words expressing relations btw nations

[Guest oayama]

Currently I'm working on a study of words and phrases expressing relations between nations, for example, "French leave" or "Chinese ace" in English.

Now I' d like to expand the field of my work and take something from Chinese. I've been studying it for 3 years, but for some reason I've never met anything similar to the two given word combinations. Is it possible that such strong relationships are not expressed in the language? or I've just looked in the wrong places?

[jbradfor]

I had no idea what "French leave" or "Chinese ace" meant, so I had to look it up

What I think you are asking is whether there are words in Chinese that use names of other countries in the word?

If so, I can't think of any either. The closest I can think of is the use of 胡, e.g 胡蘿蔔.

[Guest oayama]

Yes, words containing names of other nations would do

But idioms are clearer in meaning. For example, why the Korean are called 朝鲜? Is there any connection to 朝 "a dinasty" or to 朝 "morning"? (perhaps, that's a stupid question, forgive me if so)))

By the way, could anyone prompt a good etymology dictionary? All that I could find are about characters etymology, not words.

Thanks in advance

[imron]

意大利面

法式面包

中国通

[Guest oayama]

Thanks, that's exactly what I need! Could you say where you got them? With a link if possible.

But this time I had to look it up :rolleyes:

So, "Italian face" is actually "pasta", "French bead", I suppose, is smth like "baguette", and the last one is undescryptable :blink: "open Chinese", "Chinese exit"? hm...

[jbradfor]

面 also means pasta/noodles.

[imron]

Could you say where you got them? With a link if possible.

My brain Currently not possible to link there, but who knows in a few years what technology may bring ;)

jbradford is correct. 面 is pasta/noodles, and is short for 面条. The 意大利 in front differentiates between Chinese noodles, and Italian-style noodles.

The second one as you correctly surmised is baguette, and the third one is "China expert", or "old China hand" (basically someone who understands China - although the term is so overused these days that it seems everyone gets called this, even China n00bs).

[skylee]

羅宋湯

呂宋芒

荷蘭水

朝鮮薊

星洲炒米

西班牙海鮮飯

印度神油

PS -

波斯菊

波斯貓

[imron]

Oh, and regarding etymology references, see here.

[Guest oayama]

My brain Currently not possible to link there, but who knows in a few years what technology may bring

You never know Especially, with Japan, so inventive

Thanks to everybody, you're being most helpful

Now I see that I need just a very thick dictionary that contains everything And, perhaps, some encyclopedias to learn why 朝鮮薊 are Korean.

As the encyclopedia Wiki would be great, could you recommend something else? just in case wiki doesn't answer))

As for the dictionary - I'm at a complete loss I've never seen anything really good on the net. this one prompted by imron is good, but it's not enough. For ex, it doesn't know what 印度神油 is, some "Indian spiritual oil" or petroleum :blink: . But wiki explains ))

Perhaps, anybody knows some substantial dictionaries?

And, probably, Chinese-Chinese explanatory dictionary could be more useful though not so easy to read))) Did anybody compare?

[xiaocai]

No one has thought about 阿拉伯数字?

Here is a rare one: 苏州码子.

[imron]

The link I recommended was for character etymology rather than as a comprehensive dictionary.

[Guest oayama]

I see I just need smth of a bigger scale: word etymology, not characters. Still can't find it, by the way.

Everybody seems to be interested in the roots of the characters, not the words, though it's not less interesting, to my mind...