To be frank, I'm afraid no one can give you a definite answer. I usually say phang comes from Europe, possibly from Portuguese. It was assumed that the Japanese briught the term to Taiwan after 1895. And the Japanese got it from Europe, probably during the Meji Restoration. Japanese seemed unable to ditinguish between 'ng' and 'n' quite well. For example, sir/MR is written as sang & san. Those speaking Mandarin have same problems. Frequently 興趣/性趣; 禁止/靜止; alwaus sounds the same on TV/Radio. Any comment from TGB will be highly appreciated. Babuza ----- Original Message ----- From: "Konrad Hsu Aschenbach" <> To: "Taigu (Taiwanese Net)" <> Cc: "" <> Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2005 9:02 PM Subject: bread

Hello Babuza,

I was curious about the origin of the word for "bread" in Holo. In
TG Si Sim-mih, you said, "Mi-pau kio
phang eng-kai si Phu-tho-ga oe." I found the following reference about
bread: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bread
In Portuguese, it's spelled pa̍o,/ /but in Spanish it's pan. In
French: pain. Does "phang" really come from Portuguese?

--Konrad