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Fun story, Tempura was allegedly inspired by Portuguese "Peixinhos da horta" which was a poorman meal of fried green beans, that was popular during Lent. [0]
Of course as with many things in japanese culture they carried Tempura to a next level.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170808-the-truth-about-...
> Of course as with many things in japanese culture they carried Tempura to a next level
That is true. Although to experience the real thing you really have to be in Japan.
Sadly the Westernised versions of Tempura are more often than not massacred imitations.
The most common errors in the West are that the batter is wrong or, the most common of all faults ... the oil is old.
With true Tempura in Japan, the oil is frequently refreshed during the course of service and in addition is not shared with other deep fried foods. Both of which actions serve to maintain the delicate taste and texture of true Tempura.
Sadly in the West (if you're lucky !) the chef will simply dump the Tempura in the same deep-fat fryer that he's been using all day to fry god knows what else.
Wow - I was recently in Lisbon for the second time in two years, and I insisted my other half and I ordered these at a restaurant, as I had tried them on my first visit and they were delicious!
I described them to her as 'tempura fried green beans', assuming naively that the influence came in the other direction!
Related "Why Portuguese Food is Hiding Everywhere"[0]
The Indian curry vindaloo is also a Portuguese dish although few Indian restaurants actually serve real Vindaloo which you'll only get at a Goan house or an East Indian house. Only Christians eat Vindaloo really because it has to be made with pork, as it's a pork dish, and only us Indian Christians eat pork as far as I know.
It comes from the Portuguese dish Vinha d'Alho (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carne_de_vinha_d%27alhos). It's a simple recipe and tastes excellent.
There's a whole set of Indian pork and beef curries with Portuguese influence that are amazing and unfortunately never sold in restaurants.
There used to be more fasting and abstinence than Lent: "The word tempura comes from the Ember Days (quatuor tempora in Latin), the quarterly periods of fasting in Western Christian churches, where believers go meatless." (Wikipedia)
"The word ember originates from the Latin quatuor tempora (literally 'four times')." (Wikipedia)
See also: Rogation Days for more fasting and abstinence.
I had actually wondered if tempura was a loan word a long time before I learned that it was due to how Romance language it sounds.
They got it from India and then took it Japan.
I speak Japanese and Spanish - when I went to Japan with my Mexican wife, she asked how to say "bread" in Japanese and I said "pan" and she said, "honey, you're mixing up your Japanese and your Spanish, that's the Spanish word for bread".
Always loved that simple joke from Takahashi: "Pan da panda"... (Depicting the bread holding aloof panda.)
Having gone through half a century of Japanese period, Taiwan also calls bread "pan".
This answered questions I didn't even know I had. Everyone knows pan. But I never thought to ask why the word for England didn't sound like English, or why soap bubble is a loanword. (It sounds Japanese enough to me, but I guess it's always written in katakana, so I should have wondered.)
イギリス is also written 英吉利, which implies that it came from the Mandarin, not Portuguese.
Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside Japan.
I bet they brought a couple of Japanese words to Brazilian Portuguese too.
Probably caqui too (from kaki), and kabocha (same name). And other food depending on where you are in Brazil (manju, dorayaki, gobo, rakyo, azuki, wasabi, ra-men, udon, ...).
Other words are used in management, like in English (kaizen, kaban).
And in games & sports, besides jokenpo, there's also kendama that's sometimes used (bilboque in portuguese? That toy Chaves & Kiko always fight for :). Judogi, sensei, most judo moves are not translated as in English and we use the Japanese version in Portuguese too. Some in anime and tech, like mecha, otaku, manga, anime, mangaka.
And in the Brazilin-Japanese community it's common to switch to a version of Portuguese that mixes some words that were widely used: benjo (bathroom), kusai (smelly), gohan (food, rice), kitanai (dirty), se-no (ready-set). That varies in each region and community, but it's common to switch to use these old-fashion words like benjo, which is how all my family spoke in the countrysde of Sao Paulo, but sounds redneck/wrong if you say that to a Japanese nowadays.
The two that comes to mind is rock-paper-scissors, which we call "jokenpô", that is similar to the japanese 'jankenpon'. Chopsticks are "hashis" like already mentioned.
Also, we call soy-sauce "shoyu", which is the japanese for soy.
Tsunami, emoji, soja, jo-ken-pô, judô, karatê, sushi, origami.
Because of Japanese immigration, there’s a lot of people in the Southeast with Japanese last names.
In Brazil when we play rock-paper-scissors we say "Jan Ken Po"
Hashi for chopsticks I believe.
Even more surprising is the list of Japanese words of Dutch origin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_Japanese_words_of_...
The Dutch opportunistically arrived mostly after the Portuguese had been driven out by the Japanese, but still managed to leave the Japanese language with words like bīru, kapitan and madorosu. I'm sure these words would have come up during the Portuguese era as well.
For words which are similar (captain, alcohol etc.) I wonder how they know it comes from Dutch and not Portuguese.
The words of German origin are here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eig...
I’m glad to finally learn an explanation for エネルギー
Woah "power-up" (as in the mushroom Mario takes to be double-sized) is originally Japanese! Never noticed how it's not grammatically sensible English.
Similar to how "long time no see" is either from Mandarin or pidgin English.
ワンダーフォーゲル (Wandervogel) is missing from that list. And I just learned that it was an anti-industrialization movement.
アルバイト・バイト
Is probably the most well known example. The german "Arbeit" is used commonly to refer to part time work.
I think it's safe to assume that the Portuguese "pão" (bread) was pronounced much closer to "pan" around the time they made contact with Japan, and that's what stuck in Japan while the Portuguese pronunciation kept evolving. I find it strange otherwise that the Japanese word is closer in pronunciation to the Spanish "pan", or even the French "pain", than the modern day Portuguese word.
> I think it's safe to assume that the Portuguese "pão" (bread) was pronounced much closer to "pan" around the time they made contact with Japan
The evolution of nasal vowels in Portuguese out of Latin *n predates contact with Japan by centuries (see Nasal Vowel Evolution in Romance by Rodney Sampson, Oxford University Press, 1999).
It’s not unusual at all that Japanese, a language without nasal vowels, would then replace the Portuguese nasal vowel with the closest equivalent it had.
>the Portuguese "pão" (bread)
In India, the word pao or pav in street food / snacks like vada pav and pav bhaji, probably comes from the Portuguese.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vada_pav
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pav_bhaji
My favorite variant is khada pav bhaji, in which the vegetables are in chunks, not mashed.
Wiktionary says the pronunciation of modern Portuguese pão is [pɐ̃ʊ̯̃] in IPA. Modern Japanese has [p] but not [ɐ̃]. The vowel closest to [ɐ] is [a], and to get the nasalization of [ɐ̃], the following consonant needs to be [ɴ], giving "pan" [pãɴ]. As a bonus, [ʊ̯̃] is a back nasal vowel and [ɴ] is a back nasal consonant. So modern Japanese "pan" is a good match for modern Portuguese pão.
To support your theory, you'd need to look at a language where borrowings with nasal vowels and syllable-final nasal consonants can reliably be distingished from each other, i.e. not Japanese.
The nasal sound of pão is very difficult for foreigners.
Pao led to pan (fancy sandwiches if anime is right) in Japanese and pav (small buns) in Hindi, Indians use the word bread the same. Sabao led to sabun (soap) in Hindi. We have Portuguese-Indian community, of which Rodriguez is the most common name IME, and most common names in many countries. In Malayalam, mesa means table, and plataeu in English.
My favourite is Castella a type of speciality cake from Nagasaki. Castella means Castilian and it is the cake you can buy in pretty much every bar in Spain. Brought to Japan 400 years ago by the Portuguese and now a local speciality.
This is something I have often thought about - the quantity of Japanese words that are similar to Portuguese and Greek. It really bothers me.
A Berenstain moment for me to learn that arigatō isn’t derived from obrigado.
varanda, kapitan exists in my language ( Malayalam ) as well, with same meaning and origin.
Also vada pav , which is a beloved food in Mumbai also uses pav , which comes from pão, bread in Portugese.
Interesting such a small small country had such a worldwide impact
I speak Portuguese and just got back from Portugal with my anime-obsessed boss. It was endless embarrassment when I told him to say “obrigado” to thank people, but he just said “arigato” the whole week — even after dozens of corrections.
I was browsing this same list this morning to see if there was any merit to his behavior.
As a Japanese native speaker, it's fun to learn our words with foreign origin.
As a Korean, it's wild to see what words that we got from the Japanese come from somewhere even further. I've always wondered some like
Jjokki - Jacket/vest
Ppang - Bread
dah-mah (I think?) - bulb/fuse
mang-toh - Coat/cloak
jjah-mong - pomelo like fruit
Portuguese "Arrufadas" -> Hawaiian "Sweet Bread Rolls"
<3
I was always curious about why tabaco was written in hiragana but this article explains it.
> Many of the first words which were introduced and entered the Japanese language from Portuguese and Dutch are written in kanji or hiragana, rather than katakana, which is the more common way to write loanwords in Japanese in modern times.
It would be nice if the page included the words of Portuguese origin, and not just the Japanese.
Gosh, my favorite has to be hiryūzu. The Chinese characters mean flying dragon head. But, the word in Portuguese is filhos which means sons or a type of sweet pastry. That's an amazing journey.
I was surprised when I found out the Japanese word for bread , Pan, is the same word in Spanish.
This answers questions I have long had, as I was not previously aware of the Muromachi period.
English, of course, takes from every language it encounters.
Surely the english translation of varanda is veranda(h).
Brazilian here. The first Portuguese-rooted Japanese word I learned was Kuruzu [PT: Cruz; EN: Cross]. It is lacking in the Wiki page. I wonder if it still in use.
EDIT: The word does not appear in search. The word don't seem to exist as a noun. I've been given wrong information, apparently. I apologize for spreading it.