yyy
December 25, 2021, 12:05am
1
There’s a dish known as moogoo (or mugu) gaipan, which is 蘑菇雞片, mogu jipian in Mandarin.
Moo goo gai pan (Chinese: 蘑菇雞片; Cantonese: móh-gū gāi-pin) is the Americanized version of a Cantonese dish - chicken with mushroom in oyster sauce (香菇雞片), which can be a stir-fry dish or a dish made in a claypot. The Chinese-American version is a simple stir-fried dish with thin sliced chicken, white button mushrooms, and other vegetables. The chicken is thinly sliced as the word "pan"片 means thin slices. Popular vegetable additions include bok choy, snow peas, bamboo shoots, shiitake mushrooms, ...
Since it’s supposed to be a Cantonese dish, but the Cantonese pronunciation should be mogu gaipin, I’m wondering how it came to be pronounced the way it is in English. Is it just a bastardization, or is it from an obscure dialect?
Marco
December 25, 2021, 12:18am
2
Bastardisation if you ask me.
Wiktionary suggests that the etymology is Taishanese:
moo goo gai pan - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
This is the etymology from the entry of the old Bartleby.com version of the American Heritage Dictionary (saved in the Internet Archive):
moo goo gai pan. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
But this is the etymology from the entry of the current online version of that dictionary:
[Cantonese mo4 gu1 gai1 pin3 , akin to Chinese (Mandarin) mógu jī piàn : mógu , mushroom + jī , chicken (from Middle Chinese kjiaj ) + piàn , slice (from Middle Chinese phjian` ).]
American Heritage Dictionary Entry: moo goo gai pan
I favor Wiktionary’s opinion, but I may be biased, because I’m from Louisiana:
The following is a dinner menu from the House of Lee restaurant, dated 1967. It can be found at the restaurant menu collection at the Louisiana Division of the Main Branch of the New Orleans Public Library. Notice that the menu lists both Cantonese dishes, like sweet and sour pork and “moo goo guy pan,” and American dishes, like hamburger steak and fried chicken.
The House of Lee 李家園 on 3131 Veterans Blvd. (1959 → 1995) in Metairie was founded by Lee Bing 朱炳韶 (1903 → 1973) and his wife Yip Shee, both natives of Taishan county in Guangdong province in southern China 廣東省台山縣.
–from “Researching Chinese American History in New Orleans 紐奧良華僑歷史研究,” on Facebook
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