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| Heinz's produces plenty of tomato ketchup, and it says the word "ketchup" originated from a Chinese sauce pronounced "catsup". Bloomberg |
As a language expert, Alan Yu is used to all kinds of influences showing up in English words.
But even the University of Chicago linguistics professor is surprised at the Chinese origins of the word "ketchup".
"This is what academics, having dinner together, talk about as one of the more interesting bits of the English language," Yu says of the far-flung roots of many English words.
While German, French and Latin generally are said to have made the biggest impact on the English that Westerners speak, read and mangle, Chinese also appears as an influence in words such as kumquat, gung ho, and kowtow.
But for millions of Americans used to dumping the beloved condiment on their French fries, scrambled eggs and hamburgers, none of those connections may be as startling as the Chinese link to ketchup.
In fact, HJ Heinz Co, the Pittsburgh-based maker of one of the world's best selling ketchup brands, confirmed in a statement to China Daily that ketchup "originated from a Chinese sauce pronounced catsup".
In a nutshell, here's the deal on ketchup, at least according to Dan Jurafsky, a Stanford University professor who has written a blog called "The Language of Food".
Jurafsky's blog cites evidence that ketchup has roots in eastern Fujian province as a fish sauce. "This fish sauce in the Southern Min (southern Fujian) dialect in the 18th century was called something like 'ke-tchup', 'ge-tchup', or 'kue-chiap', depending on the dialect," Jurafsky writes.
"Those of you who speak Southern Min or Cantonese dialects will recognize the last syllable of the (American pronunciation of the word), chiap or tchup, as the word for 'sauce' - pronounced zhi in Mandarin."
A 1982 Mandarin-to-Southern-Min dictionary, he says, confirms that the first syllable of the written Chinese name for ketchup is an archaic word pronounced gue in spoken Southern Min, and meaning a preserved fish. So ketchup is an "archaic word for fish sauce" in the Hokkien dialect of Southern Min Chinese, Jurafsky concludes.
Furthermore, Jurafsky says, early English recipes show that the original ketchup was indeed fish sauce, the stinky cooking sauce called nuoc mam in Vietnam, nampla in Thailand, patisin the Philippines, all made from salting and fermenting anchovies.
Jurafsky's blog also sheds light on a long-time mystery - why ketchup sometimes is spelled "catsup". Since Hokkien isn't written with the Roman alphabet, the same archaic, Western process that transcribed fish sauce as "ke-tchup", also delivered the world catsup, and even katchup.
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