You may have something there.
Mandarin Chinese quan < MC khjwen < OC *khwin < ST *kwi-n (Schuessler)
English hound (< PGerm. *khun-das), Latin canis, Sanskrit śvāna < PIE *kwon (Beekes)
In which case:
Eng. mare < OE mearh < Celtic *marg-, then untraceable to PIE, so may be a loanword form another language family.
Ch. 馬 ma < MC ma < OC *mra < ST *mrang, most likely a loanword from a Central Asian language. cf. Mongolian morin.
Since horses are believed to have first been domesticated by Central Asians, there may be a connection.
I believe Chris is correct. If you look at the etymology of tonal languages, like Chinese, words developed from long words. For instance the “pi” in ping has sounds like pi 5 in Mandarin, whereas the “pi” in pit sounds like pi4. The final sounds in most languages are the weakest parts of a word, and over the centuries these end sounds faded away. Today, we are left with a tonal anlaut of the original word. Anyway, a linguist friend of mine once told me that Ma ‘horse’ originally had rolling r at the end.
See Indo-European Vocabulary in Old Chinese, by Tsung-tung Chang (University of Frankfurt).
Interesting. It’s based on older scholarship (e.g. Karlgren’s /-g/ final in Old Chinese is now generally accepted to be a final glottal stop), but there may be something there. Don’t know how much can be attributed to coincidence…
Sorry to bring this back to earth a tad…
I heard yeterday that the word “lesbian” is transliterated “lei si bi an.”
Wasn’t exactly in a postion to check the tones and all that, and lesbian isn’t even showing in my dictionaries except as a translation of female homosexual, something like nu: tonGXingLian de* (That is how I say it, not exactly what the dictionary says - anyway, people seem to understand it…).
If anybody could give me a confirmation that this word “lei si bi an” is actually used, and maybe tones too that’d be great.
Thanks.
Seems to be a late arrival to the lingo as younger people know it and the older ones don’t.
I was told lei2si1bian1 (three syllables, not four) today. Purdy sure that’s correct.
(…not sure that the syllables mean anything in isolation that would be even vaguely relevant to the meaning of the three syllables taken together. More likely some sort of odd sound loan meets transliteration meets confusing amalgam of vague rationalizations sort of deal. Anyway, lei2si1bian1 is easy enough and if there’s one thing we all come to appreciate eventually, it’s “easy”.)
lei2si1 = lace
bian1 = edge, I’ve discovered.
Lord what a feminine take on things. Even the tones are horny.
I think I found a good one…
Wei2ke1bai3ke1qian2shu1 = wikipedia?
Sounds a little off (the shu1 on the end there can’t be right, it’s not a book…) off but a native speaker says that is what it is so…
Wikipedia is Wei2ji1bai3ke1. The subtitle is Ren2ren2 ke3 bian1ji2 de5 bai3ke1quan2shu1.
It’s consistent with other transliterations where a k or hard c sound has been transliterated to a j sound. Like Jia1na2da4 for example.
I’ll give it a shot…
person person can edit (modification particle) encyclopedia.
Makes a lot of sense.
Thanks.
English “cow”, “beef” - both ultimately from from PIE root *gwo-
Mandarin niu2 - from Late Han ngu, from OC *ngwə
Thai wua, from Proto-Tai *ngwue
Cognates? Ancient loanwords? Or just imitative of the sound a cow makes? Or coincidence?
A “false friend”:
English: mojo - a good luck charm; a mystical personal quality that attracts success, good luck, etc.
But…
Chinese: 魔咒 mo2zhou4 - a curse, a streak of bad luck
This topic is fun to look at, and I would like to make some contributions here:
Weygand (Maxime Weygand, a French military commander) = wei3jiang1 (borrowing logic from “Yarkand” which in Mandarin is transliterated as “Ye4’er3qiang1”)
Mekong River = mei1jiang1 (“beautiful river” if of course “Mekong,” otherwise written “Mei3gong1 He2” in Pinyin, is transliterated from Cantonese and then Mandarin)
Charles Jones Soong (Chinese Christian missionary and one-time backer of Sun Yat-sen) = song4 jia1shu4 (the “Charlie Soon(g)” bit seems to be an Anglicization of his Chinese given name, Jiao4zhun3; the middle name Jones, to be added to his name later on, would be Mandarinated as “qiong2si1”)
Charlie Sheen (film actor, real name Carlos Estevez) = jiao4 xing1 (following the logic for C.J. Soong above)
John Chiang (California state controller) = jiang1 jun4hui1
Cajun (an ethnic group of French-American people living mainly in the state of Louisiana) = kei1zhen1
Carrie Prejean (former Miss California USA 2009) = jia1li3 pu1li2zhen3 (last name needs help, please; bear in mind it is French)
Yngwie Malmsteen (Swedish virtuoso rock guitarist) = ying1wei3 ma1lu1mu1si3ting1 (?)
~Ben
The idea that linguistic cognates are mere coincidence are ok to a certain extent but it’s obvious that not all cognates are a product of coincidence. To take that position would be the same as stating that Chinese and Europeans are of a different origin. Like God made Europeans and the devil made the Asians. I remember reading somewhere that Japanese was a language created by Satan to prevent the spreading of the gospel…a prevailing attitude in medieval times.
Some cognates I find interesting are(add the tonal marks yourself):
mien - face
ja se - just
so yi - so
na ho - and then
quai - quick
I added:
“mo2zhou4” (bad luck, curse) <-> mojo (good luck/spunk)
“suo3yi3” - so
and
“quai4” - quick
…to the list on the first page which is intended to be something “easy.” Just stuff that sounds the same for whatever reason. To be useful it needs to be common enough and similar sounding enough to be, once again, “easy.”
If I missed some let me know and I’ll add it later. Sorry, I don’t have quite as much time as I once did to work on this.
Some more names to loanwords for you:
Argonne = er3jiang1
James = jie2mu1si1
Jason = jie2sheng1
Jane = jie2nu1
John = zhang1, jiang1
Jean (if as a feminine name, otherwise see “John” above for the masculine pronunciation) = jin3, jing1
Jolene = zhou1lin3 or jiao1lin3
Joanie Laurer (a wrestler who did her sport under the ring name “C h y n a”) = jiao1nei1 lao2la3’er4
Siobhan (an old Irish spelling of Joan) = zhi1wang2
~Ben
Qué? No kei. It’s 卡真.
(Thanks for giving those examples though, all new to me!)
The only problem with names is there are millions of them. Most are simply transliterations.
馬賽克 (ma3 sai4 ke4) = mosaic