Tаpescript 17.

Presenter Now it’s time for our regular Wednesday afternoon sport about words and their origins. And I have with me, as usual, our English language expert, Sally Davies. So what are the three words you going to tell us about today, Sally?

Sally Hello, John. My three words today are ‘ketchup’ ‘orange’ – that’s the fruit, the colour came later, and ‘tennis’.

Presenter Let’s start with ‘ketchup’ then.

Sally Yes, well, the Chinese invented a sauce called ‘ke-tsiap’, spelled K-E-hyphen –T-S-I-A-P in the 1690s. It was made from fish and spices, but absolutely no tomatoes. By the early eighteen century, it’s popularity has spread to Malaysia, and this is where British explorers fist found it, and obviously really liked it. By 1740 the sauce was part of the English diet-people were eating a lot of it and was also becoming popular in the American colonies. And they renamed the sauce ‘ketchup’, because it was a bit easier for the English to pronounce. Then about fifty years later, in 1790, some American colonists in New England mixed tomatoes into the sauce and it became known as ‘tomato ketchup’.

Presenter So it is American after all?

Sally Well, it’s very interesting that neither ‘orange’ in English nor ‘naranje’ in Spanish or ‘arancia’ in Italian, come from the Latin word for ‘orange’, which was ‘citrus aurentium’. Instead they, they all come from the ancient Sanskrit word ‘narangah’. There is also an interesting story about where this word, ‘narangah’, comes from. It’s said that it comes from ‘nagaranga’, which literally means ‘poison for elephants’.

Presenter Poison for elephants?

Sally Yes, apparently one day in around the 7^th or 8^th century BC an elephant was passing through the forest, when he found a three which he had never seen before. This tree was full of beautiful, temping oranges; as a result, the elephant ate so mane that he died. Many years later a man came to the same spot and noticed the remains of the elephant with some orange trees growing from what had been its stomach. The man then exclaimed, ‘These fruit are nagaranga’ that is, ‘ poison for elephants’.

Presenter So is this true?

Sally Well, I don’t know, but it’s a nice story!

Presenter And finally our last word is ‘ tennis’.

Sally This is my favouriteone, and it shows that the English have always had their own special way of pronouncing foreign languages. Tennis is a sport which first developed in France. The name was originally ‘tenez’ which is from the French verb ‘tenir’ which means in this case, something like ‘Here you are’. Players used to say ‘tenez’ when they hit the ball meaning something lake ‘There, try to get this one’. But the sport lost popularity in France and gained popularity in England at the same time. So, English people were still using the word ‘tenez’ each time they hit the ball, but they were saying it with the English accent which sounded more like ‘tennis’, and eventually it took this new spelling. Then the sport gained popularity worldwide and was taken up by many nationalities, including the French – but they now had to call it ‘le tennis’!

Presenter Fascinating! Well, thank you very much for those three words, Sally, and we’ll look forward to next week’s programme.