quan2
Ironlady used that example in another conversation so I looked it up. She's the bomb IMHO.

Koran - ke3ran2jing1
Surprsingly difficult book to find in Taipei I'm discovering.

[Chris]

Chinese/Thai cognates or damn similar words

ma - ma: horse
shuang - song: pair/two
san - sam: three
disan - thisam: third
si - si: four
wu(< OC nga) - ha(< PTai hnga): five
liu(< OC luk) - hok(<PTai hlok): six
qi - chet; ba - baet; jiu - kao; shi - sip: 7, 8, 9, 10
tiao - thaew: strip/row
liao - laew: perfective aspect particle
mao - maew: cat
xiang - chang: elephant
shuai - suay: handsome/pretty
qiang - kheng: strong
guang - kwaang: wide
dei - dai: "can" in classical Ch./can (dei means "must" in modern Chinese)
mei - mai: not
mo - meuk: ink/squid (Middle Ch.: m@k - ink; Viet.: muc - squid) (@ = schwa)

[Changjiang750]

Geelong (proper pronunciation is: jee'-long), the Australian city, becomes this: ji1 lang3 (Jyutping: gei1 long2). This also makes me wonder if any Taiwanese immigrants living in Australia misspell the name of that city as "Keelong (Jilong)" in deference to the Taiwanese city of Keelung (Jilong)/Jilong.
Jurong, Singapore: yu4 lang2 (Jyutping: jyu3 long4). But what about: Zhulang (zhu1 lang2)?

~Ben

[archylgp]

Many of those loan words came into Huayu through the HK variety of Cantonese: English -> Cantonese -> Mandarin. For example, bikini in HK Cantonese is something like /bikini/, because they still "roll" /ki/ sounds over there.

If you see the character 士 in a loanword (巴士), it's probably from HK, as 士 is the standard for transliterating English /s/ and /sh/. In Huayu transliterations, I see 斯 a lot; I've never seen 斯 in a HK transliteration. I've only seen about a hundred or so HK transliterations, though.

[archylgp]

I see that the Cantonese connection has been brought up already

I wouldn't go as far as to say that "all the country names that uses 加 to transliterate a hard G or K sound is due to Cantonese influence."

Let's look at "Canada" as an example.

加拿大 in Cantonese is ga na dai [ka na tai] (汉语方音字汇). This transliteration, if from HK Cantonese, would be abnormal. But, it isn't from Cantonese; it's a Huayu original.

Wiskey 威士忌, on the other hand, did come into Huayu from Cantonese. HK Cantonese = [uɐi si kei] .

Here's a list of HK Cantonese loan words. Not all of them are in Huayu. After looking through them, you should know why 加拿大 didn't come from Cantonese. The segments in the brackets are IPA. p = b in pinyin; p' = p and so on for k, k', t, t'.

巴士 [pa si] bus
啤啤 [pi pi] baby
波 [pɔ] ball
波士 [pɔ si] boss
杯葛 [pui kɔt] boycott
班 [pan] band
甫士 [p'ou si] pose
派對 [p'at t'i] party
拍乸 [p'at na] partner
泊車 [p'ak ts'ɛ] park (a car)
媽咪 [ma mi] mammy
孖氈 [ma tsin] merchant
迷你 [mɐi nei] mini skirt
嘜 [mɐk] mark
花臣 [fa sɐn] fashion
科文 [fɔ mɐn] foreman
科騷 [fɔ sou] floor-show
快勞 [fai lou] file
肥佬 [fei lou] fail
咕喱 [ku lei] coolie
爹哋 [tɛ ti] daddy
多士 [tɔ si ]toast
T 恤 [t'i søt] shirt
貼士 [t'ip si] tips
乃昔 [nai sɩk] milk shake
鐳射 [løy sɛ] laser
啫喱 [tsɛ lei] jelly
知士 [tsi si] cheese
仄紙 [tsɐk tsi] cheque
士班拿（士巴拿）[sin pan na (si pa na)] spanner
士多 [si tɔ ] store
士多啤梨 [si tɔ pɛ lei] strawberry
摔 [søt] shoot
茄喱啡 [kɛ lɛ fɛ] care free
畸士（K 事） [k'ei si] case
咭 [k'it] kid
[X] [ts'ip] cheap
柯打 [ɔ ta] order
溫拿 [wɐn na] winner

[ironlady]

I had been told that it was due to the fact that the Mandarin /j/ came from the velar /k/, but that would depend on when the particular loanword came into use. Obviously newer things would have to have come from a dialect that retains the sound in the modern form.

[archylgp]

@Ironlady--

You're correct -- Mandarin ji, qi, xi developed from ki, k'i, hi. This kind of change is called "palatalization". Palatalization didn't occur in Cantonese, thus the k - j correspondences in cognate sets.

However, Mandarin palatalization took place a long time ago. The "Zhongyuan Yinyun" 《中原音韵》 -- a Yuan dynasty rime book that captures northern pronunciation(s) from around the 13th and 14th centuries -- shows that palatalization had already taken place.

Studies have shown that when a Mandarin speaker is asked to approximate English words using the spoken language, English ki is spoken as Mandarin ji. So, this type of correspondence is expected within the contemporary English-to-Mandarin transliteration system.