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A word needs to be said about the term 'Chinese'. Within China now live a number of ethnic groups. In addition to the Han majority, there are Manchus, Mongolians, Tibetans, and so on. Linguistically, the word 'Chinese' is usually made to refer to the language of the Han group. A number of dialects are found within the Han language, the ones of most interest to us in our study being Cantonese, Mandarin, and to a lesser extent, Amoy. The great majority of the loans described in our study have entered English from these three dialects. In a small number of cases, e.g. Lama, Manchu, Cathay, we have extended the word 'Chinese' to cover non-Han languages used in China. A few loans described in our work have entered English through another language, as in the case of tycoon ultimately from ta-ta or 'great Mandarin' and soya ultimately from shi-yu which were borrowed through Japanese.
We have excluded from our list of loans those words which refer only to individual persons and specific geographical locations. Our selection is based on the meanings of the loan words in the borrowing language, and not on their originals, which may be the names of people or of places. For example, the source for Bohea Wu-i is the name of a mountain range transliterated 武夷 according to its Amoy pronunciation, and the name of a city Nanking has given rise to nankeen the name of a kind of cloth. In the case of Confucius and Mao, these combine readily with other elements to form words which refer to a philosophy, an ideology, or even a style of clothing, e.g. Confucianism, Mao jacket.
We have taken care only to choose those words which are in general use, and have excluded the 'jargon' associated with various specialized fields, e.g. wu tsai or ‘five colours' connected with the study and appreciation of Chinese porcelain, or ping, shang, qu, ru used to refer to the tones in Chinese linguistics.
The loan words chosen for discussion in our study have been selected according to the following criteria:
(1) they occur in books and periodicals published in Hong Kong or abroad within the last three decades (up to 1983).
69
A word needs to be said about the term 'Chinese'. Within China now live a number of ethnic groups. In addition to the Han majority, there are Manchus, Mongolians, Tibetans, and so on. Linguistically, the word 'Chinese' is usually made to refer to or the language of the Han group. A number of dialects are found within the Han language, the ones of most interest to us in our study being Cantonese, Mandarin, and to a lesser extent, Amoy. The great majority of the loans described in our study have entered English from these three dialects. In a small number of cases, c.g. Lama, Manchu, Cathay, we have extended the word 'Chinese' to cover non-Han languages used in China. A few loans described in our work have entered English through another language, as in the case of tycoon ultimately from B or 'great Mandarin' and soya ultimately from shi-yu which were borrowed through Japanese.
We have excluded from our list of loans those words which refer only to individual persons and specific geographical locations. Our selection is based on the meanings of the loan words in the borrowing language, and not on their originals, which may be the names of people or of places. For example, the source for Bohea Wu-i is the name of a mountain range transliterated
武夷
according to its Amoy pronunication, and the name of a city Nanking has given rise to nankeen the name of a kind of cloth. In the case of Confucius and Mao, these combine readily with other elements to form words which refer to a philosophy, an ideology, or even a style of clothing, e.g. Confucianism, Mao jacket.
We have taken care only to choose those words which are in general use, and have excluded the 'jargon' associated with various specialized fields, e.g. wu tsai or ‘five colours' connected with the study and appreciation of Chinese porcelain, or ping, shang, qu, ru used to refer to the tones in Chinese linguistics.
The loan words chosen for discussion in our study have been selected according to the following criteria:
(1) they occur in books and periodicals published in Hong Kong or abroad within the last three decades (up to
1983).
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