Linguoboy wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 12:52 pm
"Tong" isn't used in the singular in any standard variety of English I know. I'd call these "pasta tongs".
For some reason "tong" does not seem ungrammatical to me at least, like "I used a salad tong to remove salad from the bag and place it in the bowl", which for me is cromulent.
Linguoboy wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2024 3:38 pm
Product ads these days are full of sus machine translations. I never trust them anymore when trying to learn new vocabulary in a non-native language.
Wait, these are real ads??? My initial read was that xxx made them as a joke. I had a good chuckle about that.
Linguoboy wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 12:52 pm
"Tong" isn't used in the singular in any standard variety of English I know.
In places that have Chinatowns, and Hong Kong, and probably Taiwan, and maybe Singapore, a “tong” is pretty much the Chinese equivalent of a Japanese zaibatsu. If there’s a difference, it might be that tongs always have a political “department”, whereas I’m unaware of most zaibatsus having any permanent political sub-agency.
Maybe “triad society” is the phrase British-derived HongKongians use for “tong”?
HK English is in my opinion a standard variety of English. (I could be wrong!)
Linguoboy wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2024 12:52 pm
"Tong" isn't used in the singular in any standard variety of English I know.
In places that have Chinatowns, and Hong Kong, and probably Taiwan, and maybe Singapore, a “tong” is pretty much the Chinese equivalent of a Japanese zaibatsu. If there’s a difference, it might be that tongs always have a political “department”, whereas I’m unaware of most zaibatsus having any permanent political sub-agency.
Maybe “triad society” is the phrase British-derived HongKongians use for “tong”?
I suspect this ‘tong’ is etymologically unrelated.
TomHChappell wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 12:51 pm
In places that have Chinatowns, and Hong Kong, and probably Taiwan, and maybe Singapore, a “tong” is pretty much the Chinese equivalent of a Japanese zaibatsu. If there’s a difference, it might be that tongs always have a political “department”, whereas I’m unaware of most zaibatsus having any permanent political sub-agency.
Maybe “triad society” is the phrase British-derived HongKongians use for “tong”?
I suspect this ‘tong’ is etymologically unrelated.
I suspect it’s borrowed into English from some Chinese lexeme. Don’t know which Chinese language (or “dialect”).
What’s the etymology of the other tongs? Like, for serving salad?
TomHChappell wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 1:14 pm
I suspect it’s borrowed into English from some Chinese lexeme. Don’t know which Chinese language (or “dialect”).
What’s the etymology of the other tongs? Like, for serving salad?
According to Wiktionary:
The more common meaning comes from West Germanic *tangu of the same meaning, ultimately from PIE *denḱ- ‘to bite’