- The Japanese word for bread is "パン" (pronounced 'pan')
- The Korean word is "빵" (pronounced 'ppang')
- Both are loaned from the Portuguese 'pão' (bread).
- In Chinese many kinds of bread are called <something>包 (<something>'bao') or 包<something> ('bao'<something>). Examples: 面包 'Mianbao' (bread) or 包子 'Baozi' (steam bun). Note the 包 'bao' sounds a bit like the Portuguese 'pão'. However, it turns out this is completely unrelated and 包 means something more like "package" (or so all the translators and dictionaries I could find claim) so most people believe that this is a false cognate and not a loanword like in Korean and Japanese.
- Despite this, the Chinese 包 'bao' has ended up in Korean as a kind of loan word as well, but because it seems to mean the same thing as 빵'ppang' and is used in similar ways in Chinese as 빵'ppang' might be used in Korean and for various pronunciation reasons in Korean, Chinese origin breads are also called 빵'ppang'.
- The proper translation for 包 into Korean is more likely 꾸러미 'kkuleomi' (package).
- So....Chinese-Korean breads are often called <something>빵 such as 찐빵 'jjinppang' (steamed bun)) even though the correct Chinese name for the Chinese-Korean 찐빵 in China is called a 馒头 'Mantou'.
- However, in Korean, a 만두 'Mandu' is a different but related food, a dumpling, and in Japanese a 饅頭 'Manjou'.
- Going West instead of East from China, the 'Mandu' as a food goes back a thousand years and spread all over the Silk Road, so local variants are found all over Turky, Persia, Afghanistan, Mongolia and so on are called the same thing and may have been the basis for the famous Russian "Pelmeni" and Polish "Pierogi" and various other dumplings known around the world.
And thus the great bread-dumpling belt is enjoyed around the world to this day and was established by explorers, wanderers, conquerors and traders.