How have Asian Languages Influenced English?

From 'brainwashing' to 'orangutan'. Quite a few English words and expressions originate from Chinese, Japanese and other East Asian languages. The total number is small but the stories behind them are fascinating.

00:00 Indo European Influence on English
02:47 Chinese 中文
08:04 Japanese 日本語
11:05 Bahasa Melayu
12:39 Korean 한국어
14:36 Thai ไทย
04:53 Philippines (Iloko)
15:55 Vietnamese - Tiếng Việt.

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[Ankitasharma]

Pundit, Guru, baba, jungle, loot, juggernaut are some words that have entered the English vocab but are derived from Hindi. Each word in English has its unique history. Informative and helpful video! 🙏😀

[paiwanhan]

Just in case someone claims you got the origin of tea wrong because it should be 茶 instead of 荼, I am going to preempt them by pointing out 荼 was the original character for both the tea and cha readings of the character 茶. The Dutch way of saying tea is spot on for the Hokkien tê, and both the 荼 and 茶 characters still sounded the same in Middle Chinese. The t > ts sound change that led to some later dialects to read 茶 as cha is pretty much just palatalization at work, similar to how we got the tʃ in statue from a word like status.

[trevormegson]

I love your enunciation. It is as important as the words, conveyed with gesture and articulation.

[fulyatasan]

In Turkish, we use “çay" (pronounced like chai) for tea. Love your channel by the way🙏

[patriziapadovani]

It is always an immense pleasure to listen to your precious words!

[peterchan]

For your information, the two Chinese characters 茶 (cha, the word for tea) and 荼 (tu/to) look very similar, but are distinct words.

Even we native Chinese users could get them wrong ourselves.

[jpkosoltrakul]

Being Thai, I am surprised that you didn't mention one of the most widespread (yet kinda embarrassing) word: "bong" (บ้อง). lol

[nokaton]

The word "bong" for cannabis is also from Thai word บ้อง (bong) meaning a cylinder.

[melribbonboo]

I have to catch up watching more of your videos.

[ericscavetta]

Boondocks (meaning remote countryside) entered English from Philippines languages. The Tagalog ‘bundok’ means hill/mountain. Sentence: “I’m going to be late to your birthday dinner, because I am still out in the boondocks”. I’m not sure if this term is regional to the US or across the anglosphere.

[dougsinthailand]

“Look see.” I’ve heard “give a look-see”, which probably combines expressions from two different languages.

[ursulastaempfli]

Very educational and entertaining as always.

[sergiosamanozamora]

Hello and best regards!
I find your videos so interesting, thanks for the knowledge!

[ericcartier]

Bravo ! once again you are "demarking" yourself with the quality of your videos!!!

[jarekzawadzki]

Actually, the English kowtow comes form 叩頭 (kautau in Cantonese pronunciation, i.e. same as English) not 磕頭 (which would be haptau in Cantonese, and ketou in Mandarin). Same meaning, though.

[TheMalayLinguist]

Brilliant video! Malay and Indonesian are essentially the same language but with small tweaks with many influence from Indian subcontinent and from historically european colonial era. Malay having very English influence and Indonesian having Dutch influence.

[PhilIpp]

And Japanese Ramen comes from Chinese LaMian 😁 It’s funny how words travel around

[HiKasandra]

Wow! I had no idea. Thank you for sharing! X

[xbeobmn]

One correction - Hindu is the term for the followers of Hinduism. Hindi is a name of the language. The two overlap more often than not but there are Hindus who don't speak Hindi and there are Hindi speakers who are not Hindu. I understand that its a common confusion but I just thought I should make it clear. Of course both words have the same etymology (and so does India for that matter).

[craigmacmillan]

the video presentation was hunki dori - just perfect