As the first Europeans that the Japanese encountered, the Portuguese made a deep cultural impact on the Land of the Rising Sun. Many common Japanese words in use today came from the Portuguese language (here's a list), with the popular fried dish tempura (天ぷら) being a fairly well-known example (from tempero meaning seasoning or condiment, or possibly têmpora referring to the avoidance of meat during Ember Days).
One such import stands out: the word for mummy (as in the famous Egyptian ones). In Portuguese we say múmia, but that's not how the Japanese say it. Rather, they use the word ミイラ (miira), which came from the Portuguese mirra, meaning myrrh (or a really skinny person). Myrrh as a resin was of course a key part of the mummification process.
To make things more interesting, the Japanese also use the Chinese characters 木乃伊, but pronounced the same way (miira) as an exception instead of the established pronunciations of the three 漢字 (kanji, Chinese characters used in Japanese). This is a form of 熟字訓 (jukujikun), when the Japanese use Chinese characters to write native Japanese words, meaning that the pronunciation differs completely. These exceptions, and there are many, drive learners of Japanese up the wall...
What's remarkable, however, is the fact that the Chinese themselves borrowed the word 木乃伊 from languages to the west of China, possibly from the Persian word for mummy مومیائی (mumiyâ'i). The three characters are a phonetic translation (音译) and are pronounced mùnǎiyī. This would be the same etymology for the word in English and other European languages, including the Portuguese múmia.
To summarize this weird history of words, the Japanese borrowed the Portuguese word for a key ingredient in mummification as the way they pronounce their word for mummies, which they write using Chinese characters that the Chinese use because they sound like the word for mummies for Persian or Arabic speakers, who had direct contact with Egypt. Weird and wonderful, don't you agree?
P.S. The Portuguese word for myrrh, mirra, gave rise to the verb mirrar, meaning to shrivel or dry up, and by extension to lose weight or become skinny, because of the use of myrrh in mummification. By back-formation, mirra also refers to a skinny person, someone who's skin and bones like a mummy...
Comments