One of the ingenious ways the Mandarin language borrows words from other languages, called loanwords, is to create similarly sounding words that retain some of the meaning. The delicious coffee and chocolate dessert, Tiramisù, which comes from the Italian “tirami su,” meaning “pull me up” or “pick me up” in English, gets a creative transliteration and translation in Mandarin to 提拉米苏 (tí lā mǐ sū). 提 (tí) means “raise,” 拉 (lā) means “pull,” 米 (mǐ) means “rice,” and 苏 (sū) means “to revive” or “to awaken.” Only the word rice, chosen for its sound, does not contribute towards the meaning.
I love studying Mandarin and enjoy coming across inventive loanwords from English. Before we dive in – let’s differentiate these two terms:
- Translation is converting text from one language to another while preserving meaning.
- Transliteration is converting text from one language to another while preserving the pronunciation or phonology of the original words.
English loanwords in Chinese can be placed into six categories:
- Transliteration: The Chinese word imitates the sound of the English word but not meaning.
- 咖啡 (kā fēi) means coffee.
- 披萨 (pī sà) means pizza.
- 马卡龙 (mǎ kǎ lóng) means macaron (but literally means “horse-stopping-the-dragon”).
Fun fact: French settlers introduced coffee to China in the late 19th century.
- Transliteration with indicated word meaning: The Chinese word imitates the sound of the English word again, but this time the characters in the Chinese word help indicate its meaning.
- 芭蕾舞 (bā lěi wŭ) means “ballet” and the last character 舞 (wŭ) indicates dancing.
- Semi-transliteration: The Chinese word imitates the sound of the English word, and the characters indicate the correct meaning and semantically translate the loanword.
- 黑客 (hēi kè) means “hacker” and is made up of 黑 (hēi) “black” but is often translated to “illegal” and 客 (kè) “guest.” So, the whole word sounds like “hacker” and directly translates to “illegal guest.”
- 蹦极 (bèng jí) means “bungee jumping” with 蹦 (bèng) “jump” and 极 (jí) “extremely.”
- Free translation: A new Chinese word is created that preserves the whole meaning of the English word and might keep the word order and structure too like 热狗 (rè gǒu) “hot dog.”
- 火车 (huǒ chē) is “train” but the word structure differs: 火 (huǒ) “fire” and 车 (chē) “cart.”
- 蜜月 (mìyuè) is “honeymoon” and keeps the same word order and structure: 蜜 (mì) “honey” and 月 (yuè) “moon.”
- Image translation or shape translation: This is my personal favorite! The shapes of Chinese characters help indicate the meaning.
- 之字形 (zhīzìxíng) means “zig zag.”
- 工字钢 (gōngzìgāng) “I-beam,” as in the I-shaped steel beam used in construction.
- Complete loan translation:
- Complete English letter acronym: IT, ATM, CEO
- Complete English word or letter with Chinese noun: T 恤 (txù) means “T-shirt.”
Linguists determined that Mandarin tones are assigned to English loanwords primarily through lexicon and standard syllable use. There is evidence that phonology plays a small role – loanword syllables that correspond to English voiceless consonants are more likely to have high tone, while syllables that correspond to English voiced consonants are more likely to have rising tone.
FYI: 博客 (bó kè) is “blog” with 博 (bó) “wide” and 客 (kè) “guest.”
So, I am officially a 博客客 (bó kè kè) or blogger!
Read more:
Yan, Y. & Deng. T. (2009). On Chinese Loan Words from English Language. English Language Teaching. Vol. 2, No. 4, 33-37. DOI: 10.5539/elt.v2n4p33.
Glewwe, E. (2021). The phonological determinants of tone in English loanwords in Mandarin. Phonology, 38(2), 203-239. https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S0952675721000154.
Hollie. (2016, December 16). Wai Lai Ci ‘Loanwords’ and Transliteration in the Chinese Language. Written Chinese. https://www.writtenchinese.com/wai-lai-ci-loanwords-and-transliteration-in-the-chinese-language/.