Monday, September 05, 2011

The Portuguese influence?

The Portuguese controlled part of the shoreline of modern Sri Lanka from 1505 to 1658. The left their mark on the cuisine (most importantly by introducing the chilli to the local populace) religion and language.

The Portuguese and Spanish tongues are fairly closely related and when a Venezuelan newsreader referred to the editor of a newspaper as un hijo de puta (“a son of a whore”), a bell began to ring....


Thats all folks, now get back to work, its only Monday.


6 comments:

santhoshi said...

Lol JP

Dee said...

hmm

Angel said...

where does the bell ring? (you might have to spell it out for me... ):P

Jack Point said...

Thanks for that Angel, so perhaps it just sounds familiar thats all.

Someone once told me that pan means the same in Spanish, which is why I assumed puta meant son.

sbarrkum said...

Same as Sappathu (shoes), Mesa (table) or in place names like Mesa Verde etc in South Western US. This is the Wiki entry for all the Portuguese loanwords in Sinhala

A real interesting word is Camisa /Chemise i.e Shirt (not listed in Portuguese loan words).
One explanation is
"This is a cognate of the Italian word camicia, and the Spanish / Portuguese language word camisa (subsequently borrowed as kameez by Hindi / Urdu / Hindustani), all deriving ultimately from the Latin camisia, itself coming from Celtic. (The Romans avidly imported cloth and clothes from the Celts.)"

The alternative etymology is from Persian via Arabic and ultimately Greek, rather than Latin roots, i.e. the word travelled from east to west.

Jack Point said...

Thanks for that, sbarrkum.