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chachava (Offline)
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Yokohama, Japan
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03-05-2008, 01:05 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by samurai007 View Post
Right, such as "pan", meaning bread. Some Japanese don't know the origin of some words though, so I remember a funny exchange one time where a Japanese friend was saying "pan" comes from English. Well, "pan" is a word in English... it's a flat-bottomed cooking utensil, like a frying pan.

"No", he said, "the pan you eat!"

"Huh? We don't eat pans... you must mean a pan you eat out of? We call that a dish..."

"No, I mean pan shaped like this..." as he motioned a loaf of bread.

"Ahh, you mean a bread pan, for baking bread!"

"What is bread? You should know pan, it's a loan word!"

We finally figured things out, and he learned than not all loan words are from English, and I learned the Japanese (and Portuguese) word for bread!

Someday I'll tell you about the hilarious way I learned the Japanese word for "duck"....


am i right in thinking pan is the french word for bread?
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