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loh with an -s and also without, e.g. 'She's Chinese and we quai loh! and quai lohs're so cheap compared to Hong Kong girls!' (p. 711) The latter example, which uses the -s plural morpheme, shows little regard for gender. Another example relates to the word samfu or samfoo from Cantonese saam fu 衫褲 literally 'jacket and trousers'. The April issue of the British Airways inflight magazine has the following in its article about New York's Chinatown: 'Some of the old folk still wear traditional Chinese dress: men in long black gowns, a wispy beard even, and women in sam fu, those comfortable-looking baggy pyjamas.' Here the -s ending is missing, while an -s is put in to denote plurality in an advertisement publicising a fashion show appearing in The South China Morning Post which refers to 'Hand embroidered chi-paos and samfus.' (16/10/82)
In time, if the word catches on, the italics, quotation marks, and explanatory notes may no longer be necessary. This certainly applies to a number of words occurring in publications aimed primarily at the Hong Kong expatriate. In many cases standardization has been achieved in relation to the written form as well as pronunciation and meaning. Such words include mahjong, typhoon, cheongsam, taipan, hong and so on. For example, The South China Morning Post refers to the determination of the hongs' and 'the amount of money at their disposal (20/4/82); the Hong Kong Standard talks about 'people playing mahjong and children scampering about with their own games'. The loan words are unmarked.
We have said that 'linguistic borrowing' in fact involves fashioning a new word based on a 'model' in another language. To qualify as a fully assimilated item of the vocabulary, the new word usually has to meet certain requirements. It has to conform to the phonological, orthographical, and grammatical rules of the language. The spoken form is made up of the phonemes of the language, and these are combined to form permissible sequences according to the rules governing the phonology of that language. The written form has to make use of the graphemes of the language. This is no more than saying that the word must 'look' and 'sound' like an English word. In this process, certain linguistic changes have to be undergone. We have noted that
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loh with an -s and also without, e.g. 'She's Chinese and we quai loh! and
quai lohs 're so cheap compared to Hong Kong girls!' (p. 711) The latter example, which uses the -s plural morpheme, shows little regard for gender. Another example relates to the word samfu or samfoo from Cantonese saam fu 衫褲 literally jacket and trousers'. The April issue of the British Airways inflight magazine has the following in its article about New York's Chinatown: 'Some of the old folk still wear traditional Chinese dress: men in long black gowns, a wispy beard even, and women in sam fu, those comfortable-looking baggy pyjamas.' Here the -s ending is missing, while an -s is put in to denote plurality in an advertisement publicising a fashion show appearing in The South China Morning Post which refers to 'Hand embroidered chi-paos and samfus.' (16/10/82)
In time, if the word catches on, the italics, quotation marks, and explanatory notes may no longer be necessary. This certainly applies to a number of words occurring in publications aimed primarily at the Hong Kong expatriate. In many cases standardization has been achieved in relation to the written form as well as pronunciation and meaning. Such words include mahjong, typhoon, cheongsam, taipan, hong and so on. For example, The South China Morning Post refers to the determination of the hongs' and 'the amount of money at their disposal (20/4/82); the Hong Kong Standard talks about 'people playing mahjong and children scampering about with their own games'. The loan words are unmarked.
We have said that linguistic borrowing' in fact involves fashioning a new word based on a 'model' in another language. To qualify as a fully assimilated item of the vocabulary, the new word usually has to meet certain requirements. It has to conform to the phonological, orthographical, and grammatical rules of the language. The spoken form is made up of the phonemes of the language, and these are combined to form permissible sequences according to the rules governing the phonology of that language. The written form has to make use of the graphemes of the language. This is no more than saying that the word must 'look' and 'sound' like an English word. In this process, certain linguistic changes have to be undergone. We have noted that
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