List of English words of Chinese origin

Words of Chinese origin have entered European languages, including English. Most of these were direct loanwords from various varieties of Chinese. However, Chinese words have also entered indirectly via other languages, particularly Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, that have all used Chinese characters at some point and contain a large number of Chinese loanwords.

Sources

English words of Chinese origin usually have different characteristics, depending on precisely how the words encountered the West. Despite the increasingly widespread use of Standard Chinese—based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin—among Chinese people, English words based on Mandarin are comparatively few.

Chinese vocabulary has spread to the West by means such as:

• via missionaries who were living in China. These have heavy Latin influence due to Portuguese and Spanish missionaries.
• via sinologists who lived in China. These have heavy French influence due to the long history of French sinology.
• via the maritime trade route, e.g. tea, Amoy, cumshaw etc. Heavily influenced by the Min Nan Amoy dialect in southern seaports.
• via the early immigrants to the American West during gold rush era, e.g. chop suey. Heavily influenced by the Toisan dialect.
• via the multi-national colonization of Shanghai. Influenced by many European countries, as well as Japan.
• via the British colonization of Hong Kong, e.g. cheongsam. Heavily influenced by Cantonese.
• via modern international communication, especially after the 1970s when the People's Republic of China reduced up travel restrictions, allowing emigration to various countries, e.g. wushu, feng shui. Heavily influenced by Mandarin.
• via Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, often Sino-Xenic words, These languages historically borrowed large swaths of Chinese vocabulary, and wrote Chinese and their native language in Chinese characters. The pronunciation of such loanwords is not based directly on Chinese, but on the local pronunciation of Chinese loanwords in these languages, known as Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean, and Sino-Vietnamese. In addition, the individual characters were extensively used as building blocks for local neologisms with no semantic counterpart in the original Chinese, resulting in words whose relationship to the Chinese language is similar to the relationship between new Latinate words—particularly those that form a large part of the international scientific vocabulary—and Latin. Such words are excluded from the list, as they sound pretty similar to their English renderings.

Though all these following terms originated from China, the spelling of the English words depends on the direct point of contact and borrowing, as well as which transliteration scheme is typically used.

Table

See also

• List of Chinese words of English origin
• List of Spanish words of Chinese origin
• Chinese Pidgin English
  • Chinglish
  • Singlish

Notes

1. This word has the Wade–Giles romanization of ch'i, but the rough breathing mark—replaced by an apostrophe in most texts—has largely disappeared in colloquial English.

References

1. Harper, Douglas. "brainwashing". Online Etymology Dictionary. Dictionary.com. Retrieved January 15, 2012.
2. Oxford British & World English dictionary entry for chin-chin.
3. Partridge, Eric, and Beale, Paul (2002). A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, p. 1386. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-29189-5, ISBN 978-0-415-29189-7.
4. (accessed on 10 March 2008) Archived 24 April 2005 at the Wayback Machine
5. Andrew F. Smith (1996). Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment, with Recipes. Univ of South Carolina Press. p. 5.
6. "Meteorology Encyclopedia". Central Weather Bureau, Taiwan (R.O.C.).

External links

• Chinese Loanwords
• English Words from Chinese