Home | Notifications | New Note | Local | Federated | Search | Logout

Note Detail

Multilinguo@multilinguo@mastodon.social (2026-08-14 17:45:56)
"Ketchup" is a 400-year-old borrowing loop.

1600s Hokkien 鮭汁 kôe-chiap: "brine of pickled fish". Chinese diaspora carried it to Malay as kicap ("soy sauce"). British sailors brought "catchup" home 1690s as fermented fish and mushroom sauce.

Philadelphia 1812: James Mease adds tomatoes. Heinz 1876: bottled. 1900: tomato standard.

Modern Cantonese 茄汁 ke-jāp resembles English "ketchup" so closely it may be a phono-semantic back-loan: China → Malay → English → Cantonese.
---Attachments---
image: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/117/092/965/543/270/361/original/59c7441c2efe9ee6.png
image: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/117/092/966/828/368/861/original/6018b198701f9895.png
image: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/117/092/968/128/998/509/original/5eeb288c1aad5afd.png
image: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/117/092/966/817/260/928/original/b303c35f1feee7ca.png