Chinese buzzwords hard to make their way into English
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E-mail Xinhua, November 21, 2013
Chinese buzzwords reflect social changes, which is interesting, but it takes time for them to be accepted by British people and become English glossary, said Julie Kleeman, Project Manager of Bilingual Dictionaries with the Oxford University Press.
"Chinese buzzwords often come to our attention through the media," she told Xinhua in an interview. "In the case of Chinese words that are gaining publicity in the foreign media, obviously some terms such as tuhao and dama tell us something about trends and phenomena in China that mark interesting shifts in society."
Tuhao is used to describe uncouth rich. In fact, this word referring to local tyrant in the past is not new at all, but Chinese netizens are using it in a different way, which was explained by the BBC last month.
Chinese dama, or middle aged woman, rose to fame after many of them bought gold when the price was low, as reported by Wall Street Journal this past August.
Kleeman noted that they are considering to include these words in the Oxford Dictionaries Online. "Our English language experts ... would need to see evidence of it in use across a range of English media, over the course of a period of time," she said.
Media is not the only source for them to keep up with the changes of Chinese buzzwords.
"Recently we also established a relationship with the Education Centre at Peking University who track and analyse new Chinese words on a daily basis," she said.
To date, more than 120 Chinese-linked words have been written into Oxford dictionaries, such as fengshui, hutong, hukou, guanxi, goji berry, and Cantonese-based Dim Sum, Kowtow.
However, Kleeman pointed out that "no Chinese word or phrase has become very commonly-used in English in recent times," as most of the Chinese words in their dictionaries entered the English language a long time ago.
One reason is that Chinese words are hard to pronounce. "Chinese pinyin spelling, which is pretty much obligatory at this time, has a number of unintuitive features which, combined with the loss of tones, often result in pronunciations that would be unrecognizable to a Chinese speaker," she said.
In comparison, the Japanese words are not too difficult for English speakers to get the pronunciation more or less right. Therefore, some Japanese words such as tycoon and karaoke became frequently used.
Admittedly, it took a long time for words and concepts of Japanese origin to make their way into English. Maybe the cause of Chinese buzzwords is equally long.
"It does seem likely English will borrow from Chinese as trade, cultural and personal connections between China and the West grow," Kleeman concluded.
"As more Chinese words attract attention among speakers of English, with the Internet as an especially productive channel between languages, this will provide the West with more windows on China, its culture, and concerns," she added. "But as to whether or not these words will truly form part of English usage remains to be seen."
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