section_path: Vocabulary/Modern borrowings
section_name: Modern borrowings
paragraph_text: Modern borrowings
  
  Modern neologisms are primarily translated into Chinese in one of three ways: free translation (calques), phonetic translation (by sound), or a combination of the two. Today, it is much more common to use existing Chinese morphemes to coin new words to represent imported concepts, such as technical expressions and international scientific vocabulary, wherein the Latin and Greek components are usually converted one-for-one into the corresponding Chinese characters. The word 'telephone' was initially loaned phonetically as 德律风; 德律風 (délǜfēng; Shanghainese télífon)—this word was widely used in Shanghai during the 1920s, but the later 电话; 電話 (diànhuà; ' electric speech '), built out of native Chinese morphemes became prevalent. Other examples include
  
  Occasionally, compromises between the transliteration and translation approaches become accepted, such as 汉堡包; 漢堡包 (hànbǎobāo; ' hamburger ') from 汉堡; ' Hamburg ' + 包 (' bun '). Sometimes translations are designed so that they sound like the original while incorporating Chinese morphemes (phono-semantic matching), such as 马利奥; 馬利奧 (Mǎlì'ào) for the video game character ' Mario '. This is often done for commercial purposes, for example 奔腾; 奔騰 (bēnténg; ' dashing-leaping ') for ' Pentium ' and 赛百味; 賽百味 (Sàibǎiwèi; ' better-than hundred tastes ') for ' Subway '.
  
  Foreign words, mainly proper nouns, continue to enter the Chinese language by transcription according to their pronunciations. This is done by employing Chinese characters with similar pronunciations. For example, 'Israel' becomes 以色列 (Yǐsèliè), and 'Paris' becomes 巴黎 (Bālí). A rather small number of direct transliterations have survived as common words, including 沙发; 沙發 (shāfā; ' sofa '), 马达; 馬達 (mǎdá; ' motor '), 幽默 (yōumò; ' humor '), 逻辑; 邏輯 (luóji, luójí; ' logic '), 时髦; 時髦 (shímáo; ' smart (fashionable) '), and 歇斯底里 (xiēsīdǐlǐ; ' hysterics '). The bulk of these words were originally coined in Shanghai during the early 20th century and later loaned from there into Mandarin, hence their Mandarin pronunciations occasionally being quite divergent from the English. For example, in Shanghainese 沙发; 沙發 (sofa) and 马达; 馬達 (' motor ') sound more like their English counterparts. Cantonese differs from Mandarin with some transliterations, such as 梳化 (so1 faa3,2; ' sofa ') and 摩打 (mo1 daa2; ' motor ').
  
  Western foreign words representing Western concepts have influenced Chinese since the 20th century through transcription. From French, 芭蕾 (bālěi) and 香槟; 香檳 (xiāngbīn) were borrowed for 'ballet' and 'champagne' respectively; 咖啡 (kāfēi) was borrowed from Italian caffè 'coffee'. The influence of English is particularly pronounced: from the early 20th century, many English words were borrowed into Shanghainese, such as 高尔夫; 高爾夫 (gāo'ěrfū; ' golf ') and the aforementioned 沙发; 沙發 (shāfā; ' sofa '). Later, American soft power gave rise to 迪斯科 (dísīkē; ' disco '), 可乐; 可樂 (kělè; ' cola '), and mínǐ (' miniskirt '). Contemporary colloquial Cantonese has distinct loanwords from English, such as 卡通 (kaa1 tung1; ' cartoon '), 基佬 (gei1 lou2; ' gay people '), 的士 (dik1 si6,2; ' taxi '), and 巴士 (baa1 si6,2; ' bus '). With the rising popularity of the Internet, there is a current vogue in China for coining English transliterations, for example, 粉丝; 粉絲 (fěnsī; ' fans '), 黑客 (hēikè; ' hacker '), and 博客 (bókè; ' blog '). In Taiwan, some of these transliterations are different, such as 駭客 (hàikè; ' hacker ') and 部落格 (bùluògé; ' interconnected tribes ') for 'blog'.
  
  Another result of English influence on Chinese is the appearance of so-called 字母词; 字母詞 (zìmǔcí; ' lettered words ') spelled with letters from the English alphabet. These have appeared in colloquial usage, as well as in magazines and newspapers, and on websites and television:
  
  Since the 20th century, another source of words has been kanji: Japan re-molded European concepts and inventions into 和製漢語, wasei-kango, ' Japanese-made Chinese ', and many of these words have been re-loaned into modern Chinese. Other terms were coined by the Japanese by giving new senses to existing Chinese terms or by referring to expressions used in classical Chinese literature. For example, 经济; 經濟; jīngjì; 経済, keizai in Japanese, which in the original Chinese meant 'the workings of the state', narrowed to 'economy' in Japanese; this narrowed definition was then re-imported into Chinese. As a result, these terms are virtually indistinguishable from native Chinese words: indeed, there is some dispute over some of these terms as to whether the Japanese or Chinese coined them first. As a result of this loaning, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese share a corpus of linguistic terms describing modern terminology, paralleling the similar corpus of terms built from Greco-Latin and shared among European languages.