Is the Cantonese for 快 (kuai4) something like ‘chop’? (and 筷 the same).
Because you’ve got the expression ‘chop chop’ meaning ‘hurry up’ and you’ve got the word chopsticks. If these ‘chops’ both come from Chinese, this makes perfect sense, as the words have identical pronunciation. And if so, I never realised that ‘chop chop’ was from Chinese.
I do think it’s the same pidgin use of ‘chop’, though ie “quick sticks” which has the same rough meaning, but not literal sense. I always knew ‘chop-chop’ as a Chinese pidgin expression along the lines of ‘no tickee, no shirtee’, ‘long time no see’ (which passed into everyday usage), etc.
And on that note: Chop suey - Not Chinese. Not Mandarin (obviously), not Cantonese (which most Chinese takeaways seem to be), dunno about other dialects for sure though. Actually asked my HK host uncle when he visited me in NZ whether he could work it out, and he was utterly stumped. Best he could get was - here’s another connection with the above - “jap choi”, (ji cai?) mixed veges. I knew the dish itself was made up, but I didn’t think the name was.
From “Words and Phrase Origins” (Robert Hendrickson):
chop-chop Noticing how fast the Chinese ate with chopsticks, 19th-century traders in China adopted the “chop” from the word chopsticks and invented the pidgin English expression chop-chop–“quick, fast, or make it snappy.”
And on that note: Chop suey - Not Chinese. Not Mandarin (obviously), not Cantonese (which most Chinese takeaways seem to be), dunno about other dialects for sure though. Actually asked my HK host uncle when he visited me in NZ whether he could work it out, and he was utterly stumped. Best he could get was - here’s another connection with the above - “jap choi”, (ji cai?) mixed veges. I knew the dish itself was made up, but I didn’t think the name was.[/quote]
I was told it was from ‘tzap sui’ ie ‘mixed bits’ (sorry about the random romanisation). It’s almost certainly going to be from Cantonese, because they would have run the first wave of restaurants.
Brian, as I said, I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all - the British simply thought ‘gup’ meant ‘fast’. It doesn’t literally - it means urgent, but you can see how they might not catch the subtleties through pidgin. Deliver this parcel - ‘urgent, urgent’ - ‘quick, quick’ - same difference.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]Hmm, it jsut seems too much of a coincidence:
Chinese: kuaizi
English: chopsticks
Chinese: kuai, kuai!
English: chop, chop!
Brian[/quote]
Pretty sure it is a coincidence though, unless possibly it’s from Shanghainese or some other port like that.
Anyway, at the least, the chop-chop/kuai thing can’t possibly be Cantonese - “Hurry up” in Cantonese is “fai di” (快D or 快o地 - with the o representing the 口 radical) Best possibility is daasgrrls suggestion
I’d learned that ‘chop chop’ came from Fujian Hua kap for ‘hurry.’ Much like the English word tea, the original word in Fujian Hua sounded like ‘tay’ in English and eventually became what we know today as tea.
Surely “chop suey” comes from the same root “chopsticks” and “chop chop” come from - '‘quick ?"
On a related note, my English grandmother always referred to tea as a "coop o’ cha." I don’t believe she knew a word of Chinese, though, except for that “cha.”
[quote=“bababa”]Surely “chop suey” comes from the same root “chopsticks” and “chop chop” come from - ''quick ?"
[/quote]
“chop suey” comes from Cantonese “tsap seui” (雜碎 - “za sui” in Mandarin) - mixed pieces. It was stir-fried leftovers that Chinese chefs in San Francisco prepared for Westerners as a way to get rid of their leftovers, so I hear.
I’ve heard that “chop-chop” comes from Hindi, or at least is Indian in origin. As for “chop” meaning “stamp” or “seal”, apparently it comes from the Malay word “cap”.
True, they could come from Amoy Hokkien I guess. I do like one suggestion I’ve found for the origins of “chop-chop” - a doubling (common in pidgins, apparently) of “chop” meaning stamp, originating from an exhortation to “sign and get on with business”. Makes sense, given that pidgin English of this type was generally more for business purposes, but it does sound like a bit of a stretch.
Now that, I think, is just a coincidence, although before Brian started this discussion I’d always assumed the same myself, just because it makes logical sense. But if you consider when and how the phrases supposedly originated (pidgin trading in some language vs. Chinese restaurants in the US) being just a coincidence seems possible.
According to the Oxford Etymological Dictionary… [drum rolls]
“chop” in “chop sticks” comes from the seventeenth century Chinese-Pidgin English “chop”, which meant “quick”. So it wasn’t Chinese, but rather that weird lingo that the Brits and the Hong Kongers used to communicate with each other; a hybrid that resulted from attempts to imitate the other’s weird language.
So they were originally “quick-sticks”…
But the Cantonese for 快 and 筷 is “fai”. Chopsticks in Hokkien/Taiwanese is “di” (
箸
). Oxford shows the translation into Mandarin, but I fail to see how the Brits could get “chop” out of “kuai”… and then they would have had to make the same weird mistake for both characters 快 and 筷. Is there another language down there that pronounces it closer to “chop”?
Oxford says that “chop suey” comes from the Chinese word for “mixed bits”… like Kibbles & Bits or something.
That is correct. No need for any more guesses about the origin of “chop suey”.
The character meaning “urgent” or “hurry up” and pronounced like “chop” (actually “kap”) in Cantonese is 急 (see this article). In Hokkien (“Taiwanese”) they say gin-e. My girlfriend said she would write it as 緊ㄟ, but ㄟ is a zhuyin fuhao, not a character, so I guess it should be 緊个 - Dialect experts, please confirm.
That is correct. No need for any more guesses about the origin of “chop suey”.
The character meaning “urgent” or “hurry up” and pronounced like “chop” (actually “kap”) in Cantonese is 急 (see this article). In Hokkien (“Taiwanese”) they say gin-e. I suppose that is 緊个 - Dialect experts, please confirm.[/quote]
雜碎 – My wife reckons that’s also slang for “bastard.”
Yes Brian the Taiwanese says gin neh, hurry up. This is Taiyu and not Mandarin Chinese, hence the change of characters. Or Ka Gin Neh 卡緊ㄟ
My wife just calls me 外籍勞工 ( but I know I’m really her 奴隸 slave ) because I work with my hands… but some of my customers call me coolie 苦力, an old expression from the British colonial days, when thousands of poms died to keep China, British…
噎 you can also add this to the end of your sentence