Rice porridge that sounds like dżan?

[Lu]

A fellow translator is translating a book from Polish into Dutch, about someone travelling through China, mainly Tibet. The translator asked me for help with the transcription of some words, and there is one that I'm unsure of.

 

In my translation of her translation:

My headache is subsiding and I decide to take the elevator down, to the hotel restaurant, for my first real Tibetan breakfast. On high tables there are steaming hot fried vegetables with meat and rice porridge, dżan [?] – a gesture to the Chinese guests staying in the hotel. There is also toast with jam for Westerners. On a table in the center is a large earthenware bowl with tsampa, or whole-grain flour from roasted barley. Next to it is a thermos bottle with butter tea and little porcelain bowls.

 

Does anyone here know of a porridge pronounced something like dżan? My best guess is zhou, because it fits the meaning (rice porridge) and the setting (hotel with Chinese guests, breakfast) perfectly, but zhou doesn't really sound like dżan. It's possible that the original author made a mistake, of course. But I thought I'd ask here, in case there is a porridge or a word I don't know about.

 

 

[Publius]

糌粑？

[Lu]

On 2/4/2022 at 12:16 PM, Publius said:

糌粑？

I don't think that's it. Tsampa is mentioned in the next line and is not made of rice. The sound kind of fits though.

[Publius]

饘？

[Tomsima]

Quite an interesting one - perhaps the comment of it being 'rice' porridge was an assumption by the author? A table could have a dry bowl of tsampa as well as a 'wet' prepared bowl. Other than tsampa, the only other thing I can think of that is remotely like porridge is འཐེན་ཐུག ('Then thuk'), but thats more like a soup than a porridge...

[Publius]

On 2/4/2022 at 7:58 PM, Tomsima said:

འཐེན་ཐུག ('Then thuk')

Interesting. Related to 饘粥 *tɕǐɛn.tɕǐuk perhaps?

[Lu]

  

On 2/4/2022 at 12:35 PM, Publius said:

饘？

Yes, that has both the correct meaning and the correct sound. Is that a word that people (or hotels) still actually use, would the author have encountered it? (I don't think I've ever seen it before, but there are plenty of contemporary things I don't know.)

[Publius]

On 2/4/2022 at 10:19 PM, Lu said:

Is that a word that people (or hotels) still actually use, would the author have encountered it?

I don't think so.

[Tomsima]

If you look up ཐུག་པ (thukpa) in 藏汉大辞典 it defines it as (hon.) 汤面，稀粥，糊羹. 

the འཐེན་ in འཐེན་ཐུག is defined as 扯，拉 

 

So the part that could mean 粥 is the 'thuk' part, not the 'then' part that looks more like dżan, seems like its a bit of stretch to think it might be this. 

 

Whether or not its connected to 饘粥 I don't know, seems quite far from the 扯面/拉面 meaning that it seems to suggest

[Tomsima]

Having just typed 糊羹, is it possible dżan a dialect rendering of 羹 perhaps?

[abcdefg]

My best wild guess as to what was meant by "rice porridge, dżan [?]"  is that it was 稀饭，which is a regional name for rice porridge. In much of Yunnan, especially the northwest up towards Tibet, rice porridge is very often, perhaps even usually, called 稀饭。Pronounced "xifan." First tone, followed by a fourth. One also hears that a lot in Kunming; sometimes you see it in the "written on the wall" menus of small eateries. (Of course, you will still be understood if you ask for zhou 粥。)

 

Quote

Having just typed 糊羹, is it possible dżan a dialect rendering of 羹 perhaps?

 

Assuming that the story is set in recent times, which sounds to be the case, I don't think it would be 羹。I see that word mainly combined with the name of another ingredient that describes its contents. A common example would be 鸡蛋羹，which is sort of a steamed egg custard easy to make at home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S9XLtKDx3g 

 

A less common example would be 蛇羹, which I had a couple years ago on a back street in Hong Kong. It is a thick stew made with the meat of snakes. The kind I had was from the meat of cobras, stored upstairs in wooden cages. It was supposed to be not only nourishing, but an aid to virility. All the customers were middle aged guys, several clad in undershirts.  

 

[Michaelyus]

རྩམ་ 'rtsam (IPA Lhasa pronunciation /tsam/, closest to Polish <cam> or <dzam>) is a morpheme that basically means "powder" or "grain". 

རྩམ་པ་ 'rtsam pa is basically the nominalisation of this, and defaults to the roasted barley grain served as a staple.

ཐུག་རྩམ་ thug rtsam is more specific, "grains" or "particles" for gruel/congee/porridge. (I think of "ready oats" porridge.)

Compare འོ་རྩམ་ 'o rtsam, 奶粉 "powdered milk"

 

I think the Polish orthography "dżan" in the context given (IPA for Polish: /dʑan/, but may possibly be /tɕan/) actually refers to something completely different.

To my ears རྒྱ་ནག་ rgya nag (Lhasa pron. taken off Wiktionary: /ca˩˧.na˥˩/) "China", or maybe རྒྱ་མི་ rgya mi  (/cə˩˧.mi˥˥/) "(Han) Chinese person" are more likely.

 

[三少爺の劍]

You know more than Chinese people, which makes me admire. In fact, if I didn't see your problem, I would never know the word for the rest of my life. My classmate is in Tibet. Should I ask her to ask the restaurant owner??

[abcdefg]

On 2/9/2022 at 10:31 AM, 三少爺の劍 said:

My classmate is in Tibet. Should I ask her to ask the restaurant owner?

Yes, please. And welcome to the forum.