rickshaw<--Japanese?

[Beth Campbell]

I was studying some Japanese kanji in this books, and under each symbol, it
would give several examples of words using the symbol.   Well, one of the
example words was the word 'jinrikisha,' meaning 'rickshaw.'  if you break
down the individual words, 'jin' means 'person,' 'riki' means
'strenghth/power' and 'sha' means 'vehicle.'  I noticed how close the last
part of the word '--rikisha' sounded to 'rickshaw.'  Could this possibly be
a mispronunciation of the word, borrowed from Japanese?  Does anyone know
anything about this word?

Beth

H. Elizabeth Campbell
Music/English education
Linguistics/Teaching ESL
Indiana State University
Terre Haute, IN




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