Thank you very much for your explanation to chocolate, cocoa and kangaroo. I learned about the economics and linguistics of chocolate. The interesting part for me is the etymologies as we can discover the close connection between vocabulary and culture through a history of vocabulary transmission.

I want to introduce the word “lemon”. It first appeared in c1400, lymon and originated from the Old French limon “citrus fruit” (12c.) = Italian limone, compared with Arabic laimūn, Persian līmūn; cognate with Sanskrit nimbū “the lime”. Here are some examples. Tukano erimoa and Tuyuka uinimoa (among the Betoya group of the Upper Rio Negro in South America) are derived from Portuguese limão. The Brazilian lingua franca, Tupi, has absorbed many loan-words from Portuguese. It retains the word for lemon in the form of limaw, although the liquid “l” is a foreign word in Brazilian (Tatevin, La langue Tapihiya, 1910, p. 142). It has always been thought that the lemon has only recently appeared in China and was introduced by “foreigners”. The results show that this concept is wrong as the Chinese people’s understanding of the lemon began in the Song Dynasty in the middle of the twelfth century.

Reference:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/594631
https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/107204?rskey=3tcMdc&result=1#eid

There is a colloquial word that is used by Spanish speakers to refer mostly to U.S. citizens, which is “gringo”. There are different versions of the origin of this word.

The best supported version states that Spaniards used to use the word “griegos” (Greeks) to refer to any foreigner and that this use came from the proverb in Latin “graecum est; non legitur”, which means “this is written in Greek and cannot be read”. This word appeared in writing for the first time in the XXVIII century in a 1787 Spaniard dictionary and it was defined as a term to refer to foreigners who have some sort of accent that impedes natural and smooth communication in Spanish.

An Argentinian dictionary registers that the term arrived in the American continent a century later and that this word was used by the working class to refer to foreigners in general, except for Brazilian and Portuguese citizens.

However, there are other versions of the origins of this word that originate in the 1846-1948 Mexican-American war. One of the versions argues that the U.S. soldiers that invaded Mexico used to sing a song called ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ and that the word “gringo” was a product of the distortion of that sentence by Mexican soldiers.

Another version states that the U.S. troops used colours to identify themselves, one of them been green. As the battalion commander yelled “green go” to tell his troop to move forward, Mexican soldiers would make fun of this by imitating this war cry and then would use “gringo” (which sounds like “green go”) to refer to their enemies.

The last two versions have been found to be less likely to be true, but they still have a place in popular knowledge and are deemed to be true by a lot of Spanish speakers.

Nowadays, the word is defined as a term used to refer to a foreigner, particularly an English speaker or to an unintelligible language.

References:
http://etimologias.dechile.net/?gringo
https://conexionmigrante.com/2019-/07-/28/el-verdadero-origen-de-la-palabra-gringo-no-viene-del-green-go-y-no-es-de-mexico/
https://dle.rae.es/gringo

During my time teaching in Japan, I have encountered many loanwords that are used in colloquial Japanese. However, not all these words are borrowed from English. Many are adapted from German, particularly when it comes to medical terminology. An example of this is the word アレルギー (arerugi) which is ‘allergy’ in English and ‘allergie’ in German. Students in Japan are often surprised to learn that the origin of this word is German. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word allergy is a relatively recent addition to the English language first seen in 1907 and is an amalgamation of two ancient Greek words. A quick search with Google Translate finds that ‘allergie’ fits the characteristics of a wandering word with many languages borrowing the term to describe the experience.

References:
Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved from: https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/5250?redirectedFrom=allergy#eid

Thank you, Yuxuan! I love your 嗨 (Hai) and 拜（Bai）examples – they are a great example of how ubiquitous language and culture contact is in fact but how erased and ignored it is in ideology. I’m continuously amazed how deep-seated the idea of purity is, not matter how much it flies in the face of diversity and hybridity.

Thank you, Alexander! I particularly appreciate your shout-out for wiktionary!

After I read this article, another generic word “bikini” came to my mind. Bikini is known as a three-point swimsuit worn by women and it invented in 1946. This year, because of the world’s first test explosion of the atomic bomb on Bikini Island in the Pacific Ocean, the French designed this sensational swimsuit in 1947 and named it bikini. Bikini entered China in the 1990s. It is hailed as “the greatest invention of the world’s clothing industry in the twentieth century”. In Chinese, bikini is pronounced as ‘bǐ jī ní’. Also, in French, German, and Italian, it is the same pronunciation as English.

Overall, language and culture are closely related. The meaning of a word is also inseparable from the cultural context behind it.

Reference:
https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/18925?redirectedFrom=bikini#eid

References:
https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/232044?redirectedFrom=yogurt#eid
https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/the-etymology-of-the-word-yogurt
https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/words/yogurt#region-3

In Russian, unlike English, the word Kenguru is not inflected for number, as in many other countable borrowed nouns that end in vowels.

In French, inflection takes place in writing only, as with many other nouns in that language. Thus, “un kangourou” becomes “beaucoup de kangourous”, but the plural ending is silent in speech.

In Italian, by contrast, the distinction between singular and plural spoken forms is very conspicuous. “Il canguro” (i find that language’s consistency with gender word endings quite remarkable) becomes “I canguri”.

Reference:

https://en.wiktionary.org/

Nothing beats this dictionary for me. It contains a massive amount of etymological, grammatical and often phonetic data on words in many different languages, and translations are typically provided. Most importantly, it’s free and accessible globally, helping ordinary people explore the richness and vibrant diversity of world’s languages.

Thank you, both for the meaning of 巧克力 and the “golf” example. Does the reading propose a route how chuiwan would have come from China to Scotland in the 15th century?

Another universal word I want to discuss is ‘golf’. Modern golf originated in Scotland in the 15th-century. The game of golf has spread throughout the British empire’s domains since 18th century. In 1896, golf was introduced to China after the Anglo-Chinese War. It was called ‘高尔夫’, and it is pronounced as ‘Gāo ěr fū’ which is similar to English. The word ‘高 Gāo’ can mean ‘high’ or ‘high level’. The last word ‘夫fū’ can mean ‘person’. It seems to imply a high-class or high-level sport. According to the research of professor Ling Hongling, a Chinese game called ‘chuiwan’ is very similar to modern golf. It was popular from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries, and some believe it to be the forerunner of golf. During the Qing dynasty, the game of Chuiwan gradually vanished. Now, the majority of Chinese people have never heard of chuiwan, but everyone has heard of golf. It shows how a powerful culture influences the language.

References:
Ling Hongling (1991). “Verification of the Fact that Golf originated From Chuiwan” (PDF). The Australian Society for Sports History Bulletin (14)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/golf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_golf#cite_note-39

Thanks for your recommend Ingrid！
The first word popped up in my mind was 饼干 (bǐng gān) when I first time met the snack cookies and it means dried pancakes.