Word of the week

Published on 01/01/2005 00:49

tsunami: noun. 1: A very large ocean wave caused by an underwater earthquake. (Etymology: from Japanese: tsu, port + nami, wave.)

The Japanese word transliterated into English as tsunami is made up of the ideographs for harbour and wave. The term was created by Japanese fishermen who returned to their home port only to find it had been devastated by a flood, although they hadn’t been aware of any wave in the open water. The reason is that typical tsunami waves travel underwater from the earthquake epicentre with very long wave lengths between the peaks (sometimes over 100 kilometres), so they go unnoticed at sea, forming only a passing "hump" in the ocean.

The origin of Japanese is in dispute. It is most widely believed to be connected to the Ural-Altaic family, which includes Turkish, Mongolian, Manchu, and Korean. The Chinese system of written characters was adopted in the 6th century. The influence of Chinese on Japanese remains today: some 40 per cent of the vocabulary of modern Japanese consists of words adapted from Chinese. Like English, Japanese is a composite of many other tongues. From the Portuguese "po" for bread, comes the Japanese "pan". "Garasu" is from Dutch "glas", meaning "glass".

Today, English has became the main source of foreign words ("gairaigo") in Japanese, so it is only fitting we take some words back. One of my favourite festive season parlour games is to pick a foreign language in turn (the more obscure the better) and award points for how many words guests can find which have been adopted into English. Thus as well as tsunami: bonsai, geisha, futon, hara-kiri, honcho, judo, karaoke, karate, kimono, ninja, origami, rickshaw, sake, satsuma, shogun, soy sauce, sumo wrestler, sushi, and tycoon. You get double score for more than ten words.

Finally, my nomination for new word of 2004 goes to "numptorium", coined by our own Peter Clarke, and meaning "a political assembly or parliament building staffed by politicians of a low average IQ, or possessed of venal interests". I wonder to what he could have been referring?