Chinese week in EVS: 几个起源于中文的英文来历：Gung-ho、chopsticks、ketchup、kowtow、brainwashin
2013-07-16 06:51阅读：
Chinese week in EVS:
几个起源于中文的英文单词的来历：Gung-ho（热心的，狂热的）、chopsticks（筷子）、ketchup（番茄酱）、kowtow（叩头）、brainwashing（洗脑）
And today starts our Chinese week with the word: Gung-ho -
enthusiastic, keen.
Originates from the
kung (work) and
ho (together),
which was the name and slogan for the Chinese Industrial
Cooperatives. It was introduced to English by Major Evans Carlson
in 1942 who explained in a
Time interview one year later: “I
was trying to build up the same sort of working spirit I had seen
in China where all the soldiers dedicated themselves to one idea
and worked together to put that idea over.” The military success of
Major Carlson at Makin Island in the Pacific was made into a
blockbuster film in 1943. Named
Gung-ho, the word quickly
entered general American use.
Now used commonly to describe very zealous or enthusiastic
behaviour, Gung- ho is also used colloquially to describe a can-do
attitude.
The English term “chopsticks”
was probably derived from the
Chinese word for quick: “chop, chop”. It was first used in English
by the explorer William Dampier, who made three circumnavigations
of the world between 1690 and 1715. Chopsticks was actually only
one of around 80 words Dampier added to the English language. So we
will hear from him again (another one of his additions is, for
example, avocado).
The equivalent of a knife and fork has been used in Asia for some
3,000 years. Nowadays chopsticks tend to be disposable. China and
Japan produce most chopsticks out of wood, each year 45 billion
pairs are produced in China and 24 billion in Japan.
But chopsticks is also a tune played on the piano. The Celebrated
Chop Waltz, a waltz written for the piano by the British composer
Euphemia Allen became popular in the late 1870s.
In the 1690s, Chinese cuisine
featured a mixture of pickled
fish and spices called ketsiap. Various different forms were found
across Asia in the 1700s,
and a version with
tomatoes was created by Sandy Addison and found its way into the
Sugar House Book. But the key date was 1876, when Heinz
introduced its tomato ketchup and brought the red delight to
American consumers. It turned out to become a success story that
hasn’t reached its pick yet. In 1917, the company produced 12
million bottles worldwide, in 2012, 650 million.
Instead fo
pickled fish, the ingredients of modern day ketchup include tomato
concentrate, vinegar, corn syrup, salt, spice, natural flavours,
onion powder and jalapenos.
From Chinese kou tou meaning knock on the head. In traditional
Chinese culture, it was necessary to display reverence to
superiors, and lower ranked persons needed to bow deeply, or kowtow
by prostrating themselves on the floor and touching the ground with
their heads. In the Qing Period the standard procedure to greet a
superior was to perform “three kneelings and nine prostrations.”
The word was first noted in English at the beginning of the 1800s
among Asian diplomats , who were debating if to kowtow or not to
kowtow –
in an effort to find the middle path between
respect and submission.
Nowadays the word kowtow is also used to mean deferring to another
person’s opinion.
The word Brainwashing probably originated from the Chinese phrase,
xi nao, which means “wash brain.“ In its current form it was first
used in 1950 by Edward Hunter. He was a journalist and US
intelligence agent who reported on Chinese brainwashing at the time
of the Korean war. He described the method of breaking down
psychological resistance in order to create good members of
society.
A differentiation was made between the sensory and physical
deprivation as observed in GIs who had been captured by the North
Koreans and were making anti-American statements.
The
current meaning focuses on the consistent long-term use of mass
propaganda to ensure support for a totalitarian state, although it
is also used to describe an act of exerting pressure on a person to
accept a belief he or she considers undesirable.
