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 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.
A calque of Chinese 洗腦, consisting of the characters 洗; 'wash' and 腦; 'brain'. A term first used by the People's Volunteer Army during the Korean War, then picked up by the American media. It may refer to a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas; or persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship. The term "brainwashing" came into the mainstream English language after Western media sources first utilized the term to describe the attitudes of POWs returning from the Korean War.[1]
lit. 'long clothes', popularly used during the 19th and early 20th centuries
Chin chin, chin-chin
Mandarin
請
qǐng
lit. 'please', 'invite', an exclamation used to express good wishes before drinking—cf. Mandarin 乾杯; gānbēi; 'empty the glass', Sino-Japanese kanpai. While occasionally used in American English, chin-chin is an informal and outdated British English usage, for instance, the TV sitcom As Time Goes By.[2]
lit. '(slightly) touches the heart, skimming the heart, igniting the heart', generally an idiom meaning 'desserts, pastry (accomponied to green tea), light refreshments'
From the name of the plant: some say the word came via the Japanese pronunciation, though 人参 now means 'carrot' in Japanese, while the modern word for 'ginseng' is 朝鮮人參, 'Korean carrot'.
Literally 'ghost guy', used as a common slur for Westerners. Absent modifiers, it refers to white people and has a history of deprecatory and pejorative use, though it has been argued that it has since acquired a more neutral connotation.
lit. 'high mountain peak', the name of a village or suburb of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi, the site of a mine from which kaolin clay (高嶺土; gāolǐngtǔ) was taken to make the fine porcelain produced in Jingde.[4]
In the 17th century, the Chinese mixed a concoction of pickled fish and spices, called kôe-chiap or kê-chiap in the Amoy dialect, whose meaning refers to(鮭汁) the brine of pickled fish or shellfish (鮭; 'salmon', 汁; 'juice'). By the early 18th century, the sauce had made it to the Malay peninsula, where it was later discovered by English explorers. That word then gradually evolved into the English word "ketchup", and was taken to the American colonies by English settlers.
sparrow checkmate, short for 'hemp sparrow warfare, hemp sparrow being the term for house sparrow, and sparrow warfare (麻雀戰, 麻雀战) a form of guerilla warfare tactics.
Calque of an idiom referring to something or someone whose claims or appearances of threat or power are paper-thin, actually being ineffectual and unable to withstand challenge. Became well known internationally by its use by Mao Zedong to refer to his political opponents, particularly the American government.
The city name, used in English as a verb meaning 'to put someone aboard a ship by trickery or intoxication', or generally 'to put someone in a bad situation by trickery'. From an old practice of deceitful acquiring sailors for voyages to Shanghai
According to Lin Yutang, the expression comes from 批判; pīpàn; 'to criticize and judge' and 鬥爭; dòuzhēng; 'to fight and contest', so the whole expression conveys the message of 'inciting spirited judgment and fighting'. It was often shortened to 批鬥; pīdòu.[citation needed]
The term refers to a phenomenon especially prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, where public sessions were ostensibly held for the benefit the target, intending to eliminate counterrevolutionary, reactionary thinking.[citation needed]
In most European languages, where the word resembles te, tea generally originated in the Amoy port. The other common word for tea worldwide, usually in places where tea generally came via the Silk Road, derives from the Mandarin pronunciation with the same Old Chinese etymology.
^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.
