
The Origin of Japanese Tempura - lukeinator42
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170808-the-truth-about-japanese-tempura
======
Berobero
Portuguese loanwords in Japanese are interesting because, unlike other Western
word imports, a lot of them have been around long enough, and thoroughly
integrated into the culture and writing system, that a number of them are
assumed to be Japanese or Sino-Japanese words by most all native speakers.

Tenpura (commonly seen as 天麩羅 or 天婦羅) is one example, but also _karuta_ (a
card game, commonly 歌留多 or 加留多) and _konpeitō_ (a confection, commonly 金平糖).
The the case of karuta, at least, it feels enough like a regular Japanese word
that it undergoes a morphophonological transformation ( _rendaku_ e.g. uta-
garuta) typically reserved for the native Japanese lexicon (i.e. not Sino-
Japanese or other loanwords).

~~~
jpatokal
Kanji are not commonly used for any of those words. However, they _are_
typically rendered in hiragana, which is usually reserved only for native
Japanese words.

 _Tabako_ (タバコ、たばこ、煙草) is another well-entrenched Portuguese loan, with
particularly wacky kanji: they mean "smoke grass", which is reasonable enough,
but you'd never guess the characters are read "tabako".

~~~
rangibaby
煙草 is ateji which in this case means that the characters are read that way
only for that word.

The other kind of ateji is when kanji are used like an alphabet eg 亜米利加 (A me
ri ka). The second kind is mainly used for abbreviations in modern Japanese eg
米 is equivalent to writing "US" in English.

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bane
Here's some more influence and then weird connections:

\- The Japanese word for bread is "パン" (pronounced 'pan')

\- The Korean word is "빵" (pronounced 'ppang')

\- Both are loaned from the Portuguese 'pão' (bread).

\- In Chinese many kinds of bread are called <something>包 (<something>'bao')
or 包<something> ('bao'<something>). Examples: 面包 'Mianbao' (bread) or 包子
'Baozi' (steam bun). Note the 包 'bao' sounds a bit like the Portuguese 'pão'.
However, it turns out this is completely unrelated and 包 means something more
like "package" (or so all the translators and dictionaries I could find claim)
so most people believe that this is a false cognate and not a loanword like in
Korean and Japanese.

\- Despite this, the Chinese 包 'bao' has ended up in Korean as a kind of loan
word as well, but because it seems to mean the same thing as 빵'ppang' and is
used in similar ways in Chinese as 빵'ppang' might be used in Korean and for
various pronunciation reasons in Korean, Chinese origin breads are _also_
called 빵'ppang'.

\- The proper translation for 包 into Korean is more likely 꾸러미 'kkuleomi'
(package).

\- So....Chinese-Korean breads are often called <something>빵 such as 찐빵
'jjinppang' (steamed bun)) even though the correct Chinese name for the
Chinese-Korean 찐빵 in China is called a 馒头 'Mantou'.

\- However, in Korean, a 만두 'Mandu' is a different but related food, a
dumpling, and in Japanese a 饅頭 'Manjou'.

\- Going West instead of East from China, the 'Mandu' as a food goes back a
thousand years and spread all over the Silk Road, so local variants are found
all over Turky, Persia, Afghanistan, Mongolia and so on are called the same
thing and may have been the basis for the famous Russian "Pelmeni" and Polish
"Pierogi" and various other dumplings known around the world.

And thus the great bread-dumpling belt is enjoyed around the world to this day
and was established by explorers, wanderers, conquerors and traders.

~~~
jpatokal
...and a Japanese manju 饅頭 is a fluffy, sweet confection filled with bean
paste, close to a Chinese bao but quite unlike the Korean mandu.

Mandu, in turn, comes from various Turkic languages, eg. in Turkish they're
_manti_. But in Mongolia, the savoury meat-filled dumpling everyone else
nearby calls a _manti /manty/mandu/..._ is a _booz_ , because they borrowed
the word from the Chinese _baozi_ instead, but in Chinese this style of
dumpling is now called a _jiaozi_ , which is the source of the Japanese
_gyoza_ 餃子, and on it goes...

~~~
yongjik
> ...and a Japanese manju 饅頭 is a fluffy, sweet confection filled with bean
> paste ...

...which is called 만쥬 _manjyu_ in Korean, following Japanese sound. I had no
idea the word was related to "mandu".

Dumplings go round and round...

------
tdeck
Another unusual fact: Panko bread crumbs are cooked by passing DC current
directly through the dough:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCNU9TrbiRk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCNU9TrbiRk)

The story is that this baking technique came about as a necessity during World
War II to save energy, although I'm not sure if that's actually true.

~~~
zkms
Reminds me of how prisoners boil water in their cells -- by passing mains
current through the water (with a device known as a "stinger").

~~~
kalleboo
A technique apparently also used in China. See these videos by bigclive

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EViyccc2t9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EViyccc2t9w)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIUJWIT9GrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIUJWIT9GrU)

~~~
tdeck
I read these were also a thing in the Soviet Union:

[http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-
origin/kipyatilnik/](http://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/kipyatilnik/)

[http://kk.org/streetuse/soviet-improvised-household-
ar/](http://kk.org/streetuse/soviet-improvised-household-ar/)

------
neves
What a fun coincidence. Just a few weeks ago I've used "peixinhos da horta" as
a way to make my sons to eat more vegetables. Now I must make them eat
Tempura.

~~~
microcolonel
I must say, I never understood kids not liking vegetables as a meme. When my
brothers and I were kids, we'd quickly demolish a casserole dish full of
shanghai-style bok choi, broccoli, yellow and/or pink onions, and potatoes
baked with some oil, salt, and pepper. You can also fry them with some
seasoned soy sauce and a savoury fermented sauce like fish sauce or oyster
sauce.

I think maybe many parents do a disservice to vegetables by being a bit too
sparing with the oil and salt, but that's just been my guess. What's your
intuition about this phenomenon?

~~~
jacoblambda
Vegetables are absolutely delicious when fresh and cooked properly however
many children grow up eating overcooked vegetables that come from a
freezerburned bag that has been sitting in the freezer for months or from
similarly aged cans.

So yes, it is definitely partially due to poor cooking but it also can come
from generally low quality of vegetables. This is unfortunately very common in
the US. The same unfortunately is applicable to fish for a lot of people.

~~~
sandGorgon
Not always. The whole system of Indian cooking exists to deliver dishes that
can utilise non-fresh or dried ingredients and stabilize them for long hours
in Indian summer conditions.

That is why our system of cooking revolves around spices which both disguise
the fact that the vegetables are not fresh as well as act as natural
preservatives.

The best cuisine to utilise frozen vegetables is Indian - I do not know of any
other cuisine that will pass them off as edible.

~~~
maxerickson
There are a fair number of vegetables where frozen are better than all but the
best fresh vegetables.

Broccoli, beans, stuff like that.

They are picked closer to the ideal time and don't suffer from the shipping
time. And then they aren't cooked like canned vegetables.

And of course there are lots of vegetables that don't take freezing well and
nothing will stand up to an excessive number of defrost cycles. But frozen
vegetable doesn't automatically mean bad.

------
hn_throwaway_99
Just wanted to say I appreciate this post so much. I didn't know tempura was
originally Portuguese, and it was also a huge surprise to me that vindaloo,
what I think of as a quintessentially Indian dish, was too. A delightfully
informative post!

~~~
TallGuyShort
It also explains why vindaloo is often served without potato, which bothered
me for a long time. I grew up with my Dad making what he called "vindaloo"
that was at least 30% - 50% potato and I loved it. But if you go to an Indian
restaurant, it's the only dish with "aloo" in the name without potato. Turns
out the name has nothing to do with "aloo" as in potato, and it just means
meat in garlic wine sauce, which is exactly what you get at a restaurant.

------
arca_vorago
I love Portugese/Spanish food. I liked port, but then I found madeira. One of
my favorite dishes is a a wine pork bean soup. Just awesome food all around.
Smoked paparika is a staple in my kitchen.

------
wahnfrieden
Netflix has a documentary episode on tempura in Japan:
[https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/80159732](https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/80159732)

If you've formed an opinion on tempura only from eating it in North America, I
highly recommend exploring it if you visit Japan as it barely compares.
There's a whole range of tempura-dedicated restaurants, from fast food up
through multiple Michelin stars.

~~~
ghaff
One of the big differences is that the "Japanese food" that most people in the
US are familiar with like sushi, sashimi, and tempura are typically all
available (perhaps along with other types of Asian dishes) at a typical
Japanese restaurant here. By contrast, tempura, sushi/sashimi, even uni tend
to be in specialized restaurants in Japan.

~~~
m_mueller
There's both. Tourists tend not to go there but so called 'family restaurants'
offer a wide range of affordable Japanese or Western or both. Some of then are
quite good, especially their value proposition.

------
chicob
Like the article says, 'peixinhos da horta' can be literally translated as
'little fish from the vegetable garden'.

And it's not just about Lent. Green beans are generally cut open on one rim of
the pod, which makes them look like small gutted fish.

In my grandmas house, we used to eat a different version, made with eggplant
slices.

I didn't know about vindaloo!

------
TotallyGod
I never heard before that recipes were used for trade, so TIL. It's
fascinating what things in the history of mankind made money. The Dutch trade
in Tulip Bulbs for example and many other things that we deem unusual today.

------
HugoDaniel
Wikipedia has a good entry on the subject:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_cuisine#Influences_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_cuisine#Influences_on_world_cuisine)

------
gpvos
I just learned that the Surinamese dish "pom", which is also popular in the
Netherlands, is actually also from Portuguese(-Jewish) origin.

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andrepd
Damn it, they're all over the place with the spelling: "piexinhos da horta",
"peixinhos do horta"... Get it right, for christ's sake x)

~~~
m_mueller
Shitake instead of Shiitake also bothered me. Just use spellcheck?

~~~
contingencies
In China we variously call _shiitake_ -like mushrooms other names: "Winter
mushroom" (冬菇) emphasizing seasonality, "Flower mushroom" (花菇) emphasizing the
graphical form of cracks on the crown of the most mature specimens, and
"Fragrang mushroom" (香菇) emphasizing flavour. For some reason it slightly
irritates me that of late western media seems to jump on Japanifying things
that are far more broadly produced consumed elsewhere, but that's pop-culture
for you...

------
turtlebits
In Taiwan (possibly China), 甜不辣 is fried fish cake. And it also translates to
tempura.

------
microcolonel
Aside: I always hated the romanization "tempura". The nasal is clearly an _n_
in this word, and I have no idea how they got to an _m_.

~~~
buf
'n' is moraic nasal, which requires the same length of time as all other
moraic sounds. How it is pronounced depends on what sound follows it.

It is pronounced with 'm' like in てんぷら (te _n_ pura) when followed by a 'p',
'b', or 'm.'

edit: more fun facts

'n' is pronounced with 'ng' like in てんき (te _n_ ki) when followed by 'k' or
'g'

It is pronounced as a nasalized sound of the proceeding vowel when followed by
's', 'h', 'y', w', or a vowel. こんばんは (konbanwa) is pronounced kombaáwa
(nasalized á).

~~~
aetherson
This general response is something that people say a lot with regards to
Japanese pronunciation. For whatever it's worth, my (native) Japanese
professors all pronounced ん like "n," not "m," in words like tenpura,
konbanwa, senpai, and enpitsu.

~~~
Berobero
You ears are likely deceiving you. The traditional explanation of the
pronunciation rules, which widely appears in textbooks and Japanese
pronunciation manuals, is absolutely correct, and also in line with what is
normal for human language (e.g. how do you pronounce "input" in _normal_
speech?).

But if you still doubt, I grabbed the first three audio recordings of
"tempura" I could find in videos. All are very clearly bilabial nasals (i.e.
"m"):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b6glqZKVBY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b6glqZKVBY)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUslqCQd4W4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUslqCQd4W4)
[https://youtu.be/56PHtLWJh-0?t=159](https://youtu.be/56PHtLWJh-0?t=159)

~~~
aetherson
I mean, it's conceivable that this was a pedagogical technique or a strange
dialect of my teachers, but when they modeled pronunciation, it was clearly
with an "n" sound. Or perhaps when they spoke each mora distinctly and
somewhat separately, they unconsciously reverted to the "normal" pronunciation
of ん instead of a modified pronunciation.

Now, maybe having modeled that, when they spoke at normal speed it was an "m"
sound and, not listening for it, I never heard it.

(Also: They never corrected my pronunciation of ん, which was consciously an
"n" sound. They did correct my pronunciation of other things, like failing to
subvocalize vowels between unvoiced consonants (I remember a long and arduous
exchange in which my professor pronounced "hito" (人), and I tried to mirror it
back, imagining that my problem was in not emphasizing the second syllable
enough rather than failing to subvocalize the "i"). And I think that I say
"input" with an "n" sound. But maybe I'm incapable of saying "input" the way I
normally do in speech when I'm actually thinking about it. :P )

~~~
rangibaby
I just did a survey, showing people the kanji. The said tempura but not the
way a native English speaker would say, which is more like "Tem pura".

------
squaredpants
#PortugalCaralho

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scierama
I know we love those Tempura Shrimp from Costco, that's all I know about it.

