台风一词的历史沿革

虽然台风一词已经家喻户晓,但是300多年来关于台风的词源众说纷纭。通过收集和分析古今中外关于台风词源的资料,得到两个结论:（1）台风词源的争议出现在16世纪后期平托《远游记》出版以后;（2）欧洲一些学者没有给出有说服力的证据支持“台风”源自希腊语的说法,也没有给出“台风”在阿拉伯语和印度洋周边国家语言中来自希腊语的证据。相反,现有的文献资料表明,虽然飓风的说法在中国历史上很长一段时间占主导地位,但是台风的早期叫法在浙江南部和福建北部沿海方言中至少在宋代就已经出现,台风一词在中文里有自身独立的演变过程,从浙江吴语的“风痴”经过口语到福建的“痴风”,由于“痴”和“颱”在闽语中发音相近,在闽语中变成“风颱”和“颱风”。 

Historical evolution of the word "Typhoon"

As a well-known weather phenomenon, the etymology of typhoon has been debated for more than 300 years. Based on ancient and modern documents available all over the world, it is found that the debate on the etymology of typhoon started from the publication of The Voyages and Adventures of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto in the 16th century and that there is no convincing evidence for the Greek or Arabian origin of the word "typhoon". On the contrary, its origin can be traced back to the dialects in the southeast coastal region of China since the Song Dynasty although Jufeng (hurricane) was officially used for more than 1000 years. The word is pronounced as "Feng Chi" in Southern Zhejiang Dialect (Chinese Wu Language), "Chi Feng" in Fujian Dialect (Chinese Min Language), and then "Feng Tai" or "Tai Feng" in Fujian Dialect because "Chi" and "Tai" are pronounced similarly in Fujian Dialect.