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

[Chris]

[quote="archylgp"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.[/quote]
The same phenomenon happened in Latin during the time of the Roman Empire (with g and k, while h fell silent), and is ultimately the reason why English has both "hard" and "soft" c and g sounds.

[archylgp]

@ Chris --

Nice. (It's great to see cases where unrelated languages share similar processes of sound change.)

[Chris]

English "foam" (from PIE root *poimo-) vs. Chinese 泡沫 (paomo)

[Chris]

蓮霧 lianwu (jambu, bell fruit, wax apple, rose apple (Syzygium samarangense)), from Minnan lian-bu, from Malay jambu

[Chris]

魔 mo "devil", from 魔羅, from Sanskrit Māra (the demon that tempted the Buddha), from PIE mer- "to die". Root of "mortal" etc.

禪 chan "zen", from Sanskrit dhyāna "meditation", from root dhya- "to do", from PIE dhe- "to do". Root of "do", "deed", "thesis".

[kjmillig]

Today at work I overheard two teachers conversation (in Chinese) and one inserted what sounded like "pow po" into her sentence. From her context I knew she was talking about PowerPoint.
I'm hearing more and more of "bu-sz" for bus, "OK de", etc.

[Chris]

I'm hearing more and more of "bu-sz" for bus, "OK de", etc.

I like "O不OK" - applying Chinese grammar to English.

[riceworm]

ketchup and 茄汁 (Cantonese)

[heimuoshu]

ketchup and 茄汁 (Cantonese)

Ketchup was actually taken out of the Malay language of the 16th century where it meant a kind of soup or sauce with a tomato base and became ketchup as we know it in English today. Not sure of all the facts. I did a course in my masters where we had to do a presentation and I chose loan words out of Asian languages. It was very interesting.

[Chris]

Yup, "ketchup" comes from Malay, but the Malay word most certainly comes from a dialect of Chinese. Whether it's 茄汁 (tomato sauce) or 鮭汁 (fish sauce) or something else is a matter of debate, as is which dialect of Chinese it originates from.