TIL: Japan’s first European word was 蜜 and it's at least 5000 years old
This blew my mind: the Japanese word mitsu 蜜, meaning honey — the mitsu in hachimitsu — traces back to 5000/6500 year-old Proto-Indo-European *médʰu, the same ancient root that gave English mead.
The word seems to have been one of very few that “leaked” east across Eurasia incredibly early, at least 2,300 years ago through Tocharian, an extinct Indo-European branch once spoken around western China. Chinese borrowed it as 蜜, modern Mandarin mì, and Japanese later borrowed the Chinese word as mitsu.
For all the etymology nerds out there, I found that little nugget in the book Proto by Laura Spinney - highly recommend it.
Edit: Fair point from a few people below — “European” was a pretty loose/clickbaity way of putting it, and it did ignore the “Indo” part of Indo-European. I meant to write “European loanword” as a cheeky nod to the usual Portuguese/Dutch/English loanword idea Japanese learners know, but I stretched the comparison too far. Got a bit overexcited to share the fun fact.