kavanin Posted December 12, 2011 at 08:31 PM Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 at 08:31 PM Is there an online dictionary of word-level etymology of Chinese? For example, 沙发 shāfā seems to have been borrowed from Arabic suffah, via English sofa, via Turkish sofa. Turkish yan[mak] "to burn" may have a distant relation to 炎, or Persian cang (read like jang or zhang) "war, battle" to 仗. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tooironic Posted December 12, 2011 at 11:10 PM Report Share Posted December 12, 2011 at 11:10 PM Try zdic.net. It has an etymology for 沙发 here, among others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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