Chinese words that entered English

oh oh…“shanghai”, as in the verb.

Yes! But more normally past tense (in my usage). Then again, I’m sure I’ve been Banqiaoed in Taiwan. I’ve certainly been Zhuhaid.

HG

Care to elaborate? :ponder:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/or89nd/why_typhoon_sounds_so_similar_to_台风_táifēng

Maybe you noticed the English and Chinese words to describe such a storm sound very similar: Typhoon & 台风Táifēng.

Yet based on linguistic research, it’s not as simple as saying this name for sure comes from Mandarin Chinese — it could have also come into English from dialects such as Minnanhua or Cantonese. It could have even come from the Greek word ‘typhon’, which is a monster with a tremendous voice in ancient Greek mythology.

‘Typhoon’ was first used in a southern dialect in China, which only means ‘big powerful wind’. Then it became used in Mandarin to describe this kind of ‘large storms with high winds that come off Pacific ocean’, while the one that comes from the Atlantic ocean is called a ‘飓风’ (jùfēng) in Chinese, which is ‘hurricane’ in English.