Large Wave Semantics
 

This is extremely pointless, and i don't mean to be offensive with this; but do you think, if the large natural disater happened somewhere in a Western/Enlgish speaking world - would we (Or the Media) call it a Tidal Wave or a Tsunami?
or something else?

http://dict.die.net/tidal%20wave/

Tidal wave.
(a) See Tide wave, under Tide. Cf. 4th Bore.
(b) A vast, swift wave caused by an earthquake or some
extraordinary combination of natural causes. It rises far
above high-water mark and is often very destructive upon
low-lying coasts.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=tsunami

Tsunami (Japanese):
A very large ocean wave caused by an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption.


....These kind of random thoughts are what happen late at night
:eek:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that a tsunami only occurs in the Pacific, whereas a tidal wave occurs in the Atlantic. At least that's always what I believed.

But then again, I was always led to believe that hurricanes only occured in the Atlantic, whereas out west they had to worry about typhoons. Much to my surprise, it seems that the western gulf of Mexico now gets hurricanes, too.


People change the meanings of words to suit them. "Tsunami" just sounds so much cooler than plain old "tidal wave". It's like salsa ;)

Hah, yeah that's what i was getting at :)

People like to say salsa :p

Good point about the hurricanes as well! i missed that. I find Typhoon never gets used though?
apart from SIm City 4 - i think? or am i thinking about the tycoon simulation series... :p

a tsunami is a big wave that is caused by something OTHER than tidal forces (the moon's gravity). A tidal wave is a wave caused by tidal forces. Technically, all those waves you surf on are tidal waves.

I would think the term "Tidal Wave" has fallen out of favor because the Tides have nothing to do with the actual wave.

I agree with tecoyah. Tidal wave is logically wrong if the tide has nothing to do with the wave.

However, there are types of tidal waves (bores) which can be seen rolling upriver with the funneled, fast rising tide in some places (the river Severn bore is the nearest definite example i can think of). In these cases "tidal wave" would be accurate. Unfortunately there's a smaller and easier to pronounce word for it - "bore" - so i've rarely heard it referred to as a tidal wave.

Yup. We call it a tsunami because "tidal wave" is technically incorrect. The fact that this one happened to hit in Asia is coincidental.

Aren't tsunamis also more common in the Pacific region because of the "ring of fire" - lots of tectonic/volcanic activity going on there? I know they could happen anywhere, but are they more frequent in the Pacific to start with?

That is more or less what I was taught in high school geography. Although I was taught that the swell was tidal and the individual waves that ride the swells are weather formed.

I've always wondered why we started calling tidal waves "tsunami." When I was a kid they were just tidal waves but now everybody uses the Japanese word. Then why don't we start calling earthquakes "jishin" or volcanos "kazan"?

Simple! Tsunami has passed into common parlance in English. "Jishin" and "kazan" still require a bit of knowledge of Japanese to know the meaning. Plus, as was mentioned earlier, tsunami more accurately describes what is actually happening. Combine that with the tendency of the English language to assimilate other words into itself (the creation of synonyms), and you see phenomena like "tsunami" being used to the exclusion of the previous English term.

Historical linguistics is your friend!

Well yes but what I'm wondering is how the word "tsunami" happened to become so widely used in English. Why are we using that particular word to the exclusion of others, and why the Japanese word? I'm sure plenty of other languages also have words to describe the same thing, not to mention our own (even if the waves aren't particularly "tidal" in origin).

Did you have any words in mind?

I'm not aware of English alternatives. Tsunami was fairly well entrenched in Western language even before the recent disaster.