NOTES AND QUERIES
153
the cultivation of all plants whose names are qualified by the prefix faan," used for immigrants such as the tomato, the guava, the rambutan, one kind of melon, and the sweet potato. The peanut is not so qualified and it would appear that the prefix faan is used only for importations from the Pacific. The peanut bears no indication of foreign origin in its name. I do not know what it is called in the various dialects of Fukien, but Chinese books of reference refer to it as lok fa shang. The Cantonese name is fa shang, which is clearly an abbreviation of the former, while the Hakka name is ti tiu, which means earth bean.
Again it might be of some assistance if there could be recorded the names by which this plant has been known both in Arabia and in other countries of the Middle and Far East to which the Arabs introduced it. Another introduction, perhaps better described as a reintroduction, was the lemon. It would appear that the first Arab traders on their admission to Canton at the end of the sixth century took back with them the seeds of a plant then described in Chinese as yi mo (itself clearly a non-Han name) and from that plant developed and cultivated the now well-known lemon-shaped lemon which they called by the name Al-Laimûn which is the old Chinese name arabized by the common ending -n and the initial slurred with the definite article. The Cantonese then re-borrowed the Arabic name in the form of ning mung12 which we still use. Another Arabic word which was introduced into the language of Canton was the word amah, now familiar in the meaning of a Chinese female servant employed by a foreign family, which has nothing to do with the Cantonese word for grandmother2 but is a word for a female servant common to all the Semitic languages, including Hebrew it will be found in the Books of Exodus, xxiii. 12, Judges xix. 9 and many other places in the Bible. I suspect that many of the other words commonly used in Cantonese to express special relationships between Chinese and foreigners could also be found to have an origin in Arabic, Malay or other languages used by foreign traders in Canton before any Europeans were heard of: for example, sz tsai,16 sz tau,15 (which I think is the Arabic sayyid,1 fa wongł which is clearly the same word as the Urdu malik, originally meaning king and then gardener; kwun-tim," sz-naai14 and taipan3 If this surmise is correct, then these words are likely to have been
NOTES AND QUERIES
153
the cultivation of all plants whose names are qualified by the prefix faan," used for immigrants such as the tomato, the guava, the rambutan, one kind of melon, and the sweet potato. The peanut is not so qualified and it would appear that the prefix faan is used only for importations from the Pacific. The peanut bears no indication of foreign origin in its name. I do not know what it is called in the various dialects of Fukien, but Chinese books of reference refer to it as lok fa shang. The Cantonese name is fa shang, which is clearly an abbreviation of the former, while the Hakka name is ti tiu, which means earth bean.
Again it might be of some assistance if there could be recorded the names by which this plant has been known both in Arabia and in other countries of the Middle and Far East to which the Arabs introduced it. Another introduction, perhaps better described as a reintroduction, was the lemon. It would appear that the first Arab traders on their admission to Canton at the end of the sixth century took back with them the seeds of a plant then described in Chinese as yi mo (itself clearly a non-Han name) and from that plant developed and cultivated the now well-known lemon-shaped lemon which they called by the name Al-Laimûn which is the old Chinese name arabized by the common ending -n and the initial slurred with the definite article. The Cantonese then re-borrowed the Arabic name in the form of ning mung12 which we still use. Another Arabic word which was introduced into the language of Canton was the word amah, now familiar in the meaning of a Chinese female servant employed by a foreign family, which has nothing to do with the Cantonese word for grandmother2 but is a word for a female servant common to all the Semitic languages, including Hebrew it will be found in the Books of Exodus, xxiii. 12, Judges xix. 9 and many other places in the Bible. I suspect that many of the other words commonly used in Cantonese to express special relationships between Chinese and foreigners could also be found to have an origin in Arabic, Malay or other languages used by foreign traders in Canton before any Europeans were heard of: for example, sz tsai,16 sz tau,15 (which I think is the Arabic sayyid,1 fa wongł which is clearly the same word as the Urdu malik, originally meaning king and then gardener; kwun-tim,” sz-naai14 and taipan3 If this surmise is correct, then these words are likely to have been
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.