Yuletide
  • Yuletide blog
  • About Me
  • Links
  • List of All Posts

Post-249: Uneventful Thanksgiving 2014 (And, How to Say 'Turkey' in Korean)

11/29/2014

1 Comment

 
Thanksgiving Day 2014 passed for me without any indication whatsoever that it was a holiday. That's because it isn't a holiday where I am (not counting the U.S. military bases).

On the plus side, I figured out the amusing meaning of the Korean word for "turkey":
.
Read More
Turkey is not common at all in East Asia. Most Asians seem to have never tried it.

English? Chinese? No. No.
Strangely, even though the bird is native to North America, there is a Korean word for "turkey" that is neither a Chinese loan nor an English loan (by which I mean a Koreanization of our word "turkey"; it would sound something like "tuh-kee"). The Korean word for turkey is "
칠면조" (Cheel-myuhn-cho). A Chinese of my acquaintance tells me that the Chinese word for turkey sounds something like "Hwoh-Jee", which is not close to the Korean.

The Meaning
From comparing the Chinese characters, I see that "
칠" in the Korean word above means "seven" (i.e. the Chinese-Korean number 7) and the "면" means "faces" (either literal or metaphorical, as in a "a two-faced man"). My next guess was that Koreans got this word from Japanese.

I asked good old Mr. Google about seven-faced birds and he pointed me here: "Japanese turkeys have seven faces".
  So, there we have it: In Japanese and Korean, the bird we call "the turkey" is called "the seven-faced bird". A website called Hiker's Notebook claims that
this odd name "is based the belief that the turkey changes its facial expression in concert with its emotional state."

Word History Speculation
I'm going to speculate that the Americans introduced turkey to Japan sometime after Admiral Peary opened the country in the 1850s, and when Japan started to exert economic, political, military, and cultural pressure on then-long-stagnant, increasingly-backwards Korea, from around the 1880s, this word (among many others) came with it. This seems to be a reasonable guess.

The Future of the Word for 'Turkey' in Korean
Knowing what I know of how Koreans are, though, I hereby predict that if turkey ever becomes popular in Korea, the  English loan ("tuh-kee") will quickly grow in popularity and either replace the old Japanese loan totally or find a way to co-exist with it. This has happened with chicken. The Korean word is "
닭" (dahk) but often you'll see "치킨" (chee-keen). The English loan (chee-keen), though, usually refers only to "fried chicken". The pure-Korean word still exists for other forms of chicken.

I'll be eating a Thanksgiving dinner on the weekend with some good people I know.
Picture
By Rockwell

1 Comment
vidmate link
9/21/2022 11:54:48 am

anks for sharing the article, and more importantly, your personal experience mindfully using our emotions as data about our inner state and knowing when it’s better to de-escalate by taking a time out are great tools. Appreciate you reading and sharing your story since I can certainly relate and I think others can to

Reply



Leave a Reply.


    About

    Welcome. This is a place I write things that may or may not be of interest. Thanks.

    See here for more.


    Search this site:

    List of All Posts
    List of all posts
    Subscribe via email:

    Subscribe to the Feed:

    Enter email address to subscribe to daily updates:



    RSS Feed

    Archives

    November 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013


    Contact by Email
    Yuletide5142 at y@hoo.com


    Picture
    Me

    I thank you for
    stopping by
    this quiet corner
    of the Internet.

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.