![]() ![]() ![]() During the twentieth century, many new inventions that arrived in China, came first from Japan. Since neither aeroplanes or telephones existed when the Chinese language began, these new words are created based on their function or description. With the invention of the aeroplane, came 飞机 (fēi jī) ‘flying machine’ and telephone became 电话 (diàn huà) ’electrical speech’. The only way to make new word in Chinese, unless you’re Jacky ‘Duang’ Chan, is by combining two existing characters or morphemes. Macaron, the french meringue is also part of this transliteration fun, and becomes 马卡龙 (mǎ kǎ lóng), or the ‘horse-stopping-the-dragon’. I remember the first time I heard someone say tiramisu in Chinese ‘ 提拉米苏’ (tí lā mǐ sū) and thinking ‘is this for real?’. Hold your cameras phone up to the menu, and it will automatically translate the characters for you!Ĭakes types also have a similar system. Note: If you’re not sure what this menu says, you can try out our OCR tool for free by downloading the Written Chinese Dictionary app and tapping the ‘SCAN’ button in the menu. Of course, context is often key with transliteration words, which is why in a non-coffee shop environment, you might clarify your meaning by adding the word for coffee ‘ 咖啡’ (kā fēi). Similarly, 摩卡 (mó kǎ) would result in ‘rub card’ or something equally bizarre. The characters 拿 and 铁 have no connection to coffee, but if literally translated would produce ‘to hold iron’. Unless you are are aware that these words exist it is impossible to know, unlike many other Chinese words, what it actually is. Let’s take 2 of my favourite things as an example, coffee and cakes <3Ĭoffee types such as latte and mocha, do not have Chinese words and so transliteration is used to give them an equivalent Chinese name, often called a ‘loan’ word. Transliteration is mostly used for brands, names, or nouns that if described using Chinese words would be too long. There are several different ways that 外来词 (wài lái cí) can be assimilated into the Chinese language, most often by transliteration 音译 (yīn yì) and translation based on the appearance or function of the object. The idea of taking a foreign word or concept and using it in the Chinese language is called 外来词 (wài lái cí). Using transliteration preserves the origins of the Chinese language. In general though you would be hard pushed to open a newspaper and see an English word or name. It is only within the last few years where English words have cropped up in Chinese social media, where they are predominantly used as puns and slang. So, it seems funny that considering the amount of people who speak it (Spanish is second with a little over 400 million speakers), the Chinese language should seem to be one of the most ‘preserved’ languages. Mandarin Chinese has the most speakers in the world, with almost 1 and a quarter billion people speaking it. ![]() There are over 6500 languages spoken, but 2000 of those have less than 1000 speakers. All over the world, dialects are dying out and it’s up to the people to keep them alive. The idea of preserving a language is not an uncommon one. ![]()
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