English words Chinese use most often in Mandarin

[WestTexas]

T-shirt (我喜欢那件T-shirt)

call (as in 我call你=我给你打电话)

ML = make love/做爱

plenty of other words already mentioned above.

These words seem to be more in fashion in larger urban centers among younger, more-well educated people. In the farming town I live in nobody seems to use these, but in bigger cities I can use T-shirt for example and people get it.

[Meng Lelan]

I agree too. But don't most these English words have their Chinese alternatives?

Do I ever have examples! Even when there were Chinese equivalents they would use the English.

The one that stands out most in my mind, probably because I was having babies of my own at that time in about the mid 1990s, the first English word that all Chinese grannies and grampies would learn the minute they got to the US to care for the wee little ones: "formula". They all learned that one English word immediately. They'd be speaking all Chinese to me except for that one word. That just one word, yes. When I first read the short story 哺乳期的女人 I kept thinking back to how they were so formula-crazy.

[LaoJian]

with my experience, there is a partial word list we often used in our daily communication:

office,

cool

thinking,

mean,

help,

hello,

foot,

coffee,

cookie,

like,

welcome,

sorry,

fine,

good/bad/nice

smile,

beautiful,

gentle/gentle man,

lady, Mr., Mrs., Miss,Sir

delicious,

apple,

money, bank

pardon, push me,

party,

pass

go,

call, mobile

house

food

hot

man,boy

DVD,VCD,TV,PC,WiFi,

WC,

Baby, Dady,

your study is also interesting for counterpart - English learner in China, so I would like to share my thoughts for this topic.

I would explain why Chinese tend to use lots of English words in their daily life with my real experience, as young man of mainland China - birth, grow, and working in Beijing, I think there are several ways to push English words are becoming popular in China:

1. Education - we have admitted Education can change destiny of one nation/race, it is a foundation of one country. It is lucky that China has taken English language learning as compulsory course during my learning age, even the effort is not very good, but more or less, the Chinese people like my age or younger are all have basic ideas and knowledge for English. this is noticeably different from my parent generation, for political cause, their ages people were more likely educated with Russian Language.

2. Western Technology - another fact we all have to admitted that for latest one or two hundred years, as a leading power, advance western technologies and industries are impacting whole world, some professional meaningful words in specific domain are more commonly defined by English, after broadcasting to other countries, these special words are tend to keep their writing way in English, people just understand it meaning with its English spelling, as a symbol, so there are lots of words only remain one spelling way - English. One typical sample for this is IT domain, you know, there are maybe thousands of industrial academic words are keeping their English spelling way in whole world.

3. Entertainment - as a special industry, combing culture and language together, western entertainment have much more extensive and deeper affections to other countries for English popularity.

In movie and TV industry, Hollywood movies and Disney animations, Hongkong(popularity of English in HK are much higher than mainland) movies are very popular in China nowadays, some interesting words，dialog or expression way in English are directly popular among people's life, specially for youth generation, they are fond of expressing some feeling or thoughts mixing up several typical English words, they think that's cool thing they did. Typical words like ‘love’, ‘cool’, ‘beautiful’, ‘star’, ‘happy’, ‘money’, ’party’, etc. Oh, forgot to mention about TV dramas, <Discovery>, <Friends>, <X-Files>, <2 and Half men>, <start trek>, even <House>, <Prison Break>, <Big Bong Theory>, <24 hours>, <CSI> are very popular in China.

In music industry, there are similar effects like movie, lots of Chinese young people are crazy about western music, pop, hip-pop. They are willing to learn lyrics and enjoy some key words in one song. Then use it in their normal life. One typical singer is Michael Jackson, his fans in China are definitely not less than any of other country, ‘Heal’, ‘Don’t care’, ‘beat’, ‘money’, ‘peace’ some degree are come from his songs. Besides, some other words like ‘party’, ‘party animal’, ‘CD’, ‘VCD’, ‘DVD’, ‘Jazz’, ‘come on’ are also tie to musical contribution.

In E-Game Industry, I think most people under age 35 would know about CS means. CS, Warcraft, Starcraft (Protoss, Zerg) and some other fighting games, these typical games are affected whole generation, so they all know what’s these words mean – ‘fighting’, ‘game over’, ‘K.O.’, ‘VS’, ‘Go go go’, ‘Fire in the hole’, ‘GL’(good luck), ‘enemy down’, ‘negative’, ‘cover me’ , ‘AFK’, ‘Cheating’, etc. Then they like to communicate with each other combing with these fashion words as cool thing.

So how colorful and vivid lessons we can learn from entertainment world J

4 – Just for fun, fashion. Young people like to taste and use of English words which they all known or stand for some fancy or cool meaning to show off in their daily talk. Like ‘Oh my Lady Gaga’ , ‘kidding me’

5- Needs of working, more and more international companies settle down their branches in China, so Chinese Employee get to used English to express their thoughts during work with colleagues, prone to mix some English word in their conversation.

This is from 2 purpose:

• For some words are professional academic words of industry, so they have to keep English.
  
• For clear and simple expression. May you know, some word contains rich of meanings, if we use translation, may we have to use couple of Chinese words to express one English word, so we just directly use of original English word, because listeners are all know what this mean, that will make expression or talking more effective.
  

[crazy-meiguoren]

What about names or words that are pronounced similar to the English version (as close as Mandarin phonics allow), but not spelled the same due to the difference in Pinyin representation? Words like chocolate and Coca-Cola come to mind.

[Kenny同志]

Thank you everybody for your contribution. I will incorporate some of the words you suggested into my list.

@Laojian

Thank you for sharing your ideas. I will also touch on the reasons behind the popularity of the English words mingled in Mandarin.

@Crazy Meiguoren

Thank you Crazy but this essay is mostly about real English words. In fact I personally think 可口可乐 is a very good transation. As for 巧克力, at least it's not in English.

[Kenny同志]

The essay is now available on my blog. Comments are always welcome.

[BertR]

Recently I hear Chinese often speak about "cosplay".

Maybe you should also add "Hold". It's becoming really popular recently. See also: http://baike.baidu.com/view/6290587.htm

[Kyle_Wang]

I think you could add 'show' to your list. It is usually written as 秀, both verb and noun.

[semantic nuance]

Hi Kenny,

'Fu' is a transformed English word spoken a lot in Taiwan. I guess the original word is 'feel', and it turns out to be 'Fu'. 沒有那個 Fu--沒那個感覺/氣氛。

[Kenny同志]

Many thanks for your contribution folks. I will add your words to my list later.

[Gymnosopher]

From listening to my girlfriend talk with other chinese:

email

accent

- not an extensive list but just things that occurred to me previously and stuck

[Kenny同志]

Thank you Gymnosopher for your contribution. I will write a follow-up essay.

The English version (Speak Better Chinese than Native Speakers) is now available. Also the Chinese version is updated.

[imron]

Here are two others that appear a lot: nice and enjoy.

[Kenny同志]

Well, "nice" and "enjoy" might be overused by Chinese when speaking English but I don't hear them often in Mandarin.

I shall take "n" out of the list and write another essay about GG, MM, and lp stuff.

[imron]

Last night when talking in Mandarin with some friends I heard nice and enjoy used 'n' times I also heard it used several times today e.g. "这个人很nice"

[Kenny同志]

Thanks for the suggested words Imron. While "nice" and "enjoy" might be used more than often by a particular group of Chinese, say, Chinese employees with multinational or foreign-invested companies, these two words are not widely used by average Chinese in their Mandarin. The words on the list are those that're promoted far and wide.

[skylee]

these two words are not widely used by average Chinese in their Mandarin.

But if you already know what an average Chinese would use in their Mandarin, why ask here?

[Kyle_Wang]

I got another one: offer.

Frequently used among those who are job hunting, which is what I am doing.

[Kenny同志]

@Skylee

It’s like sometimes we can’t recall what a person looks like, but we are able to recognize him the minute we see him. J

@Kyle

Thanks for contributing to this list. J

[Kyle_Wang]

Came across another one while job hunting : HR, refering to human resource, especially the staff in charge of recruitment.