We were ordering food at a restaurant, and I found a word on the menu that looked a little familiar. I think it was "Alcart." I asked what it meant. Mike laughed at me. "À la carte."
It had occurred to me that the Vietnamese language is full of various words from other languages. For example, the Vietnamese word for t.v. is tivi. Since I don't know French, I probably run across these loanwords all the time and don't even know it.
I thought it would be fun to browse through the internets and find some interesting Vietnamese loanwords. Thought it would make a good blog post. Then I stumbled on this blog on French loan-words. And I realized my post on loanwords would only stack up if I found another thousand words that weren't already posted. So that blog's prolific author is "loaning" us this list, as it were.
I don't know Chinese either, and I've heard, from a semi-reliable source, that Chinese words constitute about 60 percent of the Vietnamese vocabulary. A post on Chinese loanwords would be similarly interesting. Due to the variety of Chinese dialects, to include the ancient language of the first 1000 years or so of Chinese occupation, those loanwords are tremendously complex. For now, I'm thinking about a post on that subject sometime. But if I come across a source as comprehensive as the one on French loanwords, it might just loan us the information, too.
Wow, getting other people to write my posts is... kind of lazy. Hope this doesn't come back and bite me in the butt. Never a borrower be, quoth the bard.
No comments:
Post a Comment