Chrysti The Wordsmith: Chinese Adoptees

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith. English speakers are promiscuous collectors of foreign words and expressions while French and Latin are well-known contributors to our lexicon. Thousands of our terms are adoptees from such unexpected languages as Basque to Gallic Hebrew in Arabic the various dialects spoken in China have contributed several words to modern English for example kowtow k o w o t o w to show deference or to fawn was introduced to English speakers in the early 19th century. This word is the derivative of a mandarin expression meaning knock the head it refers to the custom of touching the forehead to the ground in a gesture of respect. English speakers have embraced several Cullen airy terms from the Cantonese dialect spoken by about 50 million Chinese kumquat chop suey child main one tonn bok choy dim sum and walk. Other English words from Cantonese include typhoon which when translated literally means great wind and Sharpei the name of a breed of dog.

The expression gung ho meaning enthusiastic eager or ready is a relative newcomer from China. Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson is responsible for adopting this phrase from the Chinese circa 1940 to Carlson used gung ho as a training slogan for his Rangers during the Second World War. It's the English pronunciation of a mandarin Chinese phrase meaning everybody work together. I'm Christi the wordsmith. Good day for whores. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.