Say No No to Loanwords

Much has been long discussed about the problem of loanwords in Chinese, which has already made this problem a platitude to some extend. In most of the debates, consensuses will be reached that the flooding loanwords is corrupting our language, and we should purify Chinese. But if considered together with the present features of modern Chinese language, I would draw a conclusion that the borrowed words entering into Chinese are not monsters and the purification is not necessary.

It is partially a misconception that since Chinese is a pictographic language in its written form, while the loanwords are mainly imported from the West where alphabetic system is used, the borrowed words cannot be fully absorbed into our language and thus cause problem in understanding. This is a misconception because though Chinese is categorized as a pictographic language, there are still huge amount of abstract elements in it expressing abstract ideas. Also because the simplification of the writing system, many Chinese characters now have nothing to do with a concrete idea, despite that they used to be pictographic. For example, it is hard for a nonprofessional to tell the original picturesque meaning of the characters like 尔, 克, 斯, etc. Since these words are abstract, why can’t we use them as phonetic symbols to simulate the pronunciation of a foreign word? We have been long accustomed to the names of foreigners translated into Chinese characters like 马克思, 爱因斯坦 and 贝克汉姆, and no one will be confused by them, so the loanwords translated according to their sounds is acceptable and not troublesome in understanding.
Of course, there are some loanwords which are perfect translated both in pronunciation and in writing forms. The most frequently cited example is 霓虹灯 for neon lights. We can see that the key of the success of importing words is the selection of Chinese characters. If the translator chose other characters for neon lights, for instance, 尼恩灯, it would become less vivid and less concrete. However, is there any real difference between these two translations? There is a possibility that the former one will be easier for one to grasp its definite meaning, and the latter one needs some explanation. But once the Chinese speaker acquires the basic meaning of neon lights and has got the picture of a neon light in his mind, there will be no gigantic differentiation on which term is used. And it is so with the situation of the words 伊妹儿 and 电子邮件. The latter one is perhaps more apprehensible, but both of the two words are expressing the same conception to an E-mail user, and neither of them signifies more than an unfamiliar idea to those who don’t use E-mails. The fact that a networker often interchanges these two terms suggests the potentiality that a loanword can function as well as a connatural Chinese one.

Another reason that I don’t see the necessity of so-called language purification is the fact that most of the loanwords are nouns. What necessitates the importation of foreign words is often the need of expressing an idea or conception which does not previously exist in our own language. That’s why the wholesale loanwords are terminologies. Even if a passage is written with superfluous loanwords, it is still Chinese because the verbs, the grammar, the thinking mode and ideology are all Chinese. The enormous amount of loanwords did not corrupt our language; instead, they enriched our mother tongue, and enabled it to catch up with times.

“New borrowed words will not decrease the enchantment of Chinese language.” This is the conclusion made in a seminar by many experts two years ago, and the perseverance of our language today proves its correctness, and so will the future do.

References:
OzIdeas, Chinese character writing Advantages and disadvantages of Chinese logographs,
<http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/writchin.htm>

Dominic Yu, Thoughts on Logan\'s the Alphabet Effect,
<http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~domingo2/zok/logan.html>

原春琳, 《如果放弃外来语，怎样称呼沙发呢？新词语会不会削弱汉语的独特魅力》,《中国青年报》 2002年8月28日, <http://bbs.people.com.cn/bbs/ReadFile?whichfile=9049307&typeid=14>