Fun story, Tempura was allegedly inspired by Portuguese "Peixinhos da horta" which was a poorman meal of fried green beans, that was popular during Lent. [0]
Of course as with many things in japanese culture they carried Tempura to a next level.
> Of course as with many things in japanese culture they carried Tempura to a next level
That is true. Although to experience the real thing you really have to be in Japan.
Sadly the Westernised versions of Tempura are more often than not massacred imitations.
The most common errors in the West are that the batter is wrong or, the most common of all faults ... the oil is old.
With true Tempura in Japan, the oil is frequently refreshed during the course of service and in addition is not shared with other deep fried foods. Both of which actions serve to maintain the delicate taste and texture of true Tempura.
Sadly in the West (if you're lucky !) the chef will simply dump the Tempura in the same deep-fat fryer that he's been using all day to fry god knows what else.
At least in Spain we have multiple ways of batter-fry our food, which are simply different and not "wrong" per se. For example with calamari you can have them "calamares rebozados"[1] vs "calamares a la romana"[2], which are two very different styles of doing it. And then even within those there are variations ofc. While Japanese Tempura is very homogeneous on its style all across, like most of Japanese food (quality might vary a lot, but cooking styles usually don't).
Then there is the point of oil, while we'd normally use olive oil in Spain, it's crazy expensive in Japan so surely they use other oils, which also change the taste and very likely make it feel lighter.
Always old oil, wrong temp, wrong oils / bad oil blends, less regional variety as seen in Japan. Never mind the range of ingredients battered and ways of serving/plating it. Tempura in North America is dire. I’ve eaten at many Michelin tempura exclusive restaurants
Wow - I was recently in Lisbon for the second time in two years, and I insisted my other half and I ordered these at a restaurant, as I had tried them on my first visit and they were delicious!
I described them to her as 'tempura fried green beans', assuming naively that the influence came in the other direction!
The Indian curry vindaloo is also a Portuguese dish although few Indian restaurants actually serve real Vindaloo which you'll only get at a Goan house or an East Indian house. Only Christians eat Vindaloo really because it has to be made with pork, as it's a pork dish, and only us Indian Christians eat pork as far as I know.
Vinho d'Alho is actually more broad than just that dish; it can refer to anything marinaded in wine and garlic (which is literally what the name refers to, as stated in the wikipedia article).
I grew up in an Azorean household, and a lot of stuff besides pork gets prepped that way (or a permutation thereof)
There used to be more fasting and abstinence than Lent: "The word tempura comes from the Ember Days (quatuor tempora in Latin), the quarterly periods of fasting in Western Christian churches, where believers go meatless." (Wikipedia)
"The word ember originates from the Latin quatuor tempora (literally 'four times')." (Wikipedia)
See also: Rogation Days for more fasting and abstinence.
I understood that actual fasting was pretty much a poor people thing for catholics at least. i.e. That rich lords/merchants would just pay some repentance fee to their local church and could eat whatever they wanted (except for Good Friday)?
I speak Japanese and Spanish - when I went to Japan with my Mexican wife, she asked how to say "bread" in Japanese and I said "pan" and she said, "honey, you're mixing up your Japanese and your Spanish, that's the Spanish word for bread".
This answered questions I didn't even know I had. Everyone knows pan. But I never thought to ask why the word for England didn't sound like English, or why soap bubble is a loanword. (It sounds Japanese enough to me, but I guess it's always written in katakana, so I should have wondered.)
The question is whether the Japanese got the word from the Chinese, and if so where the Chinese got it from, or whether the Japanese got the pronunciation independently and then noticed that the Chinese already had a kanji for that word and decided to use it.
Elsewhere in the thread people are saying that loanwords got kanji arbitrarily assigned before katakana was in wide use, and it was it this phase of language development that the Japanese and Portuguese first interacted.
I don't know the etymology and don't have a Japanese input method handy, but "coffee" is another word occasionally written with kanji to be fancy.
Probably caqui too (from kaki), and kabocha (same name). And other food depending on where you are in Brazil (manju, dorayaki, gobo, rakyo, azuki, wasabi, ra-men, udon, ...).
Other words are used in management, like in English (kaizen, kaban).
And in games & sports, besides jokenpo, there's also kendama that's sometimes used (bilboque in portuguese? That toy Chaves & Kiko always fight for :). Judogi, sensei, most judo moves are not translated as in English and we use the Japanese version in Portuguese too. Some in anime and tech, like mecha, otaku, manga, anime, mangaka.
And in the Brazilin-Japanese community it's common to switch to a version of Portuguese that mixes some words that were widely used: benjo (bathroom), kusai (smelly), gohan (food, rice), kitanai (dirty), se-no (ready-set). That varies in each region and community, but it's common to switch to use these old-fashion words like benjo, which is how all my family spoke in the countrysde of Sao Paulo, but sounds redneck/wrong if you say that to a Japanese nowadays.
The two that comes to mind is rock-paper-scissors, which we call "jokenpô", that is similar to the japanese 'jankenpon'. Chopsticks are "hashis" like already mentioned.
Also, we call soy-sauce "shoyu", which is the japanese for soy.
The Dutch opportunistically arrived mostly after the Portuguese had been driven out by the Japanese, but still managed to leave the Japanese language with words like bīru, kapitan and madorosu. I'm sure these words would have come up during the Portuguese era as well.
There's an interesting, vaguely related family of terms derived from ゲバルト, from Ger. Gewalt "violence", that all refer to 60s-era student political movements and protests.
For example ゲバヘル, protective helmets students wore during protests, and even ゲバ字 "violence characters" - referring to an angular form of writing used on protest fliers and signs, meant to prevent authorities from identifying the author by their handwriting.
I think it's safe to assume that the Portuguese "pão" (bread) was pronounced much closer to "pan" around the time they made contact with Japan, and that's what stuck in Japan while the Portuguese pronunciation kept evolving. I find it strange otherwise that the Japanese word is closer in pronunciation to the Spanish "pan", or even the French "pain", than the modern day Portuguese word.
> I think it's safe to assume that the Portuguese "pão" (bread) was pronounced much closer to "pan" around the time they made contact with Japan
The evolution of nasal vowels in Portuguese out of Latin *n predates contact with Japan by centuries (see Nasal Vowel Evolution in Romance by Rodney Sampson, Oxford University Press, 1999).
It’s not unusual at all that Japanese, a language without nasal vowels, would then replace the Portuguese nasal vowel with the closest equivalent it had.
Wiktionary says the pronunciation of modern Portuguese pão is [pɐ̃ʊ̯̃] in IPA. Modern Japanese has [p] but not [ɐ̃]. The vowel closest to [ɐ] is [a], and to get the nasalization of [ɐ̃], the following consonant needs to be [ɴ], giving "pan" [pãɴ]. As a bonus, [ʊ̯̃] is a back nasal vowel and [ɴ] is a back nasal consonant. So modern Japanese "pan" is a good match for modern Portuguese pão.
To support your theory, you'd need to look at a language where borrowings with nasal vowels and syllable-final nasal consonants can reliably be distingished from each other, i.e. not Japanese.
Not quite! This is a peculiarity of Japanese transcription: the moraic nasal [0] is often transcribed as /ɴ/ or /N/ in phonemic representation, while its phonetic realisation varies between [m~n~ɲ~ŋ]; it is true uvular [ɴ] only utterance-finally, but apparently even that is controversial.
According to the Japanese wiki page on bread, it was introduced in 1543 then banned as part of the Christian bans. They mostly ate whole grains, then used flour for noodles.
> Didn't the Japanese have bread or balconies before the Portuguese arrived? How does that work?
I ask myself that every day. I think the answer is prestige.
In my language, Romanian, many words are borrowed from English because there's no home-grown equivalent, like "hacker".
But even common words are being replaced with English ones. E.g. fashion instead of modă, know-how instead of cunoștințe (knowledge), brand — marcă, however – însă (you know your language is in danger of disappearing when the conjunctions are being replaced).
This is in spite of the fact that people can often hardly pronounce the English words, for example businessman is pronounced /biznismen/ (with no way to differentiate between man and men), or pronouncing "guard" as "goo-ard".
Western-style fluffy bread was not present in Japan before Portuguese trade.
The introduction through trade also applies to other eastern countries - China was exposed through the silk road, India through Portuguese and middle eastern trade.
You have similarly surprising culinary events in the West. Tomatoes weren't introduced to Italy until the 16th century, an tomato sauce wasn't a thing before the 18th century - before that, pasta (itself assumed to come from Chinese noodles) was eaten dry with your fingers. Potatoes first arrived in Europe around the same time.
Japanese has a couple of words for 'door' (some of which refer to Japanese style sliding doors): 戸, 扉, 障子, but one of the more frequent ones is ドア which is a loan word from English 'door'. Adoption of loan words can be strange.
I wonder this when I studied Russian and saw all the French/German loanwords. "Did the Russians not use to have screens/beaches/furniture before the Enlightenment?"
> I find it strange otherwise that the Japanese word is closer in pronunciation to the Spanish "pan", or even the French "pain", than the modern day Portuguese word.
That's because Japanese is extremely phonetically poor.
No, this is a false cognate. Chinese bāo (包) is short for miànbāo (麵包), literally meaning "flour wrap/package", and its use has been attested since the Song Dynasty (ca. 11th century), whereas the Portuguese didn't have contact with China until the 16th century. The pronunciation of 包 at that time was still mostly similar to what it is today – using IPA notation, it is reconstructed as /pˠau/, compared to /pau̯/ today.
Pao led to pan (fancy sandwiches if anime is right) in Japanese and pav (small buns) in Hindi, Indians use the word bread the same. Sabao led to sabun (soap) in Hindi. We have Portuguese-Indian community, of which Rodriguez is the most common name IME, and most common names in many countries. In Malayalam, mesa means table, and plataeu in English.
It’s not as simple. They can be ‘z’ and be Portuguese related, if it is been carried over for generations. The ‘s’ standardization is from the XX century. The Portuguese reached India at the end of the XV century.
In places like Indian, these names have been carried over for many generations, so you can’t compare them directly with modern conterparts
Pinto, Dias, Gomes, Menezes, Mascarenhas, D'Souza, Coutinho, DeSa or D'Sa, Lobo are some other fairly common Portuguese influenced surnames in India, with the most in Goa and next most in Mumbai, but also occur elsewhere, since people move.
From my anime knowledge, it's "bread" though seemingly any meal with bread instead of rice is also called "pan." It also links to the Japanese Wikipedia page for bread.
The curry you get in restaurants is not Vindaloo. Vindaloo is spicy but it's not the overwhelmingly spicy thing most restaurants sell. A lot of them just rebrand a tangy spicy curry as Vindaloo and sell it. If you have Goan or East Indian Vindaloo, it's spicy, but it also has a lot of sweetness, and it's made of pork.
Readit News
Of course as with many things in japanese culture they carried Tempura to a next level.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170808-the-truth-about-...
That is true. Although to experience the real thing you really have to be in Japan.
Sadly the Westernised versions of Tempura are more often than not massacred imitations.
The most common errors in the West are that the batter is wrong or, the most common of all faults ... the oil is old.
With true Tempura in Japan, the oil is frequently refreshed during the course of service and in addition is not shared with other deep fried foods. Both of which actions serve to maintain the delicate taste and texture of true Tempura.
Sadly in the West (if you're lucky !) the chef will simply dump the Tempura in the same deep-fat fryer that he's been using all day to fry god knows what else.
Then there is the point of oil, while we'd normally use olive oil in Spain, it's crazy expensive in Japan so surely they use other oils, which also change the taste and very likely make it feel lighter.
[1] https://content-cocina.lecturas.com/medio/2021/06/09/calamar...
[2] https://cdn3.misrecetascaseras.com/sites/default/files/style...
I described them to her as 'tempura fried green beans', assuming naively that the influence came in the other direction!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiXtAPfMj6o
It comes from the Portuguese dish Vinha d'Alho (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carne_de_vinha_d%27alhos). It's a simple recipe and tastes excellent.
There's a whole set of Indian pork and beef curries with Portuguese influence that are amazing and unfortunately never sold in restaurants.
I grew up in an Azorean household, and a lot of stuff besides pork gets prepped that way (or a permutation thereof)
"The word ember originates from the Latin quatuor tempora (literally 'four times')." (Wikipedia)
See also: Rogation Days for more fasting and abstinence.
I don't know the etymology and don't have a Japanese input method handy, but "coffee" is another word occasionally written with kanji to be fancy.
Deleted Comment
I bet they brought a couple of Japanese words to Brazilian Portuguese too.
Other words are used in management, like in English (kaizen, kaban).
And in games & sports, besides jokenpo, there's also kendama that's sometimes used (bilboque in portuguese? That toy Chaves & Kiko always fight for :). Judogi, sensei, most judo moves are not translated as in English and we use the Japanese version in Portuguese too. Some in anime and tech, like mecha, otaku, manga, anime, mangaka.
And in the Brazilin-Japanese community it's common to switch to a version of Portuguese that mixes some words that were widely used: benjo (bathroom), kusai (smelly), gohan (food, rice), kitanai (dirty), se-no (ready-set). That varies in each region and community, but it's common to switch to use these old-fashion words like benjo, which is how all my family spoke in the countrysde of Sao Paulo, but sounds redneck/wrong if you say that to a Japanese nowadays.
Deleted Comment
Also, we call soy-sauce "shoyu", which is the japanese for soy.
Because of Japanese immigration, there’s a lot of people in the Southeast with Japanese last names.
The Dutch opportunistically arrived mostly after the Portuguese had been driven out by the Japanese, but still managed to leave the Japanese language with words like bīru, kapitan and madorosu. I'm sure these words would have come up during the Portuguese era as well.
I’m glad to finally learn an explanation for エネルギー
Similar to how "long time no see" is either from Mandarin or pidgin English.
Dead Comment
For example ゲバヘル, protective helmets students wore during protests, and even ゲバ字 "violence characters" - referring to an angular form of writing used on protest fliers and signs, meant to prevent authorities from identifying the author by their handwriting.
Example of such characters: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NAVI_hansen_shukai.j...
Is probably the most well known example. The german "Arbeit" is used commonly to refer to part time work.
The evolution of nasal vowels in Portuguese out of Latin *n predates contact with Japan by centuries (see Nasal Vowel Evolution in Romance by Rodney Sampson, Oxford University Press, 1999).
It’s not unusual at all that Japanese, a language without nasal vowels, would then replace the Portuguese nasal vowel with the closest equivalent it had.
In India, the word pao or pav in street food / snacks like vada pav and pav bhaji, probably comes from the Portuguese.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vada_pav
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pav_bhaji
My favorite variant is khada pav bhaji, in which the vegetables are in chunks, not mashed.
To support your theory, you'd need to look at a language where borrowings with nasal vowels and syllable-final nasal consonants can reliably be distingished from each other, i.e. not Japanese.
Not quite! This is a peculiarity of Japanese transcription: the moraic nasal [0] is often transcribed as /ɴ/ or /N/ in phonemic representation, while its phonetic realisation varies between [m~n~ɲ~ŋ]; it is true uvular [ɴ] only utterance-finally, but apparently even that is controversial.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Moraic_nasa...
(They did have steamed grain products, just not baked ones.)
Don't know about balconies.
I ask myself that every day. I think the answer is prestige.
In my language, Romanian, many words are borrowed from English because there's no home-grown equivalent, like "hacker".
But even common words are being replaced with English ones. E.g. fashion instead of modă, know-how instead of cunoștințe (knowledge), brand — marcă, however – însă (you know your language is in danger of disappearing when the conjunctions are being replaced).
This is in spite of the fact that people can often hardly pronounce the English words, for example businessman is pronounced /biznismen/ (with no way to differentiate between man and men), or pronouncing "guard" as "goo-ard".
The introduction through trade also applies to other eastern countries - China was exposed through the silk road, India through Portuguese and middle eastern trade.
You have similarly surprising culinary events in the West. Tomatoes weren't introduced to Italy until the 16th century, an tomato sauce wasn't a thing before the 18th century - before that, pasta (itself assumed to come from Chinese noodles) was eaten dry with your fingers. Potatoes first arrived in Europe around the same time.
That's because Japanese is extremely phonetically poor.
Such names ending in 'z' are more likely Spanish in origin.
In places like Indian, these names have been carried over for many generations, so you can’t compare them directly with modern conterparts
From my anime knowledge, it's "bread" though seemingly any meal with bread instead of rice is also called "pan." It also links to the Japanese Wikipedia page for bread.