Mandarin Loanwords

English-based Mandarin loanwords are commonly used in Chinese people’s daily lives. Mandarin Loanwords demonstrates how English phonemes map into Mandarin phonemes through Mandarin loanwords adaptation. The consonantal adaptations are the most important in the analyses, and vowel adaptation and tonal adaptation is also considered. Through the analysis, it is proven that the functions of phonology and phonetics play a significant role in Mandarin loanword adaptation, however the functions of other factors, such as semantic functions of Chinese characters and English orthography, are also discussed. Additionally, the phonetic symbolization of Chinese characters is mentioned.

Chinese loanwords (Wàilái cí, 外来词) refer to words that are transliterated or simply literally translated from English and other languages. The loanwords have become an important part of the Chinese language. However, every foreign word, that comes to China, usually gets a new shape in Mandarin Chinese language. These words originate elsewhere, and are mapped to a new set of characters, often with resembling pronunciations. In this book, I am including over 500 words in the tabular form that are closely related to the foreign words. For each of the words in this book, I am adding: 1. Serial number (count) 2. English, 3. Pinyin, and 4. Simplified Chinese characters. Additional details have been provided for the less known English words (in English). Further, the book has been meticulously organized into different chapters. -Jia Ming

A loanword, or wailaici, is a word with similar meaning and phonetic form to a word from a foreign language that has been naturalized in the recipient language. From ancient times, cultural exchanges between China and other countries has brought and integrated a myriad of loanwords to the Chinese language. Approaching the topic from a diachronic perspective, this volume is the first book-length work to chart the developmental trajectory, features, functions, and categories of loanwords into Chinese. Beginning with a general introduction to the Chinese loanword system, the author delves deeper to explore trends and standardization in Chinese loanword studies and the research landscape of contemporary loanword studies more generally. Combining theoretical reflections with real-life examples of Chinese loanwords, the author discusses not only long-established examples from the dictionary but also a great number of significant loanwords adopted in the 21st century. The author shows how the complexity of the Chinese loanword system is intertwined with the intricacies of the Chinese character system. This title will be an essential reference for students, scholars, and general readers who are interested in Chinese loanwords, linguistics, and language and culture.

A loanword, or wailaici, is a word with similar meaning and phonetic form to a word from a foreign language that has been naturalized in the recipient language. From ancient times, cultural exchanges between China and other countries has brought and integrated a myriad of loanwords to the Chinese language. Approaching the topic from a diachronic perspective, this volume is the first book-length work to chart the developmental trajectory, features, functions, and categories of loanwords into Chinese. Beginning with a general introduction to the Chinese loanword system, the author delves deeper to explore trends and standardization in Chinese loanword studies and the research landscape of contemporary loanword studies more generally. Combining theoretical reflections with real-life examples of Chinese loanwords, the author discusses not only long-established examples from the dictionary but also a great number of significant loanwords adopted in the 21st century. The author shows how the complexity of the Chinese loanword system is intertwined with the intricacies of the Chinese character system. This title will be an essential reference for students, scholars, and general readers who are interested in Chinese loanwords, linguistics, and language and culture.

Approaching the topic from a diachronic perspective, this volume is the first book-length work to chart the developmental trajectory, features, functions, and categories of loanwords into Chinese, drawing on both long standing examples as well as the many new loanwords that have entered the Chinese language in the 21st century.

"This landmark publication in comparative linguistics is the first comprehensive work to address the general issue of what kinds of words tend to be borrowed from other languages. The authors have assembled a unique database of over 70,000 words from 40 languages from around the world, 18,000 of which are loanwords. This database allows the authors to make empirically founded generalizations about general tendencies of word exchange among languages." --Book Jacket.

This book aims to explore which factors and to what extent these factors affect loanword phonology by conducting acoustic experiments and corpus studies. Two typologically different languages, Mandarin Chinese and Korean (spoken by Seoul Korean and Korean Chinese in Northern part of China), are recruited into the research to propose more scientific and more comprehensive generalizations for loanword phonology. First, this book determines the acoustic properties of Korean dialects. Then, corpus studies are conducted to compute which cues exert influence in the adaptation process. The results argue that distinctive features or primary acoustic cues of the borrowing languages greatly affect the process in loanword phonology synchronically. Further, this book explores the role of other influential factors such as frequency on shaping the adaptation process diachronically. Frequency is attested as an important factor in systematizing the perceptual adaptation into phonological adaptation. A cross-linguistic study provides not only the synchronic evidence of phonetic approximation in loanword adaptation but also diachronic support of the systematization of loanword phonology. This book makes contributions to research methodologies of acoustic experiments across languages and sheds light on the understanding of the complexity of loanword phonology synchronically and diachronically.