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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
It was traditionally assumed that Chinese had contributed few borrowings into English until Cannon (1987, 1988, 1990) carried out his research based on different English desk-dictionaries. His studies were supplemented by Moody (1996) who reviewed Cannon's list focusing on the information provided by the Oxford English dictionary (henceforth OED) and Webster's third new international dictionary of the English language. Nonetheless, Moody's analysis did not explore all the possibilities the OED offered at the time. This articles aims at revising those previous pieces of work on the topic to find out whether there are significant changes in view of the latest data supplied by the OED, to determine whether there is an increase in the number of items borrowed, which are the transmission and source languages and to see whether any predictions for the near future can be made. Finally, some comments on the transliteration of the terms are also included.
1. Introduction
This article arises from a personal interest in the language and the culture of China, which is meant to be a future world power according to economic experts. Both the development of the nation as a crucial source of labour force and its inhabitants as potential consumers and the fact that this vast territory is gradually opening its frontiers and fostering commercial relations with western countries favour interaction at all levels, including language. This contact will allegedly involve exportation of some aspects of Chinese culture along with its language. Subsequently, the number of loanwords from Chinese into western languages has probably experienced an important increase in the last decades. Language contacts between China and Europe, and Britain in particular, have existed for centuries. (1) However, it was traditionally assumed that Chinese borrowings in English were few. In fact, Serjeantson (1935) listed just 27 items from Chinese, until Cannon's studies (1987, 1988 and 1990) changed this conception drastically. His articles were complemented by Moody (1996), who centred on the information provided by the Oxford English dictionary (henceforth OED), but also on Webster's third new international dictionary of the English language. Nonetheless, since Moody's analysis did not explore all the possibilities the OED offered at the time, but rather relied on Cannon's retrieval of data, the present research deals with a comprehensive corpus extracted from the OED, which has undergone dramatic revisions in the last decade. In fact, a huge amount of items has been amended since 1997 and some of them were even introduced for the first time as draft entries since the time when this lexicographic work has been available online (2000). Thus, this article aims at revising those previous pieces of work on the topic to find out whether there are significant changes in view of the latest data supplied by the OED, to determine whether the English vocabulary is being enlarged with Chinese elements due to the economic expansion of China, which are the transmission and source languages and to see whether any predictions for the near future can be made. Finally, some comments on the transliteration of some terms are included, as well. (2)
2. Selection of data
In order to carry out the present study, the data were retrieved from the Oxford English dictionary online. By making a query for terms containing the word "Chinese" in their etymology, 409 tokens were obtained. (3) Despite this amount of occurrences, not all the elements were to be taken into account, since some of the tokens were not considered valid for research purposes:
1) Terms from a different etymological origin. Even if the word shows the term Chinese in its etymology explanation, its linguistic origin can be ascribed to any other language. This includes derivatives such as chinesery, whose allograph chinoiserie recalls its French origin.
2) Terms that are out of use nowadays and thus, considered obsolete: alfin, bing, camaca, cheyney, Gormogon latinxua, moc-main and peeling.
3) There are also loan translations or caiques, by which the idea expressed in the Chinese language is conveyed more or less literally with English words.
Before analysing the final corpus, more detailed information will be provided on how and why these items are excluded from the corpus. In the case of 2.1. Different etymological origins and 2.2. Obsolete terms, the denomination of the sections are self-explanatory. However, regarding calques, some reasons will be adduced to explain their exclusion.
Finally, when the research was complete, some crucial items to the Chinese culture seemed to be missing. After searching for some like qi or Kuomintang, it was realized that the OED did sometimes not include the whole word Chinese in the etymology section, but just the abbreviation chin. An additional search by chin retrieved 58 elements, most of which were directly related to English chin as a physical part of the face and had nothing to do with the scope of the present study. Thus, out of 58, just 17 were considered valid for inclusion in the final corpus: gung ho (1942), (4) ho-ho (1901), hutung (1922), I Ching (1876), inro (1617), kongsi (1839), kuei (1935), Kuomintang (1912), Kuo-yu (1932), Lohan (1878), qi (1850), Shar-Pei (1976), shih-tzu (1921), Szechuan (1956), wonk (1) (1900), Yin (2) (1846) and Zen (1727). The remaining items are completely disregarded and not even listed here, as they have no connection at all with Chinese, but mainly with Old English and Latin and Greek. Thus, the initial query was increased with these 17 items, which makes a total of 426 tokens.
2.1. Different etymological origins
The group comprises 37 words or expressions. These terms were disregarded because they have a different origin from Chinese, although the word Chinese appears in the etymology section. As the OED considers them not to have sprung from this language, they are not included in the final corpus. However, some of them are worth commenting on more thoroughly:
Bonze (1552), cangue (1727), cash (2) (1598), China (1555), Chinese (1577), chinesery (1890), Chinglish (1957), compound (1679), Dobsonian (1980), Hun (900), joss (1711), junk (1555), Manchu (1697), Manchurian (1706), mandarin (1589), miaow (1634), myriarch (1623), ombres chinoises (1779), pavillon chinois (1876), Pere David's Deer (1898), phad thai (1978), piastre (1592), prefect (1853), prefecture (1855), Ryukyu (1808), samisen (1616), shaman (1698), Sharawaggi (1685), shogun (1615), Shorin ryu (1974), silk (c.888), Symbionese (1973), transitional (1945), Turfanian (1939), Turk (13..), Wade-Giles (1943), Yarkand (1875).
Some of the words have a disputed origin. Thus, bonze is said to come from French, taken from Portuguese bonzo, although other reference works claim Japanese is the source language, although it was adopted from Chinese fan seng 'religious person'. Like the OED, Moody (1996: 408) chooses French as the transmission language and includes the word in his selection. In this case as well as in some others, it was necessary to reach decisions concerning the real origin of the term. The decisions adopted here do not always coincide with Moody's and Cannon's, as they both consulted the Webster's third new international dictionary of the English language. Unlike their studies, the main source of information for this article is the OED; that is why in case of dubious etymology, the etymons can be adscribed to different languages depending on the reference work that is taken into consideration.
Other items owe much to the influence of Portugal in the area. This country had intense contact with Chinese traders. Thus, some remarkable words like mandarin were first recorded in Portuguese although, other European influences, such as Spanish or Dutch, are shown in similar forms like mandarim, mandeline or Mandorijns. The word comes from Malay menteri or its Sanskrit etymon mantri. The OED explains that "the Sanskrit word was the usual term...
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