What’s the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Chinese Swallow?
September 1st, 2006 by MarkLast night, while looking up some words I didn’t understand in a Chinese kids’ book, I found something really interesting, or at least really interesting if you’re a language geek. Unless there’s some reason to say something in a certain way, the Chinese way of saying it and the English way are often completely different. Here’s a case in which the similarity is so strong it seems like it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
In English, the word “swallow” can be a verb which means to gulp something down your throat. It can also be a noun which means a certain kind of bird.
The Chinese character 燕 means a swallow (the bird). Just by adding a mouth radical on the left side to make it 嚥[1], the meaning can be changed to swallow (i.e. gulp). In Mandarin at least, both words even have the same pronunciation - yàn.
Swallows swallow mosquitoes
燕子嚥下蚊子
What’s the deal with swallows swallowing anyway?
[1:] As usual the simplified variant is convenient, but not very interesting. The commies changed 嚥 into 咽, which doesn’t look anything at all like 燕.
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September 1st, 2006 at 11:02 pm
That seems to imply that the swallow wasn’t native to China. (at least at first glance without any real background.) and was named so similar due to the english’s influence.
Just my 2 cents.
September 5th, 2006 at 12:21 am
That is really useful memonic. Just to note, 燕 has also been used historically to refer to Beijing, which is presumably why the local beer is called 燕京.
September 5th, 2006 at 3:24 am
Travelyan,
That’s interesting. Do you know why Beijing is referred to as 燕? Was there an ancient country there of that name or something?
September 5th, 2006 at 10:26 pm
For some info on “Yanjing,” see Language Log’s post Beijing, Peking, Peiping and all that.
September 6th, 2006 at 1:49 am
Thank you, Mark. As usual, your link was very informative. One thing the article didn’t mention is that Beijing is called ペキン (i.e. “Peking”) in Japanese, and has been for quite a while.
For those who don’t want to read the link, yes, 燕 was the name of an ancient state in northern China.
September 7th, 2006 at 1:25 am
The Chinese martial arts have forms called Swallow. In the US the swallow is a little pipsqueak of a bird, not much to admire, and generally a nuisance bird in the cities. The Chinese swallow must have been admired, maybe for its speed and the way it swoops down and then flies back up quickly.
Well there are forms called Chicken, too, which is another not-so-admirable bird. Maybe it was just convenient, like having a computer company called Apple. (!)
(Always enjoy your posts. Good luck on the new job.)
March 29th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Swallows eat while flying, they just open their enormous mouths and swoop around through herds of bugs. This was probably the connection between to swallow and a swallow, not surprisingly the Chinese drew the same connection.
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:32 am
Last week, when I lost the rudder on my sailing yacht, a swallow just like above visited my boat and stay there for a day and a night. I was at anchor 25 miles west off the shore from Peninsular Malaysia (port Klang) waiting for help. I was alone on board. The bird even came into the cabin over the night and was with me until the rescueboat towed us back to shore. About 5 miles near the shore this friendly bird left me. I was thinkink Swallows are very shy birds.
Funny to know is thad my vessel is registred as Swallow in the ship registration of port Klang.