# Hindi: loanwords from Portuguese, French, Dutch and Danish



## albondiga

So apparently the Portuguese colonization of some parts of India left a mark on Hindi vocabulary... some of the examples I've encountered so far (of Hindi loanwords from Portuguese) include mesa/_mez _and camisa/_kameez_... 

Can anyone give me some more examples?

And two more related questions:

-In addition to the British and the Portuguese, others (including the French, Dutch, and even Danish!) had colonial possessions in what is now India.  How much of an influence did these languages have on Hindi?  Does anyone know of any loanwords into Hindi from these other languages? (leaving English aside, for obvious reasons!)

-Besides these loanwords from the colonial era, Portuguese and Hindi share some cognates due to common Indo-European roots.  Many numbers (e.g., 2, 7, 8, 9) are obvious examples of this...  but are there any such cognates that you have encountered that Hindi shares with Romance languages that you found particularly surprising?


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## panjabigator

> So apparently the Portuguese colonization of some parts of India left a mark on Hindi vocabulary... some of the examples I've encountered so far (of Hindi loanwords from Portuguese) include mesa/_mez _and camisa/_kameez_...



The word "camisa" I believe is not directly a loan word to India.  The word for shirt we use is /qamiiz/ but it is pronounced the way you wrote it /kamiiz/.  I believe the word is a loan from either Arabic or Farsi (I'll look into it).  Perhaps it originates from Portuguese, but I'm not 100% with that one.



> Can anyone give me some more examples?



I believe the word /kamraa/ for room is.  The word /bataataa/ for potato is too.  I can't think of any others.


> -In addition to the British and the Portuguese, others (including the French, Dutch, and even Danish!) had colonial possessions in what is now India. How much of an influence did these languages have on Hindi? Does anyone know of any loanwords into Hindi from these other languages? (leaving English aside, for obvious reasons!)



I know that they had possessions in India, but I am not sure where.  And I don't know of any affect they have had on the language, unfortunately.


> -Besides these loanwords from the colonial era, Portuguese and Hindi share some cognates due to common Indo-European roots. Many numbers (e.g., 2, 7, 8, 9) are obvious examples of this... but are there any such cognates that you have encountered that Hindi shares with Romance languages that you found particularly surprising?



Well, I know I have thought of this before, but the only thing that comes to ming is the informal word for you "tu" in Spanish and in Hindi.  They are the same word.  Also the word for to cut in Spanish "cortarse" and in Hindi /kaTanaa/.


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## albondiga

panjabigator said:


> I believe the word /kamraa/ for room is.


Yes, from camara (with a circumflex accent on the first 'a')...  I actually had encountered /kamraa/ before in Hindi and remembered it as another loanword later last night, but was too lazy to go back and edit my post  ... I think that those were the only three I had encountered so far...



panjabigator said:


> The word /bataataa/ for potato is too.



I don't recall specifically encountering this one before, so thanks...  this word seems to be similar in many languages, but the 'b' certainly implies that it did come from Portuguese (rather than English, etc.)



panjabigator said:


> I know that they had possessions in India, but I am not sure where.  And I don't know of any affect they have had on the language, unfortunately.



The big French colony of which I know was Pondicherry, though they had others scattered along the coasts; the Dutch and Danish ones were scattered along the coasts as well (I just found out about the Danish colonies in India within the last couple of weeks)...  many of these were in the South, so perhaps those languages had more of an effect on Tamil, etc. than on Hindi...



panjabigator said:


> Well, I know I have thought of this before, but the only thing that comes to ming is the informal word for you "tu" in Spanish and in Hindi. They are the same word. Also the word for to cut in Spanish "cortarse" and in Hindi /kaTanaa/.



Cognates with common origins, or coincidence?

 Thanks!


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## panjabigator

I feel it is probably a coincidence.  Tu is the same in every North Indian language.

/Katanaa/ though is not a coincidence.  This one has to do with Sanskrit being related to other languages.


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## albondiga

panjabigator said:


> I feel it is probably a coincidence.  Tu is the same in every North Indian language.
> 
> /Katanaa/ though is not a coincidence.  This one has to do with Sanskrit being related to other languages.



Odd, the exact opposite of what I would have thought!  Like nahiiN, tu is close enough to other Indo-European languages that I would have thought it a cognate...

But Katanaa is an interesting and surprising cognate, please post if you can think of any more like this!


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## panjabigator

Actually, it probably DOES have a relationship.  I just wasn't thinking.  Do you have access to Rupert Snell's Teach Yourself Hindi?  He has a page which discusses etymologies and other cognates.  It should be of some use.  Also, check out George Cardona's The Modern Indo-Aryan Languages.  An excellent resource, and if it weren't so damn expensive, I'd buy it!  One day perhaps!


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## Outsider

panjabigator said:


> /Katanaa/ though is not a coincidence.  This one has to do with Sanskrit being related to other languages.


Portuguese has a word _catana_ -- much closer to _katanaa_ than _cortar-se_ --, but they are completely unrelated!


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## jazyk

Are we talking about the Japanese sword or what?


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## Outsider

Just one note, *Panjabigator*: Spanish _cortarse_ means "to cut oneself". "Cut" (the noun) is _corte_.


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## panjabigator

Right right!  Muito obrigado para la correcion! (Yuck...I really need to learn Portuguese!)


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## Kirpan

Isn't the word *'almari'* or *'almyra' *(wardrobe) also a typical loanword from Portuguese?  
One might think it is of Moorish/ Arabic origin because of the 'al' but it is of Portuguese *almario *(hope the spelling is correct) and of course related to the  French *'armoire'* and so must be from Latin *armarium.*


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## Kirpan

And as for loanwords from the Dutch about which one of you commented that there should be more of those in Tamil, I think you are right although quite a few worked their way up to the North as well.

Words that have to do with card playing like 'heere, boere, klawere, ruite' and not to forget 'troop' (troef)
A very common word is of course the 'kachus' In Tamil this may even be pronounced as in a Dutch dialect like 'kak-hus' ('hoos') (Toilet if you didn't guess)

I was very surprised however to hear the word 'petersilly' in the Calcutta bazaar (many years ago) which is the Dutch word for parsley.

There must be many more loanwords from Dutch in Tamil but hundreds of them are to be found in Ceylonese


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## SofiaB

ananas, pau, camara, girja.


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## Kirpan

The Portuguese brought us a lot of plants and fruits - often from South America, such as the ananas and I think the avocado. I would not be surprised if they did not also bring the brinjal/bangun? (aubergine/eggplant) to India. In Portuguese probably 'beringela'
The _girja_ for church is absolutely Portuguese but I have seen and heard many variations in spelling and pronunciation. I think in Malakka it is called 'kereja' where the harder K may have been introduced by the Dutch when they took over (they say 'kerk')


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## hjs45

Just an uneducated guess here - isn't the Hindi word 'bas' (I've no idea how to spell it, as I've only ever seen it in films...I have no knowledge of the Hindi language myself) almost identical to 'basta', as in 'enough!' or 'that's enough!'. It's something I've wondered about for quite a while, so I'd be interested to see what you think. Great post!


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## Kirpan

I think you are right. A good guess! 
It is a word one easily uses.
So if a waiter offers you some more of this or that, you could say 'bas - theek hai' (I do not follow academic transcriptions here) (thik hai stands for "it is good as it is" and in a way means thank you. It depends to whom you are speaking. Of course it is more polite to start with 'Thank you, but' - that should be clear.

I have often wondered about the connection bas/basta but was always too lazy to look it up.  Somehow I guessed they were not connected and it is just a coincidence.

There is a more formal word from Arabic which is sometimes but seldom used in Urdu, which also means 'enough' and it is _'qafi'._

I am not a native speaker of Indian languages and when some guys once invited me to share a cup of tea in a motel they asked me if I wanted another cup. I wanted to use a more elegant expresion and said: Thank you, qafi hai.  It is enough. Now in a question in Hindi and Urdu the voice rises higher and mine did not, but I remember the one brother asked the other: Do we have coffee?

As a foreigner one has to learn by making mistakes and if you pick up your information from one source or from a book people may smile or say that you speak 'mesl'qalam' (like a pen = as written language).
I used the 'bas' so often that I am now wondering if it does not also exist in Farsi and I'll look it up now and let you know


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## Kirpan

Thank you hjs45 for making me look it up.
My intuition was right. I did use the word in Persia as well as in India/Pakistan. It became such a familiar word that I forgot where I picked it up.
It is not at all connected with basta, even though it means the same. It may be the other way round maybe that Portuguese or Spanish took it from the Indian subcontinent. Now we must ask them.

Bas is - as my Steingass Persian but also Platts Classical Hindi say by origin Persian, but the Persian dictionary refers also to Sanskrit.
The Hindi gives as origin Persian but also gives Sanskrit 'va'sas'
Now it is quite often that you find similar words in both Sanskrit and old Persian so we never can tell exactly where the word is from.
You have to accept that they originated in the same part of the world.

As for the V = B. These letters are more or less interchangeable. In Hindi the characters are almost similar. Spanish B becomes a V in other languages and just one step further and the letter is pronounced as F.
And there is your new dialect or language


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## Outsider

Kirpan said:


> Isn't the word *'almari'* or *'almyra' *(wardrobe) also a typical loanword from Portuguese?
> One might think it is of Moorish/ Arabic origin because of the 'al' but it is of Portuguese *almario *(hope the spelling is correct) and of course related to the  French *'armoire'* and so must be from Latin *armarium.*


That makes sense. The word is _armário_ in modern Portuguese, but _almário_ could be an ancient variant of it.


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## Outsider

The word _basta_ is a form of the verb _bastar_. According to this dictionary, _bastar_ is derived from Latin.


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## Kirpan

Very interesting. My (classical) Latin dictionary does not give the word at all. Could the verb _'bastar'_ not have been formed from the word basta instead of basta from bastar?

The Persian and Sanskrit _'bas' _is much older in origin I think.

Is _bastar_ as a verb often used in Portuguese and what does it mean?
I have no Portuguese dictionary but does it mean something like _'to close'?_


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## panjabigator

Wow.  So many comments.  I don't know where to start!


> Isn't the word *'almari'* or *'almyra' *(wardrobe) also a typical loanword from Portuguese?
> One might think it is of Moorish/ Arabic origin because of the 'al' but it is of Portuguese *almario *(hope the spelling is correct) and of course related to the  French *'armoire'* and so must be from Latin *armarium.*


You are right about it not being Indic at least.  I had intended on suggesting it being from Portuguese, but I wasn't too sure.  But I think you are right.  The word we use is /almaarii/ and it very well could be from Portuguese.  I wonder if it is originally Arabic though... hmmm.  The "al" prefixes is usally indicative of Arabic origin words, but many times L becomes an R (or visaversa) so there is no way of me being sure.  



> And as for loanwords from the Dutch about which one of you commented that there should be more of those in Tamil, I think you are right although quite a few worked their way up to the North as well.



I am quite interested in learning any of the Dutch loan words in Tamil you know of, aside from the card game ones.  Tamils are usually very anti loan/foreign words, including those of Sanskrit (especially anything with Hindi) because their language is the _other_ classical language of India (with Sanskrit being the other one).  Tamil actually predates Sanskrit, so they elevate it higher than they do Sanskrit, which is very interesting considering Hinduism and its relationship to Sanskrit.



> There must be many more loanwords from Dutch in Tamil but hundreds of them are to be found in Ceylonese



You are right.  Any ideas?  So that we do not digress from the thread, maybe you can open a new thread on this topic.



> ananas, pau, camara, girja


Right!  Those are all Portuguese.  I completely forgot.  Good one!  Although, I have never really heard Girja too much.   I hear church much more.  Perhaps in Goa, the Portuguese colony (where Portuguese is still spoken, but diminishing in presence), there would be more.



> The Portuguese brought us a lot of plants and fruits - often from South America, such as the ananas and I think the avocado. I would not be surprised if they did not also bring the brinjal/bangun? (aubergine/eggplant) to India. In Portuguese probably 'beringela'
> The _girja_ for church is absolutely Portuguese but I have seen and heard many variations in spelling and pronunciation. I think in Malakka it is called 'kereja' where the harder K may have been introduced by the Dutch when they took over (they say 'kerk')



I heard once that the word for Eggplant has traveled the world and back again.  I don't remember the exact story, but the version I heard was that it started in India and migrated west and then was brough back to India with a different word.  Or perhaps they have similar roots from a common ancestrial language.  Here are the words I know for eggplant:  brinjal, aubergine, /baigan/ (H/U/P),  /batauN/ (P).  There are probably more that I am neglecting. 



> Just an uneducated guess here - isn't the Hindi word 'bas' (I've no idea how to spell it, as I've only ever seen it in films...I have no knowledge of the Hindi language myself) almost identical to 'basta', as in 'enough!' or 'that's enough!'. It's something I've wondered about for quite a while, so I'd be interested to see what you think. Great post!



Hmmmm...!  Great post!  I never knew that!  But here is what I heard.  Bas is a combination of words from the Qu'ran.  The first letter in the Qu'ran is a B, and the last is an S.  (I am pretty sure that the first verse is the "Bismillah" line).  So that is how the word was created...Arabic.  It is probably just a theory, so who knows?  Perhaps it was Arabic influence on both ends of the world?  Or maybe it's just from the Romance languages.  Really good post!


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## panjabigator

> So if a waiter offers you some more of this or that, you could say 'bas - theek hai' (I do not follow academic transcriptions here) (thik hai stands for "it is good as it is" and in a way means thank you. It depends to whom you are speaking. Of course it is more polite to start with 'Thank you, but' - that should be clear.


/Thiik hai/ is literally "it's OK".  Perhaps if you want to be more polite, you could add /nahii.n yeh Thiik hai, dhanyaavaad/.  "No, this is fine, thanks".


> I do not follow academic transcriptions here.


Eh, I have trouble doing so too sometimes.  I am not consistent...I really ought to be though!



> There is a more formal word from Arabic which is sometimes but seldom used in Urdu, which also means 'enough' and it is _'qafi'._



I don't think it is seldomly used at all.  But with that word, I can see how they may have confused it with coffee.  Did you use the "proper" urdu pronunciation of the /q/?  And where were the speakers from?  Many Indians (irrespective of religion) do not differentiate between the /q/ and /k/ sounds and just elect to use /k/, so maybe that added into the confusion.  



> Bas is - as my Steingass Persian but also Platts Classical Hindi say by origin Persian, but the Persian dictionary refers also to Sanskrit.
> The Hindi gives as origin Persian but also gives Sanskrit 'va'sas'
> Now it is quite often that you find similar words in both Sanskrit and old Persian so we never can tell exactly where the word is from.
> You have to accept that they originated in the same part of the world.



Right, I once looked up the word in Platts and found a similar answer.  The ancient Persian and Sanskrit languages are cousins and probably share an ancestor somewhere...so who knows where the word came from.  Probably a little of both.


> As for the V = B. These letters are more or less interchangeable. In Hindi the characters are almost similar. Spanish B becomes a V in other languages and just one step further and the letter is pronounced as F.
> And there is your new dialect or language


Just so everyone can see how similar the characters are:  B ब and V व.  Just the difference of a line in the letter.  Here are some general trends of dialects while I am at it.  Many Hindi B words start with V in Panjabi.  In Bengali, all Hindi V words become B.  And from Sanskrit to Hindi, Many V words become a B.  From Hindi to Gujarati, many B words become a V.  I could go on....


As for Basta, perhaps a new thread on its usages in the Portuguese forum is in order.


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## SofiaB

Outsider said:


> The word _basta_ is a form of the verb _bastar_. According to this dictionary, _bastar_ is derived from Latin.


I think the question is could basta be the origin of the word in Hindi not the opposite. 
Basta in Portuguese is not the origin of bas in Hindi which comes from Farsi. Girja is being replaced by church as the English influence is stronger.


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## Outsider

Kirpan said:


> Very interesting. My (classical) Latin dictionary does not give the word at all. Could the verb _'bastar'_ not have been formed from the word basta instead of basta from bastar?


Perhaps. If you look in the dictionary I mentioned, they trace _bastar_ back to Latin _bastu_ (_bastus_ in classical Latin?)



Kirpan said:


> Is _bastar_ as a verb often used in Portuguese and what does it mean?
> I have no Portuguese dictionary but does it mean something like _'to close'?_


Yes, it is used often. It means "to suffice", "to be enough".


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## Qcumber

panjabigator said:


> the word for to cut in Spanish "cortarse" and in Hindi /kaTanaa/.


Frankly I fail to see how Port. cortar "cut" could become Hind. /kaTanaa/.
How would you explain the replacement of /o/ by /a/, the deletion of /r/, and the suffixation of /naa/?


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## panjabigator

That's because I am an idiot!  I meant to say Hindi /kataanaa/ and English "to cut".


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## albondiga

SofiaB said:


> ananas, pau, camara, girja.



I've got the others, but just want to check for the word _pau_: does it also mean "a stick/pole" in Hindi or did the meaning change along the way?


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## panjabigator

I have never heard of pau.


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## MarcB

albondiga said:


> I've got the others, but just want to check for the word _pau_: does it also mean "a stick/pole" in Hindi or did the meaning change along the way?


No, it is a type of bread brought to India by the Portuguese see 
"Makhan-Pau and also pav.


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## panjabigator

Oh. Well /makhan/ is butter.  Perhaps it has a different name in the Panjab.  No clue still.


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## jazyk

> No, it is a type of bread brought to India by the Portuguese see
> "Makhan-Pau and also pav.


It must be pão "bread" then.


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## MarcB

Panjabigator and Jazyk are both correct.In Mumbai Makhan-Pau is bread and butter Portuguese style as there are many types of bread. Pav is an alternate pronunciation. The etymology is pão.
I found this:
*Bread* *Bengali* *Hindi **English*kochuri ,kachori fried wheat pastry with seasoned filling ;luchi l,uchi ,puffed fried fllour bread ;porota ,paratha ,thick crispy bread grilled in ghee; pau ruti ,pau roti ,loaf bread .


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## panjabigator

Portuguese's influence on Indic languages is probably the most obvious in Konkani.  I'll keep my eye out for any examples.


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## Outsider

From Wikipedia: 
Sinhala words of Portuguese origin
Portuguese loan words in Sri Lankan Tamil


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## panjabigator

It would be interesting to investigate the sociolinguistics of these words. How pervasive is there use across Sinhala speaking areas? Are they representative of a more urban diction or do villagers use them too? 

And does Sinhala have any movements to purge out these Portuguese words (even the well established ones)? India certainly does. Thanks for the sites Outsider.


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## albondiga

MarcB said:


> Panjabigator and Jazyk are both correct.In Mumbai Makhan-Pau is bread and butter Portuguese style as there are many types of bread. Pav is an alternate pronunciation. The etymology is pão.
> I found this:
> *Bread* *Bengali* *Hindi **English*kochuri ,kachori fried wheat pastry with seasoned filling ;luchi l,uchi ,puffed fried fllour bread ;porota ,paratha ,thick crispy bread grilled in ghee; pau ruti ,pau roti ,loaf bread .



Now it's all clicking!  When I first saw "pau," "pão" crossed my mind, but I could only think of roti, chapati, etc. but no cognates of "pão"... but now I recall encountering "bhaji pav" or "pav bhaji" or something like this...

So, presumably pau/pav is something more likely in a "loaf" or "roll" form (which the Portuguese may have used more often), rather than flatbreads (which the locals may have used more often)?  Thus, the Portuguese loanword was taken to describe what was (to the locals) essentially the imported Portuguese style of bread?

Sound about right?


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## panjabigator

I can't believe that escaped me!   Pao/pau/pav bhaji!  I just had some the other day!

Here is the wiki on it!


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## id566

A few other examples:

Hindi & Bengali - chaabi (key) from the Portuguese chave
Hindi & Bengali - balti (bucket) from the Portuguese balde
Hindi & Bengali - Sabun/Shaban (soap) from the Portuguese sabao
Bengali - janela (window)  from the Portuguese janela
Bengali - Toale (towel)  from the Portuguese toalha


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## Kirpan

Interesting - sometimes one knows words in 2 or more languages but one does not realise that they have the same origin. chaabi (Hindi) and chave (Port) happily lived in my mind without striking a key!
The other words I did combine. 
But one must be careful. Some words sound the same but are totally different:
In Karachi a visiting friend had some chappals made and wanted a rubber sole underneath so I asked for the price which was 'teen rupees'. Now my friend was Dutch and 'teen' in his language means 'ten'. His answer was: that's not expensive (had no idea of prices of course) so I told him to give me the ten and I would pay the sandalmaker.
Then he realised there was something wrong. I asked him if he expected the man to quote prices in a foreign language.
On my first visit to Tehran - I knew no Farsi then - I went with a friend to visit his parents home and he showed me a beautiful bowl. "Do you know what this is made of" he asked. Knowing that in Turkish and Farsi sometimes French words are used I said in French: "albâtre" which sounded like "of course" so he yelled out: But you'r speaking Persian.


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## Cilquiestsuens

id566 said:


> A few other examples:
> 
> Hindi & Bengali - chaabi (key) from the Portuguese chave
> Hindi & Bengali - balti (bucket) from the Portuguese balde
> Hindi & Bengali - Sabun/Shaban (soap) from the Portuguese sabao
> Bengali - janela (window)  from the Portuguese janela
> Bengali - Toale (towel)  from the Portuguese toalha



Welcome in the forum id566 and thanks for the input ...

I didn't know for *chaabii* and *balTii*, and _*toliyaa*_ (the equivalent of toale in Hindi/Urdu)

_*Saaban*_ (soap) I think, was used before the Portuguese and the word is a loan from Arabic instead... (ulitmately Arabic borrowed it from Latin, so it comes somehow from the same origin).

We had discussed some Portuguese words in another thread (where's that thread PG sb??), I remember we had two more words from Portuguese :

*paraat* (don't know the English for it? that dish where you knead dough)
_*pirich*_ (saucer)

I'm sure there are more...


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## Kirpan

I suppose you mean 'paratha'? Has that a Portuguese connection?
and the otherword for saucer I know as 'piring' (Malay) which is stll used in Afrikaans as 'piering' It is used in Indonesia as 'piring'. In Afrikaans also in an expression like "vlieënde pierings" (flying saucers)


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## Cilquiestsuens

Kirpan said:


> I suppose you mean 'paratha'? Has that a Portuguese connection?
> and the otherword for saucer I know as 'piring' (Malay) which is stll used in Afrikaans as 'piering' It is used in Indonesia as 'piring'. In Afrikaans also in an expression like "vlieënde pierings" (flying saucers)




No, I meant *
1. paraat*   پرات  / পরাত / परात  /  ਪਰਾਤ
     and not *paraaTha*  پراٹھا  / পরাঠা   / पराठा  /  ਪਰਾਠਾ , which is undoubtedly _desi_

2. *pirich* پرچ /পিরিচ  /  पिरिच    / ਪਿਰਿਚ 

Not sure if the above words exist in Bengali though....


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## Kirpan

Thank you - either I never knew about paraat or I have forgotten and I am in Cape Town now and don't have my dictionaries.

The 'piering' I am pretty sure about. 

In a Calcutta food market I heard very long ago 'petersilly' for parsley. That happens to be the Dutch word too.


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## Cilquiestsuens

You're welcome...

For _*paraat*_ it depends on your background.... It is definitely used in Punjabi... I don't really remember if it is a Hindi / Urdu word.????

NO idea about Bengali....


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## Outsider

_Paraat_ could be from Portuguese _prato_, dish, with an epenthetic _a_ (is it pronounced as a schwa?) inserted between the first two consonants.

_Pirich_ is more intriguing. At first glance, it may be related to _pires_, saucer, but that consonant at the end seems a bit odd. How is the _ch_ pronounced?


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## Cilquiestsuens

Outsider said:


> _Paraat_ could be from Portuguese _prato_, dish, with an epenthetic _a_ (is it pronounced as a schwa?) inserted between the first two consonants.
> 
> _Pirich_ is more intriguing. At first glance, it may be related to _pires_, saucer, but that consonant at the end seems a bit odd. How is the _ch_ pronounced?



Thanks for your input ! I think there is no doubt these two words come from portuguese. I am sure there are more and I'd like to know them!!! Quite surprisingly they are for the most of them basic items / utensils used in daily life.

Yes, the first vowel of *paraat* is a schwa.

As for the change from an *s* (pronounced like English 'sh', right??) to a *ch* (like English chair) in the final syllable of the word, nothing really surprising.


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## Faylasoof

Cilquiestsuens said:


> ......
> 
> _*Saaban*_ (soap) I think, was used before the Portuguese and the word is a loan from Arabic instead... (ulitmately Arabic borrowed it from Latin, so it comes somehow from the same origin).
> .....



   کارتوس (cartridge) supposedly from Portuguese!  Can anyone confirm this?

 According to Platts, our word for soap (_saabun_) most directly comes from Arabic:

سابن साबुन s ābun (corr. of A. صابون, q.v.), s.m. Soap:—sābun-kā phen, s.m. Lather, soap-suds.

 Arabic certainly has a related verb, though this doesn’t prove its ultimate etymology.
 صبّن = to soap up.
 صابون = soap
 صبّان = soap boiler / maker.


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## Cilquiestsuens

_*Kaartuus *_must be from Portuguese.... (It sounds like its cognate in French = cartouche)

I have no doubt neither that *patluun* (pant) is another Portuguese loan.... (sounds like French pantalon)


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## Outsider

Cilquiestsuens said:


> As for the change from an *s* (pronounced like English 'sh', right??) to a *ch* (like English chair) in the final syllable of the word, nothing really surprising.


A shift in the opposite direction seems far more common. But perhaps sh > ch is not unusual in Indic languages...


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## flyinfishjoe

McGregor says that _kaartuus_ comes from French (if true, is this Hindi's only French loanword?), and _pirich_ from the English "press"! By the way, that same dictionary says _angrez_ comes from Portugues _ingles_. I wonder if this is true. 

Also, could _astabal_ and _baptismaa_ be of Portuguese origin?

Oh, and this link might be of some interest, although I'm not sure about the veracity of some of its claims.


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## Cilquiestsuens

Outsider said:


> A shift in the opposite direction seems far more common. But perhaps sh > ch is not unusual in Indic languages...



Not really, never heard of this sound change otherwise, but without being an expert linguist I have the impression that the explanation can be thus... The last syllable may be stressed in Portuguese while in Urdu it's not

Moreover, the sh... fricative sound in Portuguese is stronger than any sh sound in Urdu / Hindi.... This may be the reason why Urdu / Hindi speakers have overcompensated this sound... And have found only ch... as a sound having the same articulation strength as the sh ending of Portuguese??



flyinfishjoe said:


> McGregor says that _kaartuus_ comes from French (if true, is this Hindi's only French loanword?), and _pirich_ from the English "press"! By the way, that same dictionary says _angrez_ comes from Portugues _ingles_. I wonder if this is true.
> 
> Also, could _astabal_ and _baptismaa_ be of Portuguese origin?
> 
> Oh, and this link might be of some interest, although I'm not sure about the veracity of some of its claims.



I think all the claims of the article are quite reliable....

As for _*angrez*_, I have been told since I started learning Urdu (I mean by University teachers) that it was a Portuguese loan... What's so strange about that??


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## id566

flyinfishjoe said:


> McGregor says that _kaartuus_ comes from French (if true, is this Hindi's only French loanword?), and _pirich_ from the English "press"! By the way, that same dictionary says _angrez_ comes from Portugues _ingles_. I wonder if this is true.
> 
> Also, could _astabal_ and _baptismaa_ be of Portuguese origin?
> 
> Oh, and this link might be of some interest, although I'm not sure about the veracity of some of its claims.


 
I remember being taught at school by my hindi teacher that that Kartus was from french. I was also taught Hindi/Urdu "Kameez" = shirt came from the French _chemise._ However, given it sounds more similar to _Camisa_ (spanish/portguese) I am sure this will be disputed.

Also in bengali we use the word "pati" to mean small, e.g. "pati lebu" means small or common lemon, to differentiate from komolalebu (orange) and other citrus fruits. "Pati" apparently originates from the French _petite._


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## Outsider

Cilquiestsuens said:


> The last syllable may be stressed in Portuguese while in Urdu it's not


The last syllable of _pires_ is not stressed in Portuguese; the first one is.



Cilquiestsuens said:


> Moreover, the sh... fricative sound in Portuguese is stronger than any sh sound in Urdu / Hindi.... This may be the reason why Urdu / Hindi speakers have overcompensated this sound... And have found only ch... as a sound having the same articulation strength as the sh ending of Portuguese??


I guess that is possible.


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## Marloes28

I think Pistol (gun) might come from Portuguese too.


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## mundiya

Hi,

I think "kamiiz", "mez", and "angrez" are direct loans from Portuguese to Hindi.  From my limited knowledge of Portuguese I have noticed the Portuguese "s" becomes a "z" in Hindi.  Urdu "qamiis" must be from Arabic.  But I'm not positive about "mez" from Portuguese because Persian might have this word with a "z" too.  "baraamdaa" (veranda) is also of Portuguese origin.


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## mundiya

Marloes28 said:


> I think Pistol (gun) might come from Portuguese too.



In Hindi it's "pistaul" and not "pistol".


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## Happu

panjabigator said:


> I am quite interested in learning any of the Dutch loan words in Tamil you know of, aside from the card game ones.  Tamils are usually very anti loan/foreign words, including those of Sanskrit (especially anything with Hindi) because their language is the _other_ classical language of India (with Sanskrit being the other one).  Tamil actually predates Sanskrit, so they elevate it higher than they do Sanskrit, which is very interesting considering Hinduism and its relationship to Sanskrit.



I know I'm replying to an ancient thread here, almost pre-historic; but anyway:

There is Tamil கக்கூசு (_kakkūcu_) from Dutch _kak-huis_ = shit-house. Yes, of all things! It’s used colloquially for bathroom or toilet and goes back to Ancient Greek κᾰκκᾰ́ω (_kakkáō_, to defecate, to shit), and before that presumably to Proto-Indo-European _kakka_ (excrement, defecate) - leaving aside the contentious issue if PIE ever existed or not.

There are cognates of_ kak_ in German, Russian, Italian, Albanian and Armenian, and I wish I could find one in Hindi or Sanskrit.


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## littlepond

flyinfishjoe said:


> (if true, is this Hindi's only French loanword?)



Not really? There's the _aTaichii_ for a suitcase, from the French _attaché_. (The meaning may have changed, so I wonder if it qualifies.) Then, there's not just the aforementioned _kamiiz_ (from Portuguese?), but there's also _shamiiz_ (for a kind of slip worn by girls), which, I guess, comes from the French _chemise_, and in this case the meaning is quite much retained, as is the pronunciation. There must be more words, too.


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## littlepond

Happu said:


> I know I'm replying to an ancient thread here, almost pre-historic; but anyway:
> 
> There is Tamil கக்கூசு (_kakkūcu_) from Dutch _kak-huis_ = shit-house. Yes, of all things! It’s used colloquially for bathroom or toilet and goes back to Ancient Greek κᾰκκᾰ́ω (_kakkáō_, to defecate, to shit), and before that presumably to Proto-Indo-European _kakka_ (excrement, defecate) - leaving aside the contentious issue if PIE ever existed or not.
> 
> There are cognates of_ kak_ in German, Russian, Italian, Albanian and Armenian, and I wish I could find one in Hindi or Sanskrit.



_kakkaa _also means shit in "dialects" of Hindi, so I wouldn't know if the Tamil word comes from Dutch or not. In French, it's slang (or child-talk) to "faire caca" (to shit).

Of course, "kaakaa" means uncle in "dialects" of Hindi and in some other languages (e.g., Gujarati).


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## Happu

Ah, that's interesting about the dialects. In German, _Kaka_ or simply _A-A_ would also be child language, _Kacke_ is the 'official' word.

I would certainly think that the Tamil word derives from Dutch, as it includes Dutch _-huis _(house), even if in a very bastardized form.


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## Happu

As for French loan words, the good old guillotine makes an occasional appearance (गिलोटिन); though the word could have been imported by the British, just like _restaurant, cuisine, chef, mutton_ (mouton) and_ toilet_ (toilette).

The Chambers English-Hindi Dictionary lists कर्तन-यंत्र (cutting device) as a secondary option, but this could also be a harmless paper cutter. 

More Dutch-origin words in Hindi but most likely brought by the British: yacht (याख़्ट), buoy (बूई) and mart (मार्ट). The word geek (गीक) will be limited to young urban users - original Dutch meaning 'fool', 'stupid person' and related to regional German (Cologne area, Rhineland) 'jeck' = crazy, fool.


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## Pokeflute

Re: restaurant, रेस्तराँ (restraaN) which always struck me as odd because of the dental "t". (If it came from English you'd expect a retroflex, no?)

Oxford says it may come from French via Persian, so perhaps that's an option?


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## Happu

Pokeflute said:


> Re: restaurant, रेस्तराँ (restraaN) which always struck me as odd because of the dental "t". (If it came from English you'd expect a retroflex, no?)
> 
> Oxford says it may come from French via Persian, so perhaps that's an option?


Quite possible, as the Iranians even use 'merci' for 'thank you'.

Yet one does come across thing spelling as well: रेस्टोरेंट.


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