borrowed words

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2024年7月13日发(作者：)

Borrowed Words

Sophomore Introduction to Linguistics（B）

Camille Chiang ＆ Sally Wu

490200 ＆ 490200505

Professor Agnes Yuan

Linguistics Report：Borrowed Words

May 13, 2003

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Ι. Introduction：

Borrowing is a method for a language to add new words from other languages into its

system. That is, it ―takes over words from other languages.‖(George Yule, The study of language,

page 65) In English, borrowing belongs to one of the processes of Derivational Morphology.

Throughout the history of English, English has adopted a lot of borrowed words from many

languages, including France, German, Dutch Arabic, Italian and etc. To study borrowed words

further, we can divide this term ―borrowing‖ into two different types: Loan Translation and

Transliteration. We can also call Loan Translation ―calque‖. It means ―there is a direct

translation of the elements of a word into the borrowing language.‖ We can see the example of the

word ―skyscraper‖ borrowed from French into English in Yule (page 65). The other term is

Transliteration, which we can define as writing and translating words or letters using letters of a

different alphabet or language. That is, translate the borrowed words from other languages

according to the sounds we hear and then translate them in our language system.

In this paper, our group focuses on the English borrowed words that we take into the Chinese

language system. We not only collect the borrowed words through observation in daily life and

questionnaire, but also study them morphologically and phonetically. Beside the two terms of

borrowing, we find that some borrowed words are not completely labeled into the two terms. Then,

we label them in other part of borrowed words and give new definition.

Π.Design：

We collect our data mostly through the c conversation we had with other people who we met or

talked to, and some borrowed words were recorded through the conversation we heard from others.

In addition to these two methods of collecting data, we also had several brainstorming to seek for

some borrowed words we already knew. At last, we had a small questionnaire survey as follows

given to our classmates so that we could have more ideas about this topic.

親愛的同學您好，這是英文系語言學概論其中一組報告組所作的一份

問券，針對您對中文裡出現的英文Borrowed Words(

外來語

)做個資料

蒐集與了解。依據您在生活中對Borrowed Word的了解，請您列出至

少五個從英文傳到中文裡的Borrowed Words，任何您認為是的字彙皆

可。

3

您的系級: ________

您的科系: ________

Thank you 

Ⅲ.Findings / Results：

A：Loan Translation

(Food)

1. hotdog 熱狗

2. supermarket 超級市場

3. organic food 有機食品

4. milk tea 奶茶

5. afternoon tea 下午茶

(Living)

6. air-conditioner 空氣調節器;冷氣機

7. high-heel shoes 高跟鞋

8. motel (Acronym) 汽車旅館

9. wallpaper 壁紙

(Transportation)

10. traffic sign 交通號誌

11. crossroad 十字路口

(Education)

12. homework 回家作業

13. midterm 期中考

14. blackboard 黑板

(Entertainment)

15. variety show 綜藝節目

(Cosmetics)

16. Lipstick 口紅

17. eye shadow 眼影

(Sports)

18. basketball 籃球

19. football 美式足球

(Movies & Brands)

20. John walker 約翰走路

21. Batman 扁蝠俠

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22. Superman 超人

23. Spiderman 蜘蛛人

24. Snow white 白雪公主

(Computer & Net)

25. keyboard 鍵盤

26. modem 魔電

27. upload 上傳

28. download 下載

29. BBS→（Bulletin Board System） 電子佈告欄

30. Internet→（International Net） 網際網路

31. CPU→（Central Processing Unit） 中央處理器

32. WWW→（World Wide Web） 世界寬網

33. SEED Net→（Seed Network） 種子網路

34. URL→（User Resources Location） 使用者資料出處來源

35. Microsoft 微軟

(Others)

36. snowball 雪球

37. –ism (Nationalism, feminism, nazism) 主義

38. Hair dying 染髮

39. Mass Media 大眾媒體

40. A.I.→（Artificial Intelligence）人工智慧

41. E.Q.→（Emotion Quotient） 情緒商數

42. I.Q.→（Intelligence Quotient） 智慧商數

43. boy/girl scout 男/女童軍

44. Nestea/ Nestle coffee 鵲巢紅茶;鵲巢咖啡

45. cocktail 雞尾酒

46. pencil box 鉛筆盒

47. ponytail 馬尾

48 notebook 筆記本

oon 蜜月

cope 顯微鏡

ope 望遠鏡

d 冰島

ip 旗艦

B：Transliteration

(Food)

1. pudding 布丁

2. bacon 培根、貝肯

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3. chocolate 巧克力

4. sandwich 三明治

5. pie 派

6. pizza 披薩

7. mango 芒果

8. sardine 沙丁魚

9. sundae 聖代

10. cheese 起司

11. salad 沙拉

12. hamburger 漢堡

13. yogurt 優格

14. toast 土司

15. Mantos 曼陀珠

16. bagel 焙果

17. whisky 威士忌

18. saron 沙朗（牛排）

19. kiwi 奇異果

20. lemon 檸檬

21. lime 萊姆

（Drinks）

23. coffee 咖啡

可樂

25. cocoa 可可亞

26. sars 沙士

27. soda 蘇打

拿鐵

摩卡

(Clothing)

夾克

31.T-shirt T恤

32. bikini 比基尼

(Vehicle)

巴士

摩托車

引擎

→（G.P. or General purpose vehicle）吉普車

坦克

(Sport)

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on 馬拉松

g 保齡球

高爾夫

芭蕾

華爾玆

-cha 恰恰

森巴舞

(Entertainment)

45..talk show 脫口秀

n 卡通

-in 扣應

hone麥克風

撲克牌

派對

(Brand Names)

ald’s 麥當勞

雅虎

奇摩

賓士

e 保時捷

香奈兒

(Countries)

nd 蘇格蘭

威爾斯

a 美利堅共和國

土耳其

lands 荷蘭

夏威夷

拉丁

(other)

幽默

t 杯葛

ia 歇斯底里

邏輯

ne 咖啡因

n 阿斯匹林

單寧酸

(Acronym) 幽浮

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迷你

ne 凡士林

e 羅曼史

ic 羅曼蒂克

模特兒

→ （light amplification through the stimulated emission of radiation）雷射

→（radio detecting and ranging） 雷達

聲納

基因

休克

打

霓虹

摩登

酷

巧克

沙發

-bye 掰掰

沙龍

n 颱風

a 庫斯拉

92. guitar 吉他

迷思

加崙

品脫

古龍水

酷兒

ood 好萊塢

n 寶麗龍

100. teflon 鐵氟隆

101. e-mail 伊媚兒

C：Other Kinds (incomplete loan translation)：Here we refers to some borrowed words that are a little

bit different after they are translated into Chinese.

滑鼠

ll 棒球

ball 排球

n 全壘打

shake 奶昔

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Ⅳ.Discussion of the findings/results：

A： When borrowed words from English are absorbed into Chinese, the words could be

translated in two ways：

（1）Loan translation（claque）：word to word translation→Borrowed words of

this type can be analyzed into smaller units（morphemes）. That is to say, we can

translate the bigger words of this type according to the smaller units

（morphemes）. ex：supermarket（超級市場）, basketball（籃球）, hotdog

（熱夠）, etc.

（2）Transliteration：Borrowed words of this type are translated by only imitating

the original sound or pronunciation of the word. That is to say, we can’t tell what

the word means by only looking at the word literally. ex：cola（可樂）, e-mail

（伊媚兒）, bye-bye（掰掰）, etc.-- Can we know what these words mean

when we only look into their Chinese translations? Because ―可樂‖＝ a kind

of drink? ― 伊媚兒‖＝electronic mail？Then why the translation has ―媚‖

― 掰掰‖＝saying goodbye, instead of saying something nonsense since

― 掰‖ means saying something nonsense in Chinese？

＊Possible Interpretation：When words are borrowed from English into Chinese, those

words which can be analyzed and translated by smaller units（morphemes）are translated

according to the meanings of those smaller morphemes. That is to say, those borrowed

words are later classified as ―Loan translation‖ through the derivational process of forming

new borrowed words in Chinese. Then, the rest of those words which are inseparable or

untranslatable by the smaller units（morphemes）are translated in the way of imitating their

original pronunciation. 【Related to ―Morphology‖】

B：When the words are borrowed from English into Chinese, they become new words

in Chinese. This process of increasing of new words in Chinese is not only involved in

―borrowing‖ but also some other derivational processes, such as ―acronym‖,

―compounding‖, ―extension‖ of word formulation rules, etc. We found that ―acronym‖

seemed to play a very important role in borrowed words, conversion（functional shift）, and

we found a lot of borrowed words are actually ―loan translations‖ of those ―acronyms‖ no

matter whether those words are translated either by ―loan translation‖ or ―transliteration‖.

We can see the examples as follows：

（1）Acronym：Words that are formed when the initials used to abbreviate a longer

term be pronounceable words in themselves. ex：BBS（Bulletin Board System）→電

子佈告欄系統, Internet（International Network）→網際網路, CPU（Central

Processing Unit）→中央處理器, WWW（World Wide Web）→世界寬網, Seed net

（）→種子網路, URL（User Resources Location）→使用者資料出處來源, A.I

（Artificial Intelligence）→（人工智慧）, I.Q（Intelligence Quotient）→智慧商數,

E.Q.（Emotion Quotient）→情緒商數, Jeep（General Purpose Vehicle）→吉普車, UFO

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（Unidentified Flying Object）→幽浮,

.laser → （light amplification through the

stimulated emission of radiation）雷射, radar →（radio detecting and ranging） 雷達, etc.

（2）Compounding：A joining of two separate words to produce a single form. ex：

air-conditioner空氣調節器, high-heel shoes高跟鞋, call-in 扣應, etc.

（3）Extension：A part of the morphemes that are ―affixes‖, inclusive of ―prefixes‖,

infixes‖, and suffixes‖ will all be translated in certain ways. But for most of the cases,

extension happens to be ―suffixes‖. ex：-ism→主義 【Nazism, feminism, nationalism,

capitalism, etc.】

（4）Conversion（Functional shift）：Words keep the same form, but have different

grammatical function, such as ―Verb→noun‖. ex： Words like ―call-in‖, ―boycott‖,

―bye-bye‖ can be used as a verb and also a noun.

（5）Blending：The combing of two separate words to produce a single new term by

taking the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word. ex：motel

（Mobile＋Hotel）, Internet（International＋ Network）, etc.

C： Problems we met in our investigation：

（1） Although we have clear definition of ―borrowed words‖, which

includes ―loan translation‖ and ―translation‖, when we met words

like ―milk shake‖, ―mouse‖, ―baseball‖, volleyball‖ which are

neither complete ―loan translation‖ nor ―transliteration‖, we don’t

know how to classify words like these.

（2） The goal of our topic is mainly focus on the borrowed words from

English into Chinese. But since language is alive and it changes all

the time, it becomes a little difficult for us to track back the sources

of those English words. Maybe some of the words are not

originally from English, but we can’t tell them from the words

indeed from English anymore.

Ⅴ.Conclusion：

After collecting our data and trying our best to analyze the information and data we get, we

found that the interpretation our finding we could understand most clearly is the aspects which are

related to what we have studies within the field of ―Linguistic‖—Morphology. I think one of the

possible reasons for this result is because ―morphology‖ deals with the study of structure of words

and how they are formed from morphemes. The result that we found through doing this report is

that ―language is a live thing.‖ Even if ―borrowed words‖ is not the only process in creating new

words in a language. Maybe our focus is on the borrowed word from English into Chinese, but I

believe that the general idea of the derivational processes we had learned will not only work in our

report but also other aspects.

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Ⅵ.Works Cited：

Nash, Thomas. Discovering Language：An Introduction to Linguistics for Chinese Students.

Taipei：The Crane, 1986

Yule, George. The Study of Language. 2

nd

ed. Cambridge：Cambridge UP, 1997

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