Re: Borrowing Words

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> This phenomenon is actually quite common in Japanese. It consists in
> simplifying long phrases (creating abbreviations thus) by taking the
> first two morae of each word. With native words and words borrowed from
> Chinese, it usually corresponds to the first kanji of each word [...]
In Chinese itself, it's common to take the first hanzi to make an acronym.
The English word "gung-ho" (meaning very, even excessively, enthusiastic)
was borrowed in 1942 by Evans F. Carlson from Chinese gong1 he2, which
individually mean "work" and "together", under the view that the whole
phrase meant that.  But in context it is simply an abbreviation for
gong1ye4 he2zuo4she4, "industrial cooperative society".

ObIrrelevant:  Then there's "ginkgo", a broken word if there ever was one:
see http://www.zompist.com/spell.html down at the very end.

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