origin of 冰激凌？

[haton]

Hello,

does someone know the origin of 冰激凌？ (bing1 ji1 ling2 - ice cream)

The meanings of the individual characters don't seem to have anything to do with ice cream. Perhaps "jiling" is a phonetic transcript of a foreign word, but I can't make out which...

[abuck]

冰淇淋 bīngqilín is ice cream, unless I've been taught wrong. I think that the first character 冰 bīng means ice and 淇淋 qilín is a phonetic loan from the English word "cream." Someone more qualified can probably give you a better answer, though

[adrianlondon]

I was taught 冰淇淋 too, but the dictionary allows both.

Wenlin says 淇淋 is a loan word (ie a phonetic?) for cream but I'm not sure how.

[roddy]

Anyone know how those characters would be pronounced in Cantonese? Often loan words came via Hong Kong, and the characters are close to the original in Cantonese than in Mandarin.

Doesn't seem that much of a stretch to me though. Cream . . .Ki . . . leam . . .ji . . .ling

[Mugi]

I think both 冰激凌 and 冰淇淋 are actually loanwords borrowed directly into Mandarin.

Cantonese doesn't use either of these terms, and phonetically they're actually further removed from the English pronunciation than the Mandarin is (激=gik, 凌=ling, 淇=kei, 淋=lam).

Although I can't locate any evidence at the moment, this term was probably introduced into Chinese at the beginning of the 20th century by writers who had studied abroad. Such writers typically had a good knowledge of Middle Chinese phonology, so when it came to transliterating foreign words into standard Mandarin where there wasn't an appropriate sound (in this case, "ki"), then they would opt for the next closest sound and try and use a character that had an appropriate initial in Middle Chinese.

In the cases of 激 and 淇, there are probably some Mandarin dialects which pronounce these characters as "gi" and "ki" (or something similar), due to lesser palatization having occurred than in the standard language.

[Quest]

We say 雪糕 in Cantonese. In Hong Kong, "cream" by itself is transliterated as 忌廉 (gei-leem).

Like Mugi said, standard Mandarin lacks some of the "k" sounds and often uses "j" or "q" as substitutes. It could be via another dialect, maybe Shanghainese.

[Jose]

As others have said, qilin or jiling seems to be a phonetic rendering of the English word 'cream'. The lack of consonant clusters in Chinese accounts for the need to insert a vowel between the first two consonants. Using 'l' for English 'r' and '-n' or '-ng' for the final 'm' also makes sense, as Mandarin doesn't have a "ree" sound or a final '-m'.

This would explain how 'cream' should become 'kilin' or 'kiling', but then the 'ki' syllable does not exist in Mandarin either, so how should it be rendered?

As Quest has pointed out, it is common in Mandarin to use 'j' or 'q' for 'k'. Some examples include names like 'Pakistan', 'Kentucky', 'Helsinki', 'Kiribati' or 'Quito'. In all these cases the 'ki' syllable is represented by the character 基 (ji).

An interesting question is why the sound 'ji' is felt to be close to 'ki'. I find it hard to believe that names like 'Helsinki' or 'Quito' have been adopted through Shanghainese or whatever. I think Mugi is right in pointing to older pronunciation, but I am not sure if one needs to go back as far as Middle Chinese. The standardisation of modern Putonghua pronunciation is quite recent, and it seems that syllables 'gi' and 'ki' have existed in Northern dialects until relatively recent times (maybe 19th century or even beginnings of 20th century?). Note, for example, traditional English spellings like Peking, Nanking, Tao Te King, Kiangsu, Sinkiang, Kirin. I don't think these spellings can be explained in terms of Cantonese or Shanghainese. Except for the funny 'k', they all look like Mandarin. It is also interesting that Tianjin and Jinan used to be spelt as 'Tientsin' and 'Tsinan', probably reflecting an older style of pronunciation where gi/ki had not been merged away into ji/qi. At the time when such spellings were coined (probably in the 19th century) the first syllable in Jilin/Kirin (吉林) and in Jinan/Tsinan (濟南) must have been felt to be different.

My guess (unfortunately I haven't found any sources explaining this) is that the use of ji/qi to represent 'ki' comes from older northern pronunciation, and it has now become the conventional transcription for modern names like Pakistan or Kiribati, and English words like 'cream'.

[Mugi]

It could be via another dialect, maybe Shanghainese.

That's what I initially suspected too, especially given the fact that there were a number of native 吴/吳 speaking 五四 writers. However, in Shanghainese 激 and 淇 have already undergone palatization and are pronounced similar to Mandarin.

[xianu]

Historically, the first contact the "west" had in China was in Guangdong, and many of the early traders and missionaries who compiled their dictionaries, did their translations, etc. had so-called informants to help them. (remember all that opium war business?) These informants tended to speak Cantonese (being mostly from Guangdong). Words like California (Jia-li-fu-ni-ya zhou) Canada (Jia-na-da) were early translations into Chinese, translated by the cantonese informants. In cantonese, these words still sound kind of like the English equivalents, but not in Mandarin. Same is true for lots of Chinese words (like place names) Peking for Beijing, etc. My guess for why there so many J sounds in mandarin were given the K romanization was so that the romanization "syste" could be somewhat consistent, regardless of how close it actually sounded in cantonese or mandarin.

[haton]

Thanks all, you are geniuses.

(personally I would have transliterated 'cream' into 'ke lin', but never mind)