Comments on: What does the Chinese Language use for new and loan words? http://www.chineselanguagenow.com/what-does-the-chinese-language-use-for-new-and-loan-words.php Learn to speak Chinese today Fri, 27 May 2011 12:15:39 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Aidant http://www.chineselanguagenow.com/what-does-the-chinese-language-use-for-new-and-loan-words.php/comment-page-1#comment-1012 Aidant Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:30:14 +0000 http://www.chineselanguagenow.com/what-does-the-chinese-language-use-for-new-and-loan-words.php#comment-1012 They use existing characters to replicate sounds. However, they may change characters slightly to make it different from the character's original meaning. For example, my friends use 嘿 (hēi) all the time which obviously means 'hey!', it comes from the character 黑 (hēi) meaning 'black' and just has an extra mouth radical to indicate speech and make it different from the original character. I've only ever seen 'iPod' referred to as 'iPod', there seems to be no characters for this word. However, Google is now 谷歌 gǔgē (meaning 'valley song') which shows that foreign loan words also have to make sense in Chinese. Coca Cola is notoriously 可口可乐 kěkǒukělè which indicates some sort of oral pleasure...Lastly we have the word 'Internet' which can be 英特网 （yīng tè wǎng）which makes no sense in Chinese but is a merge of English and Chinese, yingte being 'inter' and wang being 'net'. Hope that explains a bit! They use existing characters to replicate sounds. However, they may change characters slightly to make it different from the character’s original meaning. For example, my friends use 嘿 (hēi) all the time which obviously means ‘hey!’, it comes from the character 黑 (hēi) meaning ‘black’ and just has an extra mouth radical to indicate speech and make it different from the original character. I’ve only ever seen ‘iPod’ referred to as ‘iPod’, there seems to be no characters for this word. However, Google is now 谷歌 gǔgē (meaning ‘valley song’) which shows that foreign loan words also have to make sense in Chinese. Coca Cola is notoriously 可口可乐 kěkǒukělè which indicates some sort of oral pleasure…Lastly we have the word ‘Internet’ which can be 英特网 （yīng tè wǎng）which makes no sense in Chinese but is a merge of English and Chinese, yingte being ‘inter’ and wang being ‘net’. Hope that explains a bit!

]]> By: jm http://www.chineselanguagenow.com/what-does-the-chinese-language-use-for-new-and-loan-words.php/comment-page-1#comment-1013 jm Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:30:14 +0000 http://www.chineselanguagenow.com/what-does-the-chinese-language-use-for-new-and-loan-words.php#comment-1013 they use some words from English, yet use Chinese chararcters they use some words from English, yet use Chinese chararcters

]]> By: Joriental http://www.chineselanguagenow.com/what-does-the-chinese-language-use-for-new-and-loan-words.php/comment-page-1#comment-1014 Joriental Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:30:14 +0000 http://www.chineselanguagenow.com/what-does-the-chinese-language-use-for-new-and-loan-words.php#comment-1014 Peter 彼得 Mike 麦克 Leo 利奥 Carl 卡尔 Truman 杜鲁门 George Walker Bush 乔治·沃克·布什 McDonald's 麦当劳 All in Hanzi (Chinese character) Peter 彼得
Mike 麦克
Leo 利奥
Carl 卡尔
Truman 杜鲁门
George Walker Bush 乔治·沃克·布什
McDonald’s 麦当劳

All in Hanzi (Chinese character)

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