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Words of Chinese origin have entered European languages, including English. Most of these were direct loanwords from various varieties of Chinese.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.
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 has been the most widely-taught foreign language in China, as it is a required subject for students attending university. [ 15 ] [ 16 ] Other languages that have gained some degree of prevalence or interest are Japanese , Korean , Spanish , Portuguese , and Russian .
Mandarin Chinese is the most popular dialect, and is used as a lingua franca across China. Linguists classify these varieties as the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family . Within this broad classification, there are between seven and fourteen dialect groups, depending on the classification.
The List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese (simplified Chinese: 现代汉语通用字表; traditional Chinese: 現代漢語通用字表; pinyin: Xiàndài Hànyǔ Tōngyòngzì Biǎo) is a list of 7,000 commonly used Chinese characters in Chinese. It was created in 1988 in the People's Republic of China. [1]
In some dialects of French, the English term "weekend" becomes la fin de semaine ("the end of week"), a calque, but in some it is left untranslated as le week-end, a loanword. French cor anglais (literally English horn) is a near-calque of English French horn. In English cor anglais refers to a completely different musical instrument.
The basic format for a head entry gives the character, the Instant Index System code, the pronunciation(s) in Simplified GR, the part or parts of speech, optionally other speech levels (e.g., "sl." for slang), English translation equivalents for the head character and usage examples of polysyllabic compounds, phrases, and idioms, subdivided by ...
Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for a Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language.