List of loanwords in Chinese

Chinese words of English origin have become more common in mainland China during its reform and opening and resultant increased contact with the West. Note that some of the words below originated in other languages but may have arrived in Chinese via English (for example "pizza/披萨" from Italian). English acronyms are sometimes borrowed into Chinese without any transcription into Chinese characters; for example "IT" (information technology), "PPT" (PowerPoint), "GDP" (Gross domestic product), "APP" (mobile app), "KTV" (karaoke), or "DVD". A rarer occurrence is the blending of the Latin alphabet with Chinese characters, as in "卡拉OK" ("karaoke"), “T恤” ("T-shirt"), "IP卡" ("internet phone card").[3] In some instances, the loanwords exists side by side with neologisms that translate the meaning of the concept into existing Chinese morphemes. For instance, while the loanword for 'penicillin' is 盘尼西林 (pánníxīlín), a neologism that 'translates' the word was later coined, 青霉素 (qīngméisù), which means 'blue/green mold extract/essence'. In contemporary Chinese, neologisms using native Chinese morphemes tend to be favored over loanwords that are transliterations. In the case of penicillin, the term 青霉素 is used almost exclusively, while 盘尼西林 is viewed as an early 20th century relic. Similarly, 'science' is now known as 科学 (kēxué) 'subject/specialty study' rather than 赛因斯 (sàiyīnsī), though it should be pointed out that the characters 科学 were actually coined in the late 19th century by the Japanese as a kanji compound.

In the chart below, loanwords in Taiwan will be written in traditional characters and loanwords in mainland China will be written in simplified characters.

• List of English words of Chinese origin
• List of English words of Japanese origin
• List of Spanish words of Chinese origin
• List of English words of Cantonese origin
• Chinglish
• Gairaigo
• Sino-Japanese vocabulary

• Daniel Kane (15 September 2006). The Chinese Language: Its History and Current Usage. Tuttle Publishing. pp. 162–166. ISBN 978-0-8048-3853-5. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
• Robert S. Bauer; Paul K. Benedict (1997). Modern Cantonese Phonology. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 347–405. ISBN 978-3-11-014893-0. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
• Wendy Yeun-wen Pao (1983). A Study of English Loanwords in Chinese Through Chinese Newswriting. South Dakota State University. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
• Janet Zhiqun Xing (30 March 2006). Teaching And Learning Chinese As a Foreign Language: A Pedagogical Grammar. Hong Kong University Press. pp. 120–124. ISBN 978-962-209-763-6. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
• 胡兆云 (2001). Language contact and lexical borrowing of English and Chinese: A comprehensive study. Shandong University Press. ISBN 978-7-5607-2382-2. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
• Kate Parry; Xiaojun Su (3 April 1998). Culture, literacy, and learning English: voices from the Chinese classroom. Boynton/Cook Publishers. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-86709-448-0. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
• Martin Haspelmath; Uri Tadmor (22 December 2009). Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 576–580. ISBN 9783110218442. Retrieved 28 May 2020.