Call us TODAY on +44 (0)7707743663


Home » Blog » Loanwords in Chinese

Loanwords in Chinese

 

In today’s class, some students were very interested to study a particular word. They learned about ‘拜拜 (báibái)’, which means ‘bye-bye’ in English.

 

As you can see, the pronunciation of ‘拜拜 (báibái)’ and ‘bye-bye’ are almost the same. Many of the Mandarin course students at our London school realised this and asked the reason. They were also very interested to know whether or not there are more cases like this in Chinese.

 

Based on their questions, I would like to introduce the term ‘Loanwords in Chinese’ in our today’s blog.

 

After China opened its doors, many foreigners started to go to this ancient country. As a result, the overseas presence also began to influence the Chinese people, their culture and especially their language. We call ‘loanwords’ in Chinese to those words which are borrowed from foreign languages.

 

In general, there are six groups of ‘Loanwords in Chinese’, and here I will introduce the four most commonly used.

 

Loanwords that imitate the sound of the source word. For example, ‘拜拜 (báibái)’ and ‘bye-bye’, ‘奥斯卡 (ào sī kǎ)’ and ‘oscar’;

 

Loanwords that translate the literal meaning of the source words. For example, ‘门口 (ménkǒu)’ which means ‘entrance’, 门 means door and 口 means mouth, so the mouth of the door is the entrance;

 

Loanwords that combine Roman letters with Chinese characters. Such as ‘AA 制 (zhì)’ which means ‘go Dutch’ and ‘B 超 (chāo)’ which means ‘ultrasound’; and

 

Loanwords that only use Roman letters. For example, ‘CD’, ‘DVD’ and ‘USB’.

 

Loanwords are widely used among Chinese people, especially the young generation. They don’t only use the loanwords to describe new situations and concepts that Chinese expressions can’t, but also to express those ideas that can be replaced by Chinese words, such as ‘bye-bye’ and ‘ok’.

 

If you are also a Mandarin learner and are interested in to know more about the loanwords in Chinese, you can visit the ChineseHour blog.

 

Post Tagged with , , , , ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>