List of English Words of Chinese Origin

List Of English Words Of Chinese Origin

Words of Chinese origin have entered the English language and many European languages. Most of these were loanwords from Chinese itself, a term covering those members of the Chinese branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. However, Chinese words have also entered indirectly via other languages, particularly Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, that have all used Chinese characters at some point and contain a large number of Chinese loanwords.

Read more about List Of English Words Of Chinese Origin:  Different Sources of Loan Words, B, C, D, F, G, H, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, W, Y, Z

Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, english, words, chinese and/or origin:

    Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    The first faults are theirs that commit them, the second theirs that permit them.
    —18th-century English proverb.

    When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Only by the form, the pattern,
    Can words or music reach
    The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
    Moves perpetually in its stillness.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)