kavanin Posted December 12, 2011 at 08:31 PM Report 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
tooironic Posted December 12, 2011 at 11:10 PM Report Posted December 12, 2011 at 11:10 PM Try zdic.net. It has an etymology for 沙发 here, among others. Quote
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