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Re: OT: Junk

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 9, 2003, 15:54
John Cowan wrote:

> H. S. Teoh scripsit: > > > > I thought this would be the best forum I've got access to to learn i)
if
> > > that's true, ii) if so, do the Chinese have a special term for the > > > ship-types we westerners call "junks" and iii) from what kind of
Chinese
> > > is the word "junk" derived - it does not look much Mandarinesque. > > [snip] > > > > I've no idea if it's true. The common word for ship or boat is /chuan2/. > > m-w.com says junk in this sense is < Pg junco < Javanese jon, which I'm > willing to bet is a Sinitic loan, probably not from Mandarin, more like > Cantonese or Minnan. > > Does that ring any bells? Roger?
Your msg. arrived just as I returned from a trip to my Shorter OED, which gives much the same info, suggesting that the Engl. word is "adapted from" either the Eur. forms or the Malay/Jav. forms, which are given correctly as "djong" (modern "jong") /dZoN/. In view of the -k, I'd guess Portuguese via Chin. Pidgin Engl. Most Chinese loans in Indonesia seem to come from Southern Chin. dialects-- do they have /-N/ for Mand. /-n/ ? Or voicing of the initial?

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H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>