Chinese Loan Words

[Shelley]

kekou kela 可口可乐

 

ka fei 咖啡

[Demonic_Duck]

马赛克 mosaic

吗啡 morphine

海洛因 heroin

可卡因 cocaine

三文鱼 salmon

拖拉机（通过俄语中的“трактор”） tractor

卡 card

摩托车 motorbike

芝士/起士 cheese

朗姆酒 rum

伏特 volt

伏特加 vodka

便士 pence/penny

蹦极 bungee

[French]

速克达 (scooter)

西打 (cider)

卡通 (cartoon)

拜拜 (bye bye)

吧(台) (bar) 

(酒)吧 (bar, the restaurant)

啤(酒) (beer)

色拉 (salad, also 沙拉already mentioned by MrPhillips)

卡拉OK (this one is half loanwoard, half "original", it means Karaoke) 

逻辑 (logic)

高尔夫 (Golf)

卡路里 (Calorie)

[MPhillips]

I don't mean to be pedantic but karaoke is half Japanese--空"kara"(native Jse. word)/"oke" is short for "okesutoraa"(loan word), so "empty orchestra". Another one is 黑客（hacker）。

[French]

My bad, I learned it during my first week, I immediately put it on my "loanward room". For some reasons, I assumed every loanword would come from English which is not the case. 

[MPhillips]

Well it is half derived from Greek by way of English. One more - 克拉（karat).

[Demonic_Duck]

Re: carat...

7克拉 - 7 carat (diamond)

24开 - 24 karat (gold)

 

I assume they're both loanwords from English, though.

[imron]

merged with existing topic.

[MPhillips]

If memory serves they use 克拉 in Taiwan to refer to gold.

[Demonic_Duck]

Not sure why this was merged with a 4-year-old topic which was broader in scope (newer topic was asking specifically for loanwords from English).

 

...anyhow, having glanced at the merged posts, I noticed of course I was wrong about 伏特加, which is from Russian, not English. My bad!

[MPhillips]

Don't forget 克瓦斯 （kvass）!

[imron]

Not sure why this was merged with a 4-year-old topic which was broader in scope

Because even though it's broader in scope a look at the answers people are providing show that it's covering mostly the same content. Not a lot of new loan words have been added in 4 years.

[Tara Braska]

Chinese imports a lot of words from other languages, and for English i think Chinese sometimes directly copied the sound and also the meaning, but for Japanese, sometimes we only copy the character but not the sound, like " 资本（zi1ben3）。 

[Basil]

The word logic is interesting. 

 

How did Chinese think logically before they had the concept of how to do so?

[Demonic_Duck]

Don't forget 克瓦斯 （kvass）!

 

Must be another mainland/Taiwan difference - here it's called “格瓦斯”.

 

 

The word logic is interesting. 

 

How did Chinese think logically before they had the concept of how to do so?

 

There's some interesting commentary on that in this episode of 锵锵三人行.

 

Also note that in common usage, "logic" tends to just mean "rationality", which Chinese has other ways of describing. I think it's quite possible to think fairly rationally without studying formal logic.

[Basil]

Thanks for the link.