asking questions sometimes makes you to start thinking about the meaning of something.
for me, as a russian native speaker, was also realy interesting to find out whether the word zhen zhu is related to the word zhemchug.
russian etymology dictionary says that the word "zhemchug" was borrowed from Turkic languages - probably it was ancient Chuvash language which in it's turn borrowed this word from Chinese. so although the process of borrowing was not direct, I'm just wondering how it was managed to save so close-to-original pronunciation in russian! =)
Posted on: Pearl Tea
May 27, 2008 at 10:40 PMasking questions sometimes makes you to start thinking about the meaning of something.
for me, as a russian native speaker, was also realy interesting to find out whether the word zhen zhu is related to the word zhemchug.
russian etymology dictionary says that the word "zhemchug" was borrowed from Turkic languages - probably it was ancient Chuvash language which in it's turn borrowed this word from Chinese. so although the process of borrowing was not direct, I'm just wondering how it was managed to save so close-to-original pronunciation in russian! =)