Sunday 1 February 2009 Soap The Malay word sabun (soap) is used in local Hokkien (sap boon = 塞文 [sai wen]) to mean soap instead of Mandarin's 肥皂 (fei zao). Sabun came from Arabic and is often used as an example of Malay words of Arabic origin (see for example Goddard's The Languages of East and Southeast Asia, 2005). Last Thu, my Teochew teacher said the older word for soap here was pia ioh [yoke] 饼药 (medicine cake). It was used to refer to the long bars of strong smelling soap used to do laundry. For Cantonese today, the term is fan kan (番枧 [fan jian]) but in the old books, I find the Westerners reporting it written as 番鹵見 (鹵見 being one word but because the modern Mandarin computer character set doesn't appear to have it, 枧 was used instead). Incidentally, 番 is used by the Cantonese to refer to foreigners and foreigness. However, soap is a Western introduction. Chinese apparently originally used detergents derived from plant pods. These were often powdered and made into cakes according to Needham's Science and Civilisation in China (vol VI:6, pg 88).Science and Civilisation in China has an example from the 宋 (Song) Dynasty calling plants used to make these detergent cakes 皂荚 [zao jia]. It also gives what must be the earliest soap term: 澡豆 (zao dou in Mandarin or tso tau in Amoy Hokkien). Given that the character 皂 or 皁 (zao) appears both there and in the modern Mandarin term, 肥皂 (fat soap would be the translation), I'd presume 皂 or 皁 (zao) is the character representing soap. That's all I've found to date. Anyone can shed more light on the question? Chinese Character Hokkien Phoneticisation Cantonese Phoneticisation Mandarin Phoneticisation 塞文 sup boon sak man sai wen 肥皂 pui ? fei zou fei zao 饼药 pia ioh peng yeuk bian yao 番枧 hoan ? fan kan fan jian 皂荚 pui ngeh fei ? zao jia 澡豆 tso tau cou dau zao dou Note: Bolded phoneticizations are words actually used in that language