NOTES AND QUERIES
161
prefix faan in Cantonese, I would like to offer alternative etymologies for some of the words which he discusses and to suggest that it is to Portuguese—often in its Asian dialectal forms that we should look rather than to Arabic for the immediate sources of several loans. The Arabs were certainly present in Canton from early times but so, since the middle sixteenth century, were the Portuguese, and the part played by them from the beginning in introducing the cultivation of new plants to China from other parts of the world has already been demonstrated in various works by Mr. Jack Braga of Hong Kong.
Not only is it possible for certain Portuguese expressions to have entered the southern Chinese dialects through the dialect of Macao but also through the Portuguese lingua franca or pidgin, widely used on the coasts and amongst the islands of Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and through China coast pidgin English which had its hey-day towards the end of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth in Canton and Hong Kong as well as in the Treaty Ports and, for that matter, in Macao itself. Pidgin English, originally more Portuguese in aspect than in the period of its decline, bears the marks of Indo-Portuguese influence in forms such as amah (female servant), coolie (labourer), comprador (local agent or grocer), chop (stamp), chit (slip of paper), tiffin (luncheon).
In short, some Indo-Portuguese expressions may have been introduced to the Cantonese by the English and other foreigners rather than by the Portuguese or Macanese. Others, such as derivatives of leilão, (auction), must have entered several Chinese dialects at an earlier date.
While agreeing that it is of importance to establish the date of the introduction to China of the cultivation of all plants whose names are qualified by the prefix faan in Cantonese, I cannot accept the statement that "it would appear that the prefix faan is used only for importations from the Pacific." Three of the four plants with the faan prefix mentioned by the author almost certainly came from the West. They are the tomato, the guava, and the sweet potato. Of these three, the guava and the sweet potato were brought by the Spaniards to the Old World, and their very names in Spanish and English are from the Taino-Arawak dialect of the Greater Antilles. The tomato, a Mexican plant
NOTES AND QUERIES
161
prefix faan in Cantonese, I would like to offer alternative etymo- logies for some of the words which he discusses and to suggest that it is to Portuguese- often in its Asian dialectal forms that we should look rather than to Arabic for the immediate sources of several loans. The Arabs were certainly present in Canton from early times but so, since the middle sixteenth century were the Portuguese, and the part played by them from the beginning in introducing the cultivation of new plants to China from other parts of the world has already been demonstrated in various works by Mr. Jack Braga of Hong Kong.
Not only is it possible for certain Portuguese expressions to have entered the southern Chinese dialects through the dialect of Macao but also through the Portuguese lingua franca or pidgin, widely used on the coasts and amongst the islands of Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and through China coast pidgin English which had its hey-day towards the end of the eighteenth and throughout the nineteenth in Canton and Hong Kong as well as in the Treaty Ports and, for that matter, in Macao itself. Pidgin English, originally more Portuguese in aspect than in the period of its decline, bears the marks of Indo- Portuguese influence in forms such as amah (female servant), coolie (labourer), comprador (local agent or grocer), chop (stamp), chit (slip of paper), tiffin (luncheon).
In short, some Indo-Portuguese expressions may have been introduced to the Cantonese by the English and other foreigners rather than by the Portuguese or Macanese. Others, such as derivatives of leilão, (auction), must have entered several Chinese dialects at an earlier date.
While agreeing that it is of importance to establish the date of the introduction to China of the cultivation of all plants whose names are qualified by the prefix faan in Cantonese, I cannot accept the statement that "it would appear that the prefix faan is used only for importations from the Pacific." Three of the four plants with the faan prefix mentioned by the author almost certainly came from the West. They are the tomato, the guava and the sweet potato. Of these three the guava and the sweet potato were brought by the Spaniards to the Old World and their very names in Spanish and English are from the Taino-Arawak dialect of the Greater Antilles. The tomato, a Mexican plant
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