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R U N D I G U O
1 2 / 1 1 / 1 5
The Influence of English on
Modern Chinese
References:
Chen, Ping. Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. New York, NY;Cambridge, U.K;: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Web.
Dong, Hongyuan, and Inc ebrary. A History of the Chinese Language. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014. Web.
Liu, Jin, Hongyin Tao, and Inc ebrary. Chinese Under Globalization: Emerging Trends in Language use in China. Hackensack, N.J;Singapore;:
World Scientific, 2012. Web. (Ch5-7)
Meng, Ma. ”Recent Changes in the Chinese Language: A Lecture Delivered on 18th June, 1962." Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal
Asiatic Society 3 (1963): 51-9. Web.
Outline
 Background
 One type of loanwords from English: Lettered-Words
 as well as language changes that they signify
 Other type of Changes
 morphology, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics
Background
 The “English Fever” and the “ESL Mania” in China
(beginning in the 20th century)
 Reasons:
 English as the lingua franca in the international community
 Growing “language contact zone” (both physically and virtually)
 English as a symbol of high social status and intellectual ability
 As a result…
English Loanwords
 Traditional English loanwords in Chinese:
 Transliteration (phonetic loans)
巧克力 qiaokeli = chocolate; 咖啡kafei = coffee
 Calque (Semantic loans)
互联网 hulian wang = Internet;篮球lan qiu =
basketball
 A mix of the two
新西兰 Xin xilan = New Zealand
Can you spot the loanwords from English?
 我坐在沙发上喝咖啡。
 张三喜欢打高尔夫球但不喜欢打篮球。
What about these?
 我要找个ATM取钱。
 IPhone用起来很方便,可以下载很多APP。
 他在ins上at了我。
 A new type of loanwords: Letter-loans /
Lettered-Words
Lettered-Words (字母词 zimu-ci)
 English words or letters incorporated into Chinese without
changing their graphic forms, forming a “Chinese-English
graphic blend”
 Letters in their original form become legitimate characters in Chinese
 A recent (but prevalent) phenomenon
 Used in different registers and stylistics, not restricted to online or casual use,
not restricted to young people, and not restricted to colloquial (oral) form
 Why?
 Convenience (shorthand); (or maybe, they look or sound “cool”)
 Question:
 Are alphabetic letters really becoming part of Chinese? Or is it that
Chinese people are just using some English along with their native
language (mixed language)?
 Different types of Lettered-Words
Types of Lettered-Words
1. Letters as standalone words
 “The borrowed letter-combination becomes a whole and
free standing word in Chinese, (largely) preserving its
original meaning in English
 Mainly are borrowed acronyms that are nouns
E.g. CPU, WTO, ATM
 But occasionally they are adjectives
E.g. Q (cute, adorable); in (in style, fashionable)
他很Q=he is very cute; 他很in=he is very fashionable
Types of Lettered-Words
2. Letters as part of a Chinese word
 The borrowed letters are only part of a word in Chinese, serving as a
morpheme (or part of a morpheme)
 Typically function as stems, but occasionally they serve as affixes
attaching to Chinese stems
 “Logographic-alphabetic hybrid” in one word
 Examples:
VIP卡 (VIP-ka) : VIP Card (compounding);
IT化 (IT-hua): IT-verbalizer, Informatization (derivation)
T恤 (T xu): T-shirt (part of a morpheme)
卡拉OK (ka la OK): Karaoke (part of a morpheme)
ABC们 (ABC-men): ABC-plural, American born Chinese (inflection)
Types of Lettered-Words
2. Letters as part of a Chinese word
 The borrowed letters are only part of a word in Chinese,
serving as a morpheme (or part of a morpheme)
 Typically function as stems, but occasionally they serve as
affixes attaching to Chinese stems
 Examples:
 Borrowing of the -ing ending: 开会ing (kaihui-ing) = having a
meeting; 恋爱ing (lian’ai-ing) = being in love
  morphological change
 Question: Is Chinese becoming more synthetic because of the
influence from English?
Types of Lettered-Words
3. Non-borrowed lettered-words
 Alphabetic words that have a Chinese origin
 Chinese neologisms that are formed with letters rather than
characters
 Two subtypes
1. Formed with the initials of the Pinyin spelling of Chinese words
 E.g. GB, guojia biaozhun 国家标准 (national standard); LG, lao
gong 老公 (husband)
2. Use of letter names as substitution of homophonic Chinese
characters
 Why use letters rather than its own logographic characters?
 Convenience
 Taboo avoidance
 E.g. 牛B,TMD,JB,放P
The case of “Karaoke”
 卡拉OK
shortened as K (ellipsis)
唱卡拉OK>唱K
K became a verb (conversion)
K歌 (to sing songs in the karaoke style)
 Semantic change
Implications of Lettered-Words in Chinese
 The graphic change is only a surface representation
of deeper language change
 Such as morphological and semantic changes
 Also, the use of letters in the Chinese writing system can signify
“change in perception of what a written sign is: how it corresponds
to the phonetic and semantic appearance of a word; how it assists
Chinese native speakers in expressing themselves in the most
updated manner and in due correspondence with the native
language’s typological and logical nature.” (Kozha, 2012)
Other changes brought by English
 Morphology
 Increasing prevalence of multisyllabic morpheme, which were not
common in older forms of Chinese
 Syntax
 Grammaticalization
 The verb 有 you (to have) in Chinese became an auxiliary that indicates
perfectiveness
 Increasing use of passive construction
 Word-order change (regarding adverb placement)
 Phonology
 Impact of the Romanization system (the Pinyin system)
 Standardization and unification of pronunciation
 New sounds borrowed from English
 Pragmatics
 Loan phrases (such as 拜拜baibai、哈喽halou、嗨hai、嘿hei)
Questions? Thoughts? Comments?
 English and Chinese differ significantly in every aspect
(morphology, phonology, syntax, and even orthography),
However, the foreign items are still so widely accepted.
  We can see how big of a role language contact can
play in language change.

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Impact of English on Chinese

  • 1. R U N D I G U O 1 2 / 1 1 / 1 5 The Influence of English on Modern Chinese References: Chen, Ping. Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. New York, NY;Cambridge, U.K;: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Web. Dong, Hongyuan, and Inc ebrary. A History of the Chinese Language. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014. Web. Liu, Jin, Hongyin Tao, and Inc ebrary. Chinese Under Globalization: Emerging Trends in Language use in China. Hackensack, N.J;Singapore;: World Scientific, 2012. Web. (Ch5-7) Meng, Ma. ”Recent Changes in the Chinese Language: A Lecture Delivered on 18th June, 1962." Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 3 (1963): 51-9. Web.
  • 2.
  • 3. Outline  Background  One type of loanwords from English: Lettered-Words  as well as language changes that they signify  Other type of Changes  morphology, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics
  • 4. Background  The “English Fever” and the “ESL Mania” in China (beginning in the 20th century)  Reasons:  English as the lingua franca in the international community  Growing “language contact zone” (both physically and virtually)  English as a symbol of high social status and intellectual ability  As a result…
  • 5. English Loanwords  Traditional English loanwords in Chinese:  Transliteration (phonetic loans) 巧克力 qiaokeli = chocolate; 咖啡kafei = coffee  Calque (Semantic loans) 互联网 hulian wang = Internet;篮球lan qiu = basketball  A mix of the two 新西兰 Xin xilan = New Zealand
  • 6. Can you spot the loanwords from English?  我坐在沙发上喝咖啡。  张三喜欢打高尔夫球但不喜欢打篮球。
  • 7. What about these?  我要找个ATM取钱。  IPhone用起来很方便,可以下载很多APP。  他在ins上at了我。  A new type of loanwords: Letter-loans / Lettered-Words
  • 8. Lettered-Words (字母词 zimu-ci)  English words or letters incorporated into Chinese without changing their graphic forms, forming a “Chinese-English graphic blend”  Letters in their original form become legitimate characters in Chinese  A recent (but prevalent) phenomenon  Used in different registers and stylistics, not restricted to online or casual use, not restricted to young people, and not restricted to colloquial (oral) form  Why?  Convenience (shorthand); (or maybe, they look or sound “cool”)  Question:  Are alphabetic letters really becoming part of Chinese? Or is it that Chinese people are just using some English along with their native language (mixed language)?  Different types of Lettered-Words
  • 9. Types of Lettered-Words 1. Letters as standalone words  “The borrowed letter-combination becomes a whole and free standing word in Chinese, (largely) preserving its original meaning in English  Mainly are borrowed acronyms that are nouns E.g. CPU, WTO, ATM  But occasionally they are adjectives E.g. Q (cute, adorable); in (in style, fashionable) 他很Q=he is very cute; 他很in=he is very fashionable
  • 10. Types of Lettered-Words 2. Letters as part of a Chinese word  The borrowed letters are only part of a word in Chinese, serving as a morpheme (or part of a morpheme)  Typically function as stems, but occasionally they serve as affixes attaching to Chinese stems  “Logographic-alphabetic hybrid” in one word  Examples: VIP卡 (VIP-ka) : VIP Card (compounding); IT化 (IT-hua): IT-verbalizer, Informatization (derivation) T恤 (T xu): T-shirt (part of a morpheme) 卡拉OK (ka la OK): Karaoke (part of a morpheme) ABC们 (ABC-men): ABC-plural, American born Chinese (inflection)
  • 11. Types of Lettered-Words 2. Letters as part of a Chinese word  The borrowed letters are only part of a word in Chinese, serving as a morpheme (or part of a morpheme)  Typically function as stems, but occasionally they serve as affixes attaching to Chinese stems  Examples:  Borrowing of the -ing ending: 开会ing (kaihui-ing) = having a meeting; 恋爱ing (lian’ai-ing) = being in love   morphological change  Question: Is Chinese becoming more synthetic because of the influence from English?
  • 12. Types of Lettered-Words 3. Non-borrowed lettered-words  Alphabetic words that have a Chinese origin  Chinese neologisms that are formed with letters rather than characters  Two subtypes 1. Formed with the initials of the Pinyin spelling of Chinese words  E.g. GB, guojia biaozhun 国家标准 (national standard); LG, lao gong 老公 (husband) 2. Use of letter names as substitution of homophonic Chinese characters  Why use letters rather than its own logographic characters?  Convenience  Taboo avoidance  E.g. 牛B,TMD,JB,放P
  • 13. The case of “Karaoke”  卡拉OK shortened as K (ellipsis) 唱卡拉OK>唱K K became a verb (conversion) K歌 (to sing songs in the karaoke style)  Semantic change
  • 14. Implications of Lettered-Words in Chinese  The graphic change is only a surface representation of deeper language change  Such as morphological and semantic changes  Also, the use of letters in the Chinese writing system can signify “change in perception of what a written sign is: how it corresponds to the phonetic and semantic appearance of a word; how it assists Chinese native speakers in expressing themselves in the most updated manner and in due correspondence with the native language’s typological and logical nature.” (Kozha, 2012)
  • 15. Other changes brought by English  Morphology  Increasing prevalence of multisyllabic morpheme, which were not common in older forms of Chinese  Syntax  Grammaticalization  The verb 有 you (to have) in Chinese became an auxiliary that indicates perfectiveness  Increasing use of passive construction  Word-order change (regarding adverb placement)  Phonology  Impact of the Romanization system (the Pinyin system)  Standardization and unification of pronunciation  New sounds borrowed from English  Pragmatics  Loan phrases (such as 拜拜baibai、哈喽halou、嗨hai、嘿hei)
  • 16. Questions? Thoughts? Comments?  English and Chinese differ significantly in every aspect (morphology, phonology, syntax, and even orthography), However, the foreign items are still so widely accepted.   We can see how big of a role language contact can play in language change.

Editor's Notes

  1. Not really related to my topic, but just to give you a sense of how much impact English has on people’s everyday life in China
  2. Practical vs. prestige factors (English is useful vs. English is cool)
  3. Chinese is not like Japanese, and doesn’t have a special writing system for transcribing borrowed words even though they were borrowed from English, they are recoded as Chinese characters, and the pronunciations are greatly adapted to the Chinese phonetic system So loanwords cannot be easily spotted
  4. Although they are used more extensively on the Internet and in casual speech, typically among young people A recent phenomenon: in earlier times, loan words from English are typically written as Chinese characters (like 巧克力、沙发、咖啡、高尔夫). There have been no precedents for such massive circulation of alphabetic letters in the logographic chinese language. Their frequent occurrence in present days (in media: newspapers, tv shows) has to result from the assumption that everyone in China can recognize all the letters Now, some people say that “nah they are not loanwords! They are just English!” I’m going to throw in this question, and try to answer it after going over all the different types and the implication of each, and then see how you guys think about this question
  5. The letter / letters and some Chinese characters together form one word
  6. This is the type that convinced me that letters have become part of chinese, and chinese people are not using them as English
  7. Thus, going back to that question, I would argue for the fomer
  8. Morphology General trends: Increase prevalence of multisyllabic morpheme (Dong), (from borrowing in general, not only from English) Historically, the majority of chinese morphemes are monosyllabic, with occasional bisyllabic ones (蝴蝶,葡萄), but in Modern Standard Chinese, the multisyllabic ones are much more prevalent; most of them are loanwords, a large number come from English: 沙发,咖啡,麦克风 (trisyllabic words are very rare in Chinese, a trisyllabic morpheme is even rarer) (the multisyllable constructions defies the general trend of disyllabification of Chinese) Syntactic: Fun fact: the first official Chinese grammar book was written based on the grammar of Latin. (how ridiculous is that!) Use of Passive construction increase Originally, the use of passive voice in Chinese is very limited. Only restricted to overt actions that have a clear agent and a undergoer (typically, the agent is needed, because it is typically the agent that is being emphasized in passive voice), unlike English, passive voice is used when the agent is unclear or de-emphasied (Dong p149)passive construction used to translate English sentences, Europeanized sentences More passive construction seen in Chinese, especially in academic writing Pinyin: the primary method of annotating pronunciation of characters We can probably say that The Pinyin system was a product of westernization