送交者: WT 于 2004-12-27, 21:48:55:
回答: 津波 由 kma 于 2004-12-27, 20:07:29:
Perhaps few words better illustrate the polyglot background of English than typhoon, with its Chinese, Arabic, East Indian, and Greek background. The Greek word typhon, both the name of the father of the winds and a common noun meaning “whirlwind, typhoon,” was borrowed into Arabic (as was many a Greek word during the Middle Ages, when Arabic learning both preserved the classical heritage and expanded upon it, passing it on to Europe). Ù¿f³n, the Arabic version of the Greek word, passed into languages spoken in India, where Arabic-speaking Moslem invaders had settled in the 11th century. Thus the descendant of the Arabic word, passing into English (first recorded in 1588) through an Indian language and appearing in English in forms such as touffon and tufan, originally referred specifically to a severe storm in India. China, another great empire, gave us yet another word for a storm, in this case the hurricane that occurred in the waters around China. This Chinese word in its Cantonese form, toi fung, was similar to our Arabic borrowing and is first recorded in English guise as tuffoon in 1699. The various forms coalesced and finally became typhoon.
也许很少有单词能像 typhoon一样表明汉语、阿拉伯语、东印度语和希腊语的多国语言背景。希腊单词 typhon既是风神的姓名又是意为“旋风，台风”的普通名词，被借入到阿拉伯语（就象在中世纪时许多希腊语单词进入阿拉伯语一样，那时，阿拉伯人的学问保存了古典的风格，同时在把它传向欧洲时又有所扩充）。 Tufan，希腊语的阿拉伯语形式，传入到了印度人使用的语言，11世纪时讲阿拉伯语的穆斯林入侵者在印度定居下来。这样，阿拉伯语单词的衍生，从印度语言进入英语（最早记载于1588年），并以如 touffon和 tufan的形式出现于英语中，最先特指印度的猛烈风暴。中国，另一个大帝国，给了我们风暴的另一个单词，这里指的是在中国附近洋面发生的飓风。汉语单词的广东语形式 toi fung同我们的阿拉伯语借用词相近，最早以 tuffoon的形式于1699年载入英语。各种形式合并在一起最后变成了 typhoon