Language Log

Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-thirty-eighth issue:

“Mapping the Language of Spices: A Corpus-Based, Philological Study on the Words of the Spice Domain,” by Gábor Parti.

ABSTRACT

Most of the existing literature on spices is to be found in the areas of gastronomy, botany, and history. This study instead investigates spices on a linguistic level. It aims to be a comprehensive linguistic account of the items of the spice trade. Because of their attractive aroma and medicinal value, at certain points in history these pieces of dried plant matter have been highly desired, and from early on, they were ideal products for trade. Cultural contact and exchange and the introduction of new cultural items beget situations of language contact and linguistic acculturation. In the case of spices, not only do we have a set of items that traveled around the world, but also a set of names. This language domain is very rich in loanwords and Wanderwörter. In addition, it supplies us with myriad cases in which spice names are innovations. Still more interesting is that examples in English, Arabic, and Chinese—languages that represent major powers in the spice trade at different times—are here compared.

Subtitle:  "Thank you, Egg Fried Rice"

You may think that nothing could be more innocuous than mundane egg-fried rice.  Not so in post-Mao China.  As background for the story I'm about to tell, you need to know that eggs were a rarity in the PRC during the days of Mao, and especially during the Korean War (1950-53), in which China was pitted against the USA and the UN.

So you know the vocabulary, it is "dàn chǎo fàn 蛋炒饭" ("egg fried rice"). 

Egg Fried Rice

What is said to have killed Mao Zedong’s oldest son, Mao Anying. The younger Mao, who had studied abroad in Russia, volunteered to fight in the Korean War and was assigned to be Peng Dehuai*’s Russian translator. According to legend, Mao Anying cooked fried rice with eggs in the daytime, against military regulation. The eggs were a rare delicacy at the time and had been just been sent to Peng Dehuai from Kim Il-sung. Spotting the smoke from the fire, an American plane dropped napalm on the site. Unable to escape, Mao perished in the flames.

Regardless of the truth of the story, Mao Anying did in fact die in 1950 when his camp in a Korean cave was napalmed.

[N.B.:  This post contains a very important set of linguistic questions about the historical evolution of the seasoning in question.  The long lists of Eurasian terms provided reveal tantalizing semantic and phonological interconnections among terms that are from different language families.  I invite historical linguists to comment on the interrelationships among all the relevant languages cited herein.]

A friend gave me a little bottle of this powerful, pungent spice.  It seems to be a unique sort of flavoring that stinks yet enhances the flavor of all sorts of Indian, Central Asian, and other regional cuisines.  At first I was just going to write a very brief note about it to pass around among family and friends, but the more I looked into this unique spice, aromatically and linguistically the more interesting it became, so I decided that I would write a rather full-blown Language Log post about it.  Voilà!

Hidden in the name was attestation of the spice's foul flavor, but I didn't know what the "asa-" part meant.  Upon investigating, I discovered that the English name, asafoetida, is derived from asa, a latinized form of Persian azā ("mastic", cf. "masticate"), and Latin foetidus ("fetid; stinky").

2017 photo of a Kaohsiung storefront courtesy of Mark Eaglesfield:

All right, I know it sounds funny, but it's a thing in Taiwan, as at this Taichung restaurant:

Klaus Nuber, who four years ago sent us this amusing post, "Restaurant logo with a dingus" (5/29/19), has contributed another droll Anekdote.

The following article is in today's Süddeutsche Zeitung, "Kannste knicken?"* (11/23/23) — herewith the second anecdote of three from all over the world:

*VHM:  The meaning of the article title escapes me — can you fold / bend [it]?

Mitten in … Zhejiang

Weiter weg geht es kaum von der Großstadt Peking: Neun Stunden mit dem Zug, dann eine lange Autofahrt die Täler entlang, jetzt ist der Hunger groß. Im Restaurant? Keine Karte, bestellt werden kann, was im Kühlschrank liegt. Ein paar Karotten, zwei Kartoffeln, ein platt gedrückter Tintenfisch. Kommt sofort! Dafür um die Ecke, kaum zu glauben, ein Café! Draußen das ländliche China mit seinen Reisfeldern und Kohlelastern, drinnen brummt die Espresso-Maschine. Der lang ersehnte Schluck, aber was ist das? Der Kaffee – eiskalt! Vorsichtige Frage an den Barista, ob es den auch in heiß gäbe? Sein Blick zunächst: totale Entgeisterung, dann folgt schallendes Gelächter. "Diese Ausländer!", ruft er und alle gucken. "Hört mal her. Jetzt trinken die ihren Kaffee auch noch wie Tee!" So was Amüsantes haben die Menschen hier schon lange nicht mehr gehört. Lea Sahay

From Charles Belov:

While scouting out restaurants on Yelp, I noticed that Harborview Restaurant Yelp page had an item on the menu listed in English as Congee with Bone-in Chicken. However, the menu image, taken in 2022, reads "Congree with stir-fried frog" in Chinese.

This appears to have been corrected on the Harborview Restaurant website. The Dim Sum menu reads Congee with Bone-in Chicken in English and 黃毛鷄粥 (jook with the Chinese version of free-range chicken) in Chinese.

I wonder how the frog got in there. Of course, I've eaten frog at Cantonese restaurants but it doesn't seem to be on Harborview's menu.

Screen print from Yelp:

Mark Metcalf had lunch with his in-laws at a great Cantonese restaurant in Taichung, Taiwan.  They shared a bottle of Táiwān píjiǔ 台灣啤酒 ("Taiwan beer") and were given chilled “Hong Kong style” battle bowls – emblazoned with zhàndòu wǎn 戰鬥碗 ("battle bowl") on the side and with shēng 勝 ("victory") on the inside bottom –  to drink it. Neither Mark nor his son had seen such a bowl before, but according to the owner it’s a Hong Kong thing.

Apparently you can buy them for \$NT6 each online or \$US70 (including postage) for a set of four from Amazon.

Here’s what they look like:

(source)
Chinese Traditional Way of Drinking Beer – From the Bowl

Following up on "Wok talk: a real-life retronym!" (10/16/23), Jim Millward remarks:

My wife (Punjabi background) and her family call the "wok-shaped pan" they use for cooking vegetable or meat dishes "kurai" (that's my phoneticization–it could be aspirated or unaspirated k / g, I'm not good at hearing the difference).  I've seen these and we've got a couple–they are indeed parabolic curved-sided heavier metal pans, though some have small diameter flat bottoms for convenience.   Other pots and pans are called patila.   The dishes, generally, are bartan.  The kurai, she just told me, is specifically the "wok-shaped pan." 

From François Lang:

[This is a guest post by François Lang]

Not Chinese.  Do you understand?

This has long been a cabbage of contention, but make no mistake about it:  fermented kimchee / kimchi  (gimchi 김치 (IPA [kim.tɕʰi]) (lit., "soaked [in their own juices of fermentation] vegetables") is not the same thing as pickled paocai / pao tsai 泡菜 (lit., "soaked [in brine] vegetables").

Kimchee and paocai are made differently, have different ingredients and spices, and taste different.  To call "kimchee" "paocai" would be like calling "wine" (pútáojiǔ 葡萄酒) "beer" (píjiǔ 啤酒).

Linguistically, kimchee has its own pedigree, of which I will here give an extended account.

Borrowed from Korean 김치 (gimchi), ultimately composed within Korea of Chinese-derived morphemes 沉 (chén, “submerged, soaked”) and 菜 (cài, “vegetable”), i.e. "fermented vegetable". Doublet of kimuchi.

(Wiktionary)