[Ads-l] ching chong (1862?)

[Stanton McCandlish]

Good points. Perhaps it was a combination of ”Chin[a|ese]", plus the
frequency of "ch" in anglicized transliterations of Chinese names and food
terms, and the fairly high frequencies of related sounds like /k/, /sh/,
/zh/ and /dzh/ (/j/), not just /tsh/ (/ch/).

I'm on mobile right now; no easy way to input IPA.

On Sun, Sep 1, 2019, 2:01 PM Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

> I doubt a widespread impression could have been formed from hearing
> Chinese people speak.
>
> So if a Chinese language is to be the source of “ching chong”, it was
> probably due to writing or a common word such as “China” or “Qing", which
> leads to the identification of words that it might come from.
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org