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.
But ask people to name an English word that derives from Chinese languages, and the responses tend to sound like a Chinese restaurant order — words like 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 into 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 contribution: 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,” whereas 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. 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 meaning “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 derives 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 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 different ingredients. 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 culinary 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 showing the extreme enthusiasm for every task, 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 Richler’s next book, Arranged & Deranged Wit, will be out later this year.