When I first encountered the word 'tsunami', I immediately decided it was a better term than 'tidal wave'. After all, these things have nothing to do with tides, and like any other know-it-all I do appreciate finding out that what everyone else says is wrong.
Tsunami literally means 'harbour wave', which isn't really all that good a description either, but that actually doesn't matter when you hijack a foreign word. Moved to English, it has no other meaning than the correct one. You could argue that both English and Japanese could be improved if we swapped words.
But I had never actually seen a tsunami. They're difficult to get footage of, because they are quite unpredictable and the people who see them are usually busy running away. I had in my head a mental picture of a really big "dumper"-style wave, that crashed onto buildings and people from a great height and smashed them.
Recently I was able to see a show that consisted of footage taken during the Japanese tsunami of 2011, using the now-ubiquitous mobile phone. This was most enlightening. Much of it was far inland, with the sea initially not visible, and there were no dumpers.
Instead, we would see dry land, and then a flat wave like the last of an ordinary beach wave when it has broken and flowed past the current water's edge. Instead of stopping and flowing back again, it would keep going. It would flow up to doorways, and then through them; it would start to fill open spaces. Water would pour between the buildings, and then that would prove too slow and it would start to spray out of windows as well. Even that would prove too slow and it would pick the building up and move it bodily.
Each time I started to think "well, that's really impressive", it would get faster and deeper and more destructive. First flowing through the road tunnel under a railway embankment, then spraying through it, then flowing over the embankment, and then throwing large objects over it - such as cars and buildings.
The insistent and inexorable way it crept up made it immediately clear why its victims would call it a tidal wave; it is exactly like a tide, but faster, and of course it appears where tides usually do not. It is not a wave caused by a tide, but a wave that behaves like one.
So I've changed my mind. Tsunami is a still a good word for it, because it's precise in what it refers to. But tidal wave is also a good term - equally precise, and very evocative. It may mislead people as to the cause of the phenomenon; but that is what education is for. And after all, even with a shiny new imported word, I still had no idea what one looked like.
Often your ignorant ancestors are smarter than they first appear.
Tsunami literally means 'harbour wave', which isn't really all that good a description either, but that actually doesn't matter when you hijack a foreign word. Moved to English, it has no other meaning than the correct one. You could argue that both English and Japanese could be improved if we swapped words.
But I had never actually seen a tsunami. They're difficult to get footage of, because they are quite unpredictable and the people who see them are usually busy running away. I had in my head a mental picture of a really big "dumper"-style wave, that crashed onto buildings and people from a great height and smashed them.
Recently I was able to see a show that consisted of footage taken during the Japanese tsunami of 2011, using the now-ubiquitous mobile phone. This was most enlightening. Much of it was far inland, with the sea initially not visible, and there were no dumpers.
Instead, we would see dry land, and then a flat wave like the last of an ordinary beach wave when it has broken and flowed past the current water's edge. Instead of stopping and flowing back again, it would keep going. It would flow up to doorways, and then through them; it would start to fill open spaces. Water would pour between the buildings, and then that would prove too slow and it would start to spray out of windows as well. Even that would prove too slow and it would pick the building up and move it bodily.
Each time I started to think "well, that's really impressive", it would get faster and deeper and more destructive. First flowing through the road tunnel under a railway embankment, then spraying through it, then flowing over the embankment, and then throwing large objects over it - such as cars and buildings.
The insistent and inexorable way it crept up made it immediately clear why its victims would call it a tidal wave; it is exactly like a tide, but faster, and of course it appears where tides usually do not. It is not a wave caused by a tide, but a wave that behaves like one.
So I've changed my mind. Tsunami is a still a good word for it, because it's precise in what it refers to. But tidal wave is also a good term - equally precise, and very evocative. It may mislead people as to the cause of the phenomenon; but that is what education is for. And after all, even with a shiny new imported word, I still had no idea what one looked like.
Often your ignorant ancestors are smarter than they first appear.
