EAST ASIAN STUDIES

INFLUENCE ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: 

Given the prevelence of China in U.S economics and foriegn policy, it is unusual that there are not more loanwords from China included in the Oxford English Dictionary. This may be due to the drastically differing syntax of Chinese, or it may simply be due to the relative small amount of time that China has interacted with the United States. However, there is a historical precedent for the use of loanwords. Japan's sudden opening to the world, a world war, and then forty years of an economic boom put quite a few Japanese words and concepts into the Anglophone mind: kamikaze, futon, haiku, kabuki, origami, karaoke, tycoon, tsunami, jiu-jitsu, zen and honcho are all common English words that nowadays can be used without any reference to Japan. Of course, Japanese borrowed some of these words from Chinese, yet English borrowed the words from Japanese, not Chinese. It seems likely that the English language will continue borrow from Chinese as trade connections between China and the west grow. However, if one examines the types of words borrowed from Chinese, it is evident that words associated with asian ideologies such as Confucianism are translated in terms of Western biblical and philosphical terminology. Thus, certain aspects of Confucianism and other cultural movements and ideologies are lost in translation. The evolution of language is also important in economic terms as the worldwide competition for brand names.