パン

Pattern visualization

Examples

1. 朝はパンを食べます。▶ —
   I eat bread in the morning.
2. このパンは美味しいです。▶ —
   This bread is delicious.

Collocations

Mnemonic

パン — pan, a loanword. Written in katakana. It came not from English but from Portuguese pão ── in the 16th century, Nanban trade, Portuguese merchants brought bread to Japan. The most striking fact: the Korean word 'ppang' (ppang) also comes from the same Portuguese pão ── it reached Korea via Japan. Japan and Korea share the same loanword, and its root is not English but 16th-century Portuguese. It is a false friend of English 'pan' (a frying pan) ── no relation at all. 食パン shokupan (sliced bread = 食 kanji + パン loanword): kanji and loanword holding hands inside one word ── a very Japanese compound. The deeper ancestor of Portuguese pão is Latin panis (bread) ── a single Latin word that flowed all the way to East Asian bakeries.

Quick check

1. Etymology language of パン?

   • Portuguese pão (16th-century Nanban trade)
   • English "pan" (frying pan)
   • French pain
   • German Pfanne