Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

加拿大 (Canada) etymology


boctulus

Recommended Posts

When I start to try the translation of country names, at first looked possible (make sense to me)

 

法國 France : law-country 

德國 Germany : mind-country 

義大利 Italy : virtuous-large-profit (rich country)

英國 UK : flower-country ? maybe Holland but I don't know UK, so...

香港 Hong Kong : fragrant-port

 

But 加拿大 was impossible to translate  :wall

 

Now, I see.... 義大利 and maybe 德國 are also loan words as almost each one (even 法國) in the list  :mrgreen:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would not pay much attention to the meanings of your country list and UK  英國   is hero, brave country not flower country but its not important as it doesn't have any purpose except to indicate pronunciation.

 

I am afraid there is no real use in trying to force a meaning on this type of thing unless it is for you to personally remember them, but they have no real basis in use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shite you're right! See, I have a Scottish friend whose family name is Scott. So I innocently thought the demonym was spelled the same way. It was all easier when you were called Picts. At least whatever happened, no one would have thought about spelling it Pictt.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

​Indeed. And it used to be pronounced k- in Mandarin too until relatively recently, which survived in the names Nanking and Peking.

​Sorry about the quote, this new editor is killing me.

 


 

It's a loan word. In most dialects of Chinese, 加 is pronounced with a k- or g- instead of a j-

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did it? I thought that was a vestige of of a different romanisation, which used a k to represent the same sound as the pinyin j.

Now, I am not an expert on this, but I remember reading a very funny quote here on the forum from an 18th century book about some linguist or other decrying the "modern" pronunciation "jing". Alas, I can't find it.

As far as I know, a shift occurred from Middle Chinese from IPA /k/, /kʰ/, /ɡʰ/ to modern Mandarin /tɕ/, /tɕʰ/ before /i/, /y/, or /j/, so original kjaeng (京) eventually turned into jing.

This process was much slower in the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin, which remained the prestige dialect for a long time. The older romanisations such as the original French, the Chinese postal romanisation, and Wade-Giles all follow the Nanjing standard of their time, or at least that was my impression.

Perhaps one of our resident linguists can chip in, here is one of the few useful sources I found: https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-story-with-the-k-j-phonetic-shift-in-Mandarin?share=1

Wiki is also useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Chinese_phonology#Initials

Note, by "recent", I mean 300 years or so. Beijingers have pronounced it "jing" for at least that long. Nanjingers not so much, and that's where the original transcription came from.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Click here to reply. Select text to quote.

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...