Congee Explained!

Wow, talk about learning something new everyday. Congee, a rice porridge typically eaten at breakfast, is a word derived from the Tamil word kanji. I've always been puzzled how that term came about.

In Cantonese, one would phonetically pronounce it as "jok" or in Chaozhou it's prounced "mwyeh". It's funny how sometimes the Chinese phonetic pronunciation never make its way to the Latin/English phonetic-based word.

On the same 'word history' topic, it appears that China, a term used to describe porcelain and the nation the People's Republic of China. It could have been derived from the name Qin (may be pronounced as Chin), the first imperial dynasty that ruled the region in around 200BC. Curiously enough, today in mandarin, it is pronounced "ZhongGuo" -中国 literally middle country.