# OF HONGS AND TONGS AND ALL THAT JAZZ: A NOTE ON LEXICAL BORROWING FROM CHINESE IN ENGLISH WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HONG KONG
MIMI CHAN
UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
In a language contact situation such as exists in Hong Kong, and has existed since the mid-nineteenth century, there is bound to be some degree of mutual exchange. The extent to which English has affected the vocabulary of Hong Kong Chinese is notable, but, as I have discovered in a previous study undertaken by myself and my colleague, Helen Kwok, by no means as extensive as might be expected, considering the tremendous influx of new 'things' and concepts from the West. In general the local population has to a large measure relied on native resources of vocabulary-building to fulfill lexical needs as they arise.
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In a second joint study, just completed, of which this paper gives a summary, I am concerned with Chinese words which have entered the vocabulary of English with special reference to the English used in Hong Kong. It is of course a well-known fact that the English vocabulary is a highly heterogeneous one, made up of borrowings from many Western as well as Eastern languages. Studies of the origins of English words tend to give detailed lists of words borrowed from Greek and Latin, French, Germanic and Middle Eastern languages among others. They also tend to include quite a number of examples from Eastern languages like Indian and Malay. But when it comes to Chinese the inclusions tend to be few indeed. Otto Jespersen, in The Growth and Structure of the English Language, giving examples of English words borrowed from various sources, writes, 'From Chinese we have kowtow?' A careful search of the Oxford English Dictionary and various editions of the Webster will reveal a somewhat larger number of words, the etymology of which is at least conjecturally Chinese. But the words themselves and/or their etymologies tend to be little known generally. I have