The Amateur Etymologist

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu

English is such a wonderful language and has such amazing ability to describe the depth and breath of human experience. It is also such an adaptable and inclusive language in the sense that it can absorb words from other languages and it continues to morph and change. It's a living language.

Some times though, it utterly fails when you try to find an equivalent English phrase to match a foreign expression. The Japanese phrase "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu" is one such phrase. There is nothing like it in English. "Yoroshiku oneigaishimasu" literrally means "I humbly ask you to be kind to me." But the beauty of that phrase is that it means so much more than that. Generally, the phrase connotes good but ambiguous feelings. And you can use it in great variety of situations.

For example, when you first meet someone for the first time, you say, "Yoroshiku oneigaishimasu." Here it means "Nice to meet you." When you first join a company, you can use the phrase to mean, "Please be kind to me and mentor me well." You can say the same thing when joining a group. In a business context, when you say it to a potential partner, it means "I look forward to doing business with you."

When you assign someone a task to do or ask a friend to do you a favour, the phrase then means, "I'll leave it to you" or "Please take care of it". The phrase can also mean "Please take care of me", "Please remember me" or "I hope we get along well". Between close friends, you can even use the more casual form "Yoroshiku". In this short form, it can also mean, "Say hello for me".

What an amazing phrase. By it's ambiguity, "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu" is such a catch-all phrase that helps you convey respect and courtesy when you are short of something nice to say. If only there were such a phrase in English.

Typhoon and its Cantonese origins

I had always thought typhoon was a Japanese word. But my father-in-law corrected me today. He said that the word was actually Chinese in origin. Specifically, its roots are from the Cantonese words for "big wind", i.e., dai fung. I was pretty impressed with that. I checked the Merriam-Webster and it also adds that there are etymological roots with a similar Arabic word tūfān (which means hurricane) and also from the Greek word typhōn (which means violent storm). Somehow, I think that's a stretch because typhoons are used only in reference to storms on Asia Pacfic's coast.

Allan Metcalf, in his book, "The World in so Many Words", points out that because of the British presence in Hong Kong for 150 years, the English language has absorbed a number of Cantonese words (the dominant Chinese dialect spoken in Hong Kong). He records 1771 as the year that typhoon entered the Engish lexicon. Other Cantonese words that entered the English language include sampan (boat, 1620), tong (secret society, 1883), cheongsam (dress with slit skirt, 1952), and shar-pei (dog, 1975).