English’s Borrowings from Asian Languages

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yeah, hi. My name is Jacques Denroin, calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

Omaha, Nebraska. Jacques, as in the French Jack?

Yeah.

Okay. Well, welcome to the program. How can we help?

Well, thank you.

Not so long ago, I heard somebody use a word that I’ve heard many times and I understand and everything, but never had considered where it came from.

And it’s the word skosh, which is used to mean like a little, so like just a skosh, right?

And for some reason, the day that I heard that word, it occurred to me to consider where it came from.

And so I looked into it, and I was thinking all along that maybe it was like a Yiddish word. It kind of sounded Yiddish to me.

But when I looked into it, it looked like it actually comes from a Japanese word.

And the word apparently was brought over by Korean War vets who had maybe taken leave in Japan, had picked up the word there, and then brought it back.

And so all along, we’ve been using this word skosh. I had no idea it came from Japanese.

And this is all interesting to me because I’m really interested in foreign languages, particularly Asian languages.

I’ve studied Chinese for many years. My daughter studies Japanese.

And I know there’s so many languages or words from Europe that we use all the time, and we know where they came from mostly, and we know when we’re using them.

But hardly do we understand that there might be like an Asian word in our language that we’re using completely unaware of.

And so I was curious if there’s other words like this, word skosh, where we’re using it and don’t even know where it comes from or that we’ve incorporated some Japanese or some Chinese into our common everyday parlance.

That’s a great question because it gets to the heart of something really important about language, which is that etymologies don’t travel with words very well, regardless of where they come from.

Like their origins need to be explored to really get to the root of it.

I mean, sometimes you can sell a little word that sounds French or looks Latin.

But yeah, your question is powerfully important when it comes to understanding language and how it got this way.

I mean, I’m thinking about the word tycoon. I mean, you probably have more expertise on these than we do if you’ve been studying Asian languages for a while.

But I know that the word tycoon comes from a Japanese word that means great lord and goes back to a Chinese term.

I think beyond that, it means big prince.

But we have fundamental food words as well, like the word tea, T-E-A, meaning to drink.

It is one of the most traveled words in any languages. It’s spread throughout the entire world from a dialect of Chinese.

And we use it in English without even thinking about that.

Ketchup, the word ketchup, comes from a Cantonese word, originally referred to a fish sauce, a fermented fish sauce.

And we’ve had it in English since the 17th century.

So, so many, tsunami, kimono, karaoke, futon, origami.

I’m thinking of, you know, you might have a yen for ketchup. That comes from a Chinese word meaning hope or desire or craving.

And kowtow, of course, is interesting as well.

Right. Which, you know, refers to the ancient practice of greeting a superior, like an elder or a leader or an emperor.

And you bow down to that person. And I think kowtow literally translates as knock your head.

But we can go to other parts of Asia. We can look into the Indian subcontinent.

So words like juggernaut and pundit and loot and avatar and bungalow all come from that part of the world.

Interesting. Avatar being Sanskrit originally, but also appearing in, just like T, appearing in lots of languages throughout the world now.

Yeah, especially among video gamers now.

That’s right, yeah.

So, yeah, we could go, we could do all day. We could do this all day.

Yeah, how much time do you have?

Yeah, right, yeah.

One word that I, as I kind of racked my brain to think about one, was the phrase gung-ho.

Oh, yeah. Which was really interesting.

And I thought, I had the suspicion it might be from the Chinese.

And so I asked around to some friends, you know, see if they knew what it meant, like I did, and they did also, you know, be overly enthusiastic.

And it seemed like everyone knew it, but nobody understood or had any idea where it came from, including myself.

It turns out that one also has like a military connection being brought over during World War II and having nothing to do with its original meaning either.

It’s really interesting.

Well, kind of, because the original meaning was something like work together or a cooperative.

And in that idea to be gung-ho means that you want to work with somebody on a thing.

You’re gung-ho for whatever they’re suggesting.

And it’s still used in the U.S. Marines and kind of has a different meaning there.

It’s a little derogatory. If someone is gung-ho, they’re too all in.

They’re too much about showing off and participating and proving that they’re the best, that they’re the most aware of what’s happening.

Jacques, clearly the three of us could go on for a very long time about this.

And I really appreciate your bringing this up because you’re right.

Usually on this show, we end up talking mainly about Indo-European, well, European languages.

It’s nice to talk about these other ones as well.

Mm-Definitely. Thank you.

Yeah, our pleasure, Jacques. And if you have any more questions, give us another call sometime, all right?

Will do.

All right. Take care of yourself.

You can always call us, 877-929-9673, toll-free in the U.S. and Canada.

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