English Words that are ACTUALLY Chinese!

Wait, tycoon comes from Chinese? And the word brainwashing and even ketchup does, too? So how many other English words are actually Chinese? Well, we’re going to tell you in this episode of Learn Chinese Now. English is a funky language. We patch together words from all sorts of different languages — French, Latin, Greek, even languages like Arabic and Turkish. So it’s natural that English would borrow some words from Chinese. But some of these words are what you would least expect. But before we start, if you like what we’re doing on this channel, please give us a like, subscribe, and become a member so we can keep making videos about everything Chinese. All right, let’s get into our first word — gung-ho. We all know the word gung-ho. It means someone who’s enthusiastic about something — maybe a little too enthusiastic. “Wow, someone’s really gung-ho about doing all those extra credit assignments.” “Man, he’s really gung-ho about mowing his lawn every week.” But that’s not what it once meant. Gung-ho actually comes from a Chinese word called 工合 (gōnghé), which looks on the surface like it means “work together” or “cooperate together.” But 工合 (gōnghé) was the name of an actual organization in China. You see, in the 1930s, China was facing a lot of problems — unrest, invasion from the Japanese, and so on. There were millions of war refugees, and something needed to be done about them. So the Chinese people started industrial cooperatives, or 工業合作社 (gōngyè hézuòshè). 工合 (gōnghé) is just a shorthand for that long word. So what is an industrial cooperative? It was basically a worker-owned company that focused on producing military-use items such as blankets, boots, things like that. So in the 1930s, a U.S. Marine Corps colonel named Evans Carlson toured China. And he was so impressed by the Chinese spirit that he named his unit after these cooperatives — gung-ho, he called it. Carlson said that the motto gung-ho meant “work together, work in harmony.” Which is interesting, because while it’s inaccurate, it happens to be a homonym of the correct words. 合作 (hézuò) can mean “to do something together,” and 和平 (hépíng) means “peace or harmony.” So his wrong interpretation ended up becoming how we understand gung-ho today — to go all out, to do something, and to work together as a group to do it. Tycoon. So English got the word tycoon from Japanese. But the Japanese got their word from Chinese. There’s a word in Chinese called 大君 (dàjūn), which basically means “great prince.” As Japan learned a lot of their culture from China, they also borrowed a bunch of words, and 大君 (dàjūn) was one of them. The Japanese called it Taikun. So in the 1850s, Commodore Matthew Perry came to Japan to open it up to western trade. When the Japanese tried to negotiate with him, he insisted that he wouldn’t talk to anyone but the highest leader. At that point, Japan had an emperor, but he was mainly just a figurehead. It was the shogun that ran the country at the time. But the thing is, shogun in Japanese basically just means “general of the army,” which doesn’t sound good enough as a title to present to the Americans. So the shogun decided to call himself the Taikun when talking with the Americans, and that did the trick. So when the American press talked about Perry’s visits to Japan, they changed Taikun to Tycoon, and the word caught on. Even Abraham Lincoln was called “the Tycoon” by some of his aides. But gradually the word came less to mean a ruler and more to mean just a rich businessman, which is the way we use it today. Ketchup. So ketchup is a really interesting one. Back in the 1600s, Britain was beginning to trade with the Chinese. One of the cities that was doing big business back then was Amoy, which we now call 厦门 (Xiàmén). If you look at it on a map, it’s basically right across the water from Taiwan. So the people of Amoy had a kind of sauce made from pickled fish called Kê-tsiap. It’s hard to know exactly what this tasted like, but probably a good comparison is the fish sauce 魚露 (yúlù). Around the late 1600s, the British brought this food back home and called it “catchup,” and then “ketchup.” They westernized it a bit by using anchovies and mushroom sauce. Later, an American named James Mease invented tomato ketchup. Then people got rid of the anchovies and our great American condiment was born. Now, some people also use the spelling “catsup,” but that’s just another attempt to turn Kê-tsiap into English. Brainwashing. This word comes straight from modern Chinese. In Chinese, there’s a term called 洗脑 (xǐnǎo), which literally means “to wash the brain.” This term became synonymous with the Chinese Communist Party’s use of propaganda to psychologically manipulate both its enemies and its own people. So how did Americans find out about the term 洗脑 (xǐnǎo)? You see, during the Korean War, sometimes the Chinese army would take American troops as prisoners. And what the American generals noticed was that the Chinese were often able to get information out of the POWs, and sometimes could even get them to defect to the Chinese side. An American journalist named Edward Hunter investigated it and found that the Chinese were using “re-education” techniques on the Americans. And when he talked to former Chinese prisoners who had been subjected to this kind of treatment, he learned about the term 洗脑 (xǐnǎo). He then wrote the English term “brainwashing” for the first time in the Miami News in 1950, and followed it up with a book on the same subject — and the word has been in our lexicon ever since. Long time no see. So in Mandarin, 好久不见 (hǎo jiǔ bú jiàn) literally means “very long no see.” And you could see how maybe some Chinese people who don’t speak English that well might say it this way — kind of like how you would take the Chinese term for “Chinese person,” 中国人 (zhōngguó rén), and literally that reads as “China man,” which is probably how the old term “Chinaman” came about. Anyway, in 1892, there was a newspaper article in Boston that came out about a woman who talked with the local Chinese a lot and ended up accidentally picking up their way of speaking English. In the article, she said, “Maybe I think I go see my mama today. Long time no see.” That phrase got picked up in other places and now we all know it. Another phrase that we won’t get into detail on is “no can do,” which probably comes from either 不可以 (bù kěyǐ), which means “not okay to be done,” or 不能做 (bù néng zuò), which literally means “no can do.” Saving face. In the late 1800s, there was a missionary in China named Arthur H. Smith who popularized the idea of “saving face.” He wrote a book on the characteristics of Chinese people and devoted an entire chapter to the concept of face. In that book he wrote, “Face will be found to be in itself a key to the combination lock of many of the most important characteristics of the Chinese.” A little bit unfair? Yeah, of course. But Chinese does have these terms. There’s a term called 丢脸 (diūliǎn), which literally means “lose face.” And there’s another term, 为面子 (wèi miànzi), which means “to do something for your face.” And that’s probably where the idea of “saving face” came from. So did you like this list of words we shared today? Do you want us to do another episode of these kinds of words, or do you think we left any words out? Let me know in the comments below. And until next time, zai jian. If you enjoy the deeper meaning behind Chinese culture, folklore, legends, and strange true stories, then come explore more with me on Jared Tells Tales — where mystery, meaning, and the otherworldly still live on. Click the link to watch your first tale.