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Jan 31 - Origin Of The Wonderchicken

7
stavrosthewonderchickenPerson was signed in when posted
02-01-2002
01:28 AM ET (US)
 That's pretty cool, lagado. It reminds me of the pronunciation of "France" in Korean, which is probably closer in spirit to the real pronunciation, not the one English speakers use : sounds like "Puh-rahng-suh", with a soft 'p'. Not unlike falang/farang...
6
joanne
02-01-2002
12:30 AM ET (US)
 mmm manduguk.
5
lagado
01-31-2002
10:42 PM ET (US)
 Thanks folks, I should have guessed that only the Chinese could have come up with a barb like that.

I discovered the other day that the Thai word for foreigner "falang" originally came from Persian and meant "French" (or rather its older version "Frank").

A link: http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/4/4-492.html

Why care? I dunno, I'm just full of this stuff.
4
stavrosthewonderchickenPerson was signed in when posted
01-31-2002
09:59 PM ET (US)
 The attempt at humour comes from the fact that many Korean soups, which I enjoy mightily, end in the particle '-guk' as well, like mandu-guk (dumpling soup)....
3
joanne
01-31-2002
11:38 AM ET (US)
wae means "outside" and guk means "nation" (essentially meaning foreign country). in means "person" so waegukin would mean "foreigner" (naturally). Each sylllable has a chinese character that it is based on--this word, like many Korean words, has its roots in Chinese. (for clarification: the chinese character meaning "outside" would be pronounced totally differently in Chinese. That character is known as wae only in Korea.)
Edited 01-31-2002 11:39 AM
2
lagado
01-31-2002
09:42 AM ET (US)
Okay now that's settled, I'm curious to know the etymology of "waeguk".

I'm wondering if it is a related (conceptually) to the Chinese word for Westerners, "gwailo" which literally means ghost (gwai) man (lo). Does "wae" mean ghost by any chance?
Edited 01-31-2002 09:43 AM
1
stavrosthewonderchickenPerson was signed in when posted
01-31-2002
01:54 AM ET (US)
 Original post here.

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