Chinese Borrowings In English

The study of language contact has been the focus of the international linguistic circlessince the1970s, which is mainly on the changes of contact-induced languages of different(or same) genetic sources.Trade, cultural exchanges, immigrants, wars and other forms, all can bring languagesto contact.Among them, the most common outcome is the lexical borrowing.In term of vocabulary, English history is the borrowing history. In its1500years ofdevelopment, English has taken in words from as many as120-odd languages, includingChinese, and developed from several Germanic dialects to the world’s most popularlanguage as so-called the “non-Esperanto Esperanto”.Due to the minor word contributor, Chinese borrowings in English, although as earlyas the late19thcentury linguists began to mention, had not been taken seriously until1980swith some influential publications from Chan&Kwok (1985), Garland Cannon(1987;1988) and Wang Rong-pei(1986;2001;2002). In the following two or three decades,researches in this area, though with many participated in, still leave two basic problemsunresolved: One is the “quantity”—how many Chinese loanwords are there in English?The other is the “quality”—what types of loan words? Any rules to follow?This dissertation, on the base of self-built corpora, presents a panoramic description ofthe Chinese borrowings from the perspective of language contact. It views the borrowingas a “dynamic” process and divides it into various stages with a macro and micro analysisfrom the dimensions of language, society and culture.Language contact researches include contact and influence; therefore, it must take intoaccount both process and result. Based on this understanding, the concept of “dynamicborrowing process” is put forward, which consists of three continual stages of pre-,present-, and post-borrowing. In accordance with this, the research of this paper alsocovers three parts, trying to give the readers a systematic and detailed picture of Chinese borrowings in English.Pre-borrowing means “temporary borrowing” while post-borrowing “creations”,which includes purely English ones, hybrids and those using only Chinese morphemes.The words in these two periods are just “neologisms”, normally, can not be regarded as“loanwords”, but could be if given more in-depth contact and longer time. At thepre-borrowing stage, the methods of transliteration and loan translation are more suitablefor the transformation of “new words” into “borrowed words”; At the post-borrowing stage,“creations”, especially those using only English morphemes, for lack of original Chinesemodel, by contrast, are usually difficult to turn into loanwords, and are generally excludedin dictionaries. If any, however, the number of this kind is very limited and hard tocalculate.Language evolution or change is a “gradual” process, usually taking some time, so isthe case of borrowings; but if connected with non-linguistic factors such as political andtechnological, and with modern media, words can pass through time and space, and all ofsudden, narrow the gap between “neologisms” and “loans”.Borrowings, in traditional sense, are usually those contained in dictionaries. Theybelong to the “borrowed” stage in the whole process. According to more or less foreignmorphemes, they can be further divided into three types: loanword, loanblend andloanshift.The amount of loanwords, roughly between three and four hundred, with very little inthe16thcentury and much in the19thand20thcenturies, shows an ascending trend; As tosemantics, loanwords are mainly those of Chinese “indigenous”, such as diet, art, biota,and politics; When it comes to spelling, most of them are in Pinyin system, followed inturn by Wade-Giles, Cantonese, Latin, Hokkien, and Pidgin English which, different fromthe ordinary “lexical borrowing”, is characterized by its prominent “structural borrowing”.Borrowings have two ways to adopt foreign words: directly and indirectly. Among theindirect Chinese loanwords, Japanese, as one of the transmission languages, is the greatestcontributor which has helped bring into English more than200words. However, academicresearches in this area have not been well conducted for the complexity of etymology.Loanblends can be sub-divided into two types: derivational and compound. Theformer have around100words, and the latter800, of which dozens are those in the form of“transliteration+one category word”, and the rest are those of “descriptive form” which occupy the largest proportion in the entire Chinese borrowings for its most convenient,economical and straightforward ways in adoption of foreign words.Loanshifts also have two types: semantic loans and loan translations. Semantic loanshappen, sometimes because the sound is similar, sometimes the meaning similar. Thenumber of this kind is limited, and in addition, their identity is often doubted for their wordform of “new wine in old bottles”. Loan translations, because of the same structures andcorresponding morphemes between Chinese and English, are becoming more and morepopular with over100in total and still in a soaring rise. Their structure is usuallycomposed of two or three words, but sometimes, of just one or four; their meanings chieflyfall into political, economic and cultural aspects of modern China.Language contact theory holds that outcomes of influence are closely related with theintensity of contact. In general, more intense contact, more borrowed words and structures.For example, casual contact usually has just lexical borrowings, such as nouns, verbs,adjectives and adverbs, but not structural borrowings. However, in the case of intensecontact, anything is possible, either lexical or structural borrowings.As far as Chinese borrowings are concerned, it is not difficult to find that this theoryhas withstood the test. Contact between Chinese and English before the18thcentury, wasnot that frequent, therefore, few words came into English; but things have changed greatlysince19thcentury, especially since the Opium Wars. Chinese words in English haveincreased steadily at a high rate in general but with some differences in particular: phoneticloanwords at a progressive growth rate while loan translations, a multiple one and mainlyin political, economic and cultural areas, unlike the former’s of Chinese “native” and“antique”—this phenomenon is very important, worthy of more attention. Geographically,language contact in Guangdong, Hong Kong, Fujian, and Shanghai happens comparativelyearlier, longer and stronger, accordingly in English appear the spellings of Cantonese,Hokkien and Pidgin.On the whole, Chinese borrowings in English are more lexical (and phonetic loans arein need of naming things), rather than structural which, mainly appear in loan translationsand Pidgin sentences. As a conclusion, it could be drawn as follows: the intensity ofSino-Anglo contact is to some degree between “casual contact” and “slightly more intensecontact.”The study of Chinese borrowings in English brings enlightenments in many aspects, such as Chinese-English translation, vocabulary teaching, lexicography, second languageacquisition and language planning. From the perspective of loanwords, the strategy offoreignization as well as the methods of transliteration and loan translation will providemore opportunities for Chinese words to “contact”, thus favorable for them to enterEnglish. These Chinese vocabularies, especially the cultural-loaded ones, once “going out”,they would play the role as a cultural “messenger” to bridge the gap between the East andthe West and let the world better understand China.