QA问答：为什么汉语不像韩语或日语那样广泛的使用英语借词

Paul Denlinger
Because Chinese prefer translations over phonetic transliterations as Japanese does.

因为中国人更喜欢意译，而不是像日语那样进行音译。

Matthew Ward
I speak Mandarin and Japanese, and here’s my personal take:

我懂普通话和日语，这是我的个人看法：

First, Mandarin does use some English loanwords—just not nearly as many as Japanese does. For example, 起司 (qisi = cheese), or 巴士 (bashi= bus). These are phonetic loans.

首先，普通话确实也使用了一些英语外来词——只是远没有日语那么多。例如，“起司”（qīsī = cheese）或“巴士”（bāshī = bus）。这些都是音译词。

In my experience, though, it’s far more common for Mandarin to use loan-translations, like 超級市場 for ‘supermarket,’ which literally means super (超級）market (市場), often shortened to just 超市. Japanese occasionally does this, but is much more prone to borrow words from Western languages phonetically: スーパーマーケット, generally shortened to スーパー.

但据我所知，普通话更常见的是使用“借译词”（loan-translations），比如“超级市场”表示“supermarket”，字面意思是“超级”（超級）+“市场”（市場），通常简称为“超市”。日语偶尔也会这样做，但更倾向于从西方语言中音译借用词汇：如“スーパー マーケット”，通常简称为“スーパー”。

I suspect that the main difference is just the writing system. It’s possible to use Chinese characters in a purely phonetically, as with the examples above, but it’s awkward, and the literal meaning of the characters usually has nothing to do with the meaning of the loanwords. In contrast, Japanese (and Korean) can readily write foreign words phonetically with katakana or Hangul, which makes it easier for them to handle phonetic loans.

我怀疑主要区别在于书写系统。虽然可以用汉字纯粹进行音译（如上例所示），但这很别扭，而且这些汉字的字面意思通常与外来词的含义毫无关系。相比之下，日语（和韩语）可以轻松地用片假名或韩文来音译书写外语词汇，这使得它们更容易处理音译外来词。

I might add that Japanese and Chinese also borrow vast numbers of words from each other, but this is quite easy to do because they both use Chinese characters. Japanese occasionally uses katakana to write Chinese words, but they generally just use the same kanji and pronounce them with the Chinese-derived ‘on’ readings. And Japanese created many kanji compounds for modern concepts that were then borrowed into Chinese.

我还想补充一点，日语和汉语也从彼此借用了大量词汇，但这很容易实现，因为它们都使用汉字。日语有时会用片假名书写中文词汇，但通常只是使用相同的汉字，并用源自中文的“音读”发音。此外，日语还创造了许多汉字复合词来表达现代概念，这些词后来又被借入汉语。

Felix
Well, Chinese does have its fair share of English loanwords, however, they''re often not "visible". That''s partly because instead of phonemic loans, Chinese languages are more inclined to use loan translations (often called calques); that often makes it difficult to distinguish them from neologisms. The primary reason is that, the archetypal lexical word in Chinese is almost always disyallabic. English loanwords are almost always polysyllabic; this leads to phonemic loans being quickly replaced by loan translations even if they get incorporated into the lexicon for a period of time. The phonemic loans that did not get replaced (芭蕾 for example) are more often than not, disyallabic. Coupled with the fact that most Chinese languages use an ideographic writing system - phonemic loans are extremely unstable.

其实，汉语确实有不少英语外来词，但它们往往“不显眼”。部分原因在于，汉语更倾向于使用“借译词”（loan translations，常称为“仿译词”或“calques”），而不是音素借词，这常常使得它们与本土新造词难以区分。主要原因在于，汉语典型的词汇单位几乎总是双音节的。而英语外来词几乎总是多音节的；这导致音素借词即使一度进入词汇，也很快被借译词取代。那些未被取代的音素借词（如“芭蕾”）大多也是双音节的。再加上大多数汉语使用表意文字系统——音素借词极不稳定。

Assimilating loanwords from foreign languages into a language’s lexicon is a form of cultural diffusion through language contact and Chinese is no stranger to that. This article endeavors to elucidate the comparative paucity of loanwords in Chinese, attributing it to a predisposition towards loan-translation over phonemic transliteration, a distinction that significantly influences the perceptible count of English loanwords in Chinese. Generally speaking, while that may be taken as a fact at face value, Chinese is prone to use semantic loans rather than phonemic loans which might be a possible factor in significantly influencing the observable inventory of English-derived lexemes.

将外语词汇融入一种语言的词汇库，是语言接触中文化扩散的一种形式，汉语对此并不陌生。本文旨在阐明汉语外来词相对稀少的原因，将其归因于汉语更倾向于使用借译而非音素音译，这种区别显著影响了汉语中英语外来词的“可见”数量。一般来说，尽管这可以被视为一个事实，但汉语更倾向于使用语义借词而非音素借词，这可能是显著影响英语来源词汇可观察数量的一个因素。

Loan words in Chinese can be a phonemic loan where foreign sounds are approximated using the native phonology, or a semantic loan where concepts are translated directly into existing lexical items or new coinages (or a combination of the two). There is an overwhelming preference for semantic loans in Chinese instead of phonemic loans, which might complicate the distinction between calques and indigenous coinages.

汉语中的外来词可以是音素借词（用本族语音近似外语发音），也可以是语义借词（将概念直接翻译成现有词汇或新造词），或两者结合。汉语对外来词有压倒性的偏好是语义借词而非音素借词，这可能使仿译词与本土新造词之间的区别变得复杂。

Here, Chinese is used to refer to Mandarin, but the arguments made here are applicable to other Chinese languages as well. A prerequisite for phonemic loans is to have a standardized (or prescribed phonology) - something that Chinese mostly lacked until the last century. A standardized prescribed phonology came about only in the early 20th century, and earlier attempts of phonological standardization, such as the Hongwu Emperor’s dictionary (洪武正韻) were not really successful. A single Hanzi character would be pronounced differently in Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese etc.

这里所说的“汉语”指的是普通话，但此处的论点也适用于其他汉语方言。音素借词的前提是拥有标准化（或规定的）语音系统——而这在20世纪之前，汉语大多缺乏。标准化的语音系统直到20世纪初才出现，而更早的语音标准化尝试，比如明太祖洪武年间的《洪武正韵》，并未真正成功。一个汉字在普通话、吴语、粤语等方言中的发音可能各不相同。

This essentially makes phonemic loans mostly unstable as Hanzi characters acted as a written lingua-franca throughout the Sinosphere. The Nanjing dialect was the dominant standard for pronunciation for most of the Qing Empire, until the 19th century when the Beijing dialect began to displace it in the imperial court. Secondly , "court Mandarin" (官话) which acted as a lingua franca in the Qing administration was essentially a koiné based on Mandarin dialects, hence, lacking any standardization. While standardized Mandarin is based off of the erstwhile Guanhua, note that Mandarin phonology differed in the 19th century - the difference between palatalized velars and dental affricates was preserved.

这使得音素借词在20世纪之前大多不稳定，因为汉字在汉字文化圈中充当了书面通用语。在19世纪之前，南京话是清朝大部分时期占主导地位的发音标准，之后北京话才开始在宫廷中取代它。其次，清代行政中作为通用语的“官话”本质上是基于北方方言的一种通用语（koiné），因此缺乏标准化。虽然现代普通话是基于旧时的官话，但请注意，19世纪的官话语音与现在不同——当时腭化软腭音和齿龈塞擦音之间的区别是保留的。

All of these made assimilating words through transliteration difficult until the 20th century when Mandarin effectively was promulgated as the "standard" for Chinese, meeting the requirement for a standardized prescribed phonology. There have been cases where loanwords in Mandarin were mediated through another Chinese language, but that is not the norm. 沙丁(鱼) for example, was loaned into Mandarin as sha1-ding1 from Shanghainese ¹so-tin, which is a loan from English "sardine".

所有这些因素使得通过音译吸收词汇在20世纪之前变得困难，直到普通话作为中国的“标准”被推广，才满足了拥有标准化语音系统的要求。确实存在一些普通话中的外来词是通过其他汉语方言传入的，但这并非主流。“沙丁（鱼）”就是一个例子，普通话“沙丁”（shā dīng）来自上海话“¹so-tin”，而上海话这个词又是从英语“sardine”借来的。

It was common to see different transliterated forms for the same loanword in distinct locations. For example, the word "sofa" was transliterated as 沙发 (sha1 fa1) in Shanghai, adhering to the Shanghainese pronunciation which eventually became the standard in Mainland China, whereas in Hong Kong, it was transliterated as 梳化 (so1 faa3) in Cantonese. When a centralized government was established in the mainland, the government got involved in the standardization of loanwords based on the phonology of Modern Mandarin. In this process, many Cantonese-based transliterations were abandoned, such as 亚美利加 (ya4 mei3 li4 ji a1 : aa3 mei5 lei6 gaa1 in Cantonese: ‘America’).

过去，同一个外来词在不同地区常有不同的音译形式。例如，“沙发”一词在上海被音译为“沙发”（shā fā），遵循上海话的发音，最终成为大陆的标准；而在香港（特区），则被音译为粤语的“梳化”（so1 faa3）。当大陆建立中央政府后，政府介入了基于现代普通话音系的外来词标准化工作。在此过程中，许多基于粤语的音译被废弃，例如“亚美利加”（普通话：yà měi lì jiā；粤语：aa3 mei5 lei6 gaa1，表示“America”）。

Besides that, the conventionality of transliterations is built upon a conventionalized writing system corresponding to a common phonological system, otherwise there will naturally be regional variations of transliterations. Accordingly, the standardization of transliterations is possible only when there is a standard phonological system. On the other hand, with the stable graphic-semantic association characteristic to ideographic writing, calques, loan-based creations, and meaning extensions can easily live across a linguistically diverse area.

除此之外，音译的惯例建立在与共同语音系统相对应的规范化书写系统之上，否则音译形式自然会出现地区差异。因此，只有在存在标准语音系统的情况下，音译的标准化才有可能。另一方面，由于表意文字具有稳定的图形-语义关联特征，借译词、基于借词的新造词以及意义延伸可以轻松跨越语言多样性区域。

The morphosyllabic nature of the characters as well the restrictive phonotactics of most Chinese languages also make loaning through transliteration difficult. The loanwords generally happen to be polysyllabic as well, hence, a semantic relation is difficult to express between the borrowed morpheme as Chinese characters are semantically attributed morphemes; graphic signs are merely used to record sound and the morphemic value is usually suppressed.

汉字的音义结合性质以及大多数汉语方言严格的音系结构，也使得通过音译借词变得困难。外来词通常是多音节的，因此，在汉语中，借入的语素与语义之间难以建立联系，因为汉字是具有语义的语素；而图形符号仅用于记录声音，语素价值通常被抑制。

All loanwords are subject to drastic modification to conform to the restrictive phonotactics in order to assimilate into the Chinese lexicon. Given the fact that transliterated loanwords semantically don’t make much sense in Chinese (macarons or a horse stuck in a dragon ?), a free morphosyllabic character is often attached to the loanword:

- 太妃糖 (tai4 fei1 tang2) : toffee + tang2 (sugar)
- 芭蕾舞 (ba1 lei2 wu3) : ballet + wu3 (dance)
- 爵士乐 (jue2 shi4 yue4) : jazz + yue4 (music)
所有外来词在融入汉语词汇时，都必须经过大幅修改，以适应其严格的音系结构。鉴于音译外来词在汉语中语义上往往没有太多意义（“马卡龙”或“龙困之马”？），通常会在外来词后附加一个自由的音义结合的汉字：
- 太妃糖 (tài fēi táng)：太妃 + 糖（糖）
- 芭蕾舞 (bā léi wǔ)：芭蕾 + 舞（舞蹈）
- 爵士乐 (jué shì yuè)：爵士 + 乐（音乐）

Secondly, most Chinese words are disyllabic and monosyllabic, followed by words with three syllables; words having four or more syllables are highly unlikely. Most English loanwords are highly likely to be polysyllabic, which would produce a possible ambiguity of meaning in sentences. The transliterated form of a loanword might be used more often over the translated forms (at least in colloquial speech) if they have to be disyllabic or trisyllabic :
- Cartoon : 卡通 (ka3 tong1) is preferred over 动画片 (dong4 hua4 pian1)
- Guitar : 吉他 (ji2 ta1) is preferred over 六弦琴 (liu4 xian2 qin2)
- Utopia : 乌托邦 (wu1 tuo1 bang1) is preferred over 理想乡 (li3 xiang3 xiang1)

其次，大多数汉语词汇是双音节或单音节，其次是三音节词；四个或更多音节的词则极为罕见。大多数英语外来词极有可能是多音节的，这会在句子中产生可能的语义歧义。如果音译形式必须是双音节或三音节，那么它们往往比意译形式更常被使用（至少在口语中）：
- 卡通 (kǎ tōng) 比 动画片 (dòng huà piān) 更受青睐（对应 cartoon）
- 吉他 (jí tā) 比 六弦琴 (liù xián qín) 更受青睐（对应 guitar）
- 乌托邦 (wū tuō bāng) 比 理想乡 (lǐ xiǎng xiāng) 更受青睐（对应 utopia）

This leads to creating workarounds using phono semantic matching such as 可口可乐 (ke3 kou3 ke3 le4 : Coca Cola), literally "palatable and enjoyable" (however, note that the phonetic aspect of this becomes less relevant in other Chinese languages such as Cantonese ho2 hau2 ho2 lok6), 维他命 (wei2 ta1 ming3 : vitamin) - literally "uphold one’s life". Note that 维他命 considered dated in the Mainland, where the term 维生素 (wei2 sheng3 su4) is preferred instead.

这导致了使用“音义兼顾”（phono-semantic matching）的变通方法，例如 可口可乐 (kě kǒu kě lè：Coca Cola)，字面意思是“可口且愉悦”（然而，需要注意的是，这种音译在粤语等其他汉语中相关性较小，粤语为 ho2 hau2 ho2 lok6），维他命 (wéi tā mìng：vitamin)——字面意思是“维持生命”。需要注意的是，“维他命”在大陆已显得过时，现在更倾向于使用“维生素”(wéi shēng sù)。

Most Chinese loanwords fall under the category of semantic loans: they’re usually loan translations (calques) or compound nouns that are created through translation. Semantic loans can be either calques or made by translating the meaning of the loanword. Some calques: -
- 白领 (bai2 ling3) : 'white-collar'
- 代沟 (dai4 guo3) : 'generation gap'
- 峰会 (feng1 hui4) : ‘summit meeting’
- 连锁店 (lian2 suo3 dian4) : ‘chain store’
- 软饮料 (ruan3 yin3 lao4) : ‘soft drink’

大多数汉语外来词属于语义借词：它们通常是借译词（仿译词）或通过翻译创造的复合名词。语义借词可以是仿译词，也可以是通过翻译外来词的含义来创造的。一些仿译词的例子：
- 白领 (bái lǐng)：'white-collar'
- 代沟 (dài gōu)：'generation gap'
- 峰会 (fēng huì)：‘summit meeting’
- 连锁店 (lián suǒ diàn)：‘chain store’
- 软饮料 (ruǎn yǐn liào)：‘soft drink’

Some examples of words that have been loaned from English through translation (usually through the creation of a compound noun) : -
- 电话 (dian4 hua4) : electric-speech ‘telephone’
- 双赢 (shuang1 ying2) : double-win ‘win-win’
- 盗版 (dao4 ban3) : steal-publish ‘to pirate’

一些通过翻译从英语借入的词汇（通常是通过创造复合名词）：
- 电话 (diàn huà)：电+话，‘telephone’
- 双赢 (shuāng yíng)：双+赢，‘win-win’
- 盗版 (dào bǎn)：盗+版，‘to pirate’

Whenever compound loanwords occur, the construction of a verb+obxt is often used to modify the model of foreign loans to allow them to be assimilated into Chinese: "electrical supply line" is semantically loaned as 输电线 (shu1 dian4 xian4) : shu1 and dian4 constitute the V+O construction, supplemented by the noun xian4 to constitute a nominal.

每当出现复合外来词时，通常使用动宾结构（V+O）来调整外来词的模式，以便将其融入汉语：“输电线”(shū diàn xiàn) 表示“electrical supply line”，其中“输”和“电”构成动宾结构，再由名词“线”补充，构成一个名词。

In loanwords that are semantically loaned through coinages, the monomorphemic elements of the Chinese word often replaces the disyllabic or polysyllabic elements - essentially conforming to the regular pattern of disyllabic words in Chinese : 冷战 (leng3 zhan4) instead of 冷战争 (leng3 zhan4 zheng1) is used for "Cold War’’; it is a loan translation from English but zhan4-zheng1 is reduced to the monosyllabic zhan4, hence, conforming to the usual disyllabic pattern. Alternatively, a single loanword can have instances of both loan translations and semantic translations : in 摩托车(mo2 tuo1 che1 : motorcycle) mo2-tuo1 is a transliterated substitute for "motor" and "cycle" is substituted by the Chinese word che1 (cart, vehicle; carry in cart).

在通过新造词进行语义借入的外来词中，汉语词的单语素元素通常会取代双音节或多音节元素——本质上是符合汉语中双音节词的常规模式：例如“冷战”(lěng zhàn) 而不是“冷战争”(lěng zhàn zhēng) 用于表示“Cold War”；这是从英语借译而来，但“战-争”被简化为单音节的“战”，从而符合通常的双音节模式。或者，一个外来词可以同时包含音译和意译：在“摩托车”(mó tuō chē) 中，“摩-托”是“motor”的音译替代，“cycle”则由汉语词“车”（车，车辆）替代。

These reasons make it hard to distinguish a loan translation from a newly coined compound which is not a direct translation of the original but is organized into a construction in a form which can be denoted as a "descxtive creation".

这些原因使得区分借译词和非直接翻译但以“描述性创造”形式组织的新造复合词变得困难。

On a general basis, semantic loans are much more frequent than phonemic loans in Chinese owing to their relatively higher stability. There are three major periods during which there was a relatively higher influx of loanwords into Chinese : the dissemination of Buddhism which brought about loanwords from Indian languages; the New Culture Movement in the 1910s which brought about loanwords from Japanese, English and other European languages; the economic reforms since 1978 have ushered in more words from English.

总体而言，由于语义借词相对更稳定，因此在汉语中比音素借词更为常见。汉语外来词的大量涌入主要有三个时期：佛教传播带来了来自印度语言的外来词；1910年代的新文化运动带来了来自日语、英语和其他欧洲语言的外来词；1978年以来的经济改革引入了更多来自英语的词汇。

During the early 20th century, a significant number of words were loaned from European languages and Japanese into Chinese - this culminated in the New Culture Movement (新文化运动) in the 1910s, brought a tremendous change to the Chinese language and is thus taken as the starting point of Modern Mandarin (Wang, 1944/1984: 434; Kratochvil, 1982: 287). Around the May 4th Movement, a large number of phonemic loans were made into Chinese from European languages (including English), however, most of these ended up getting replaced by semantic loans - a large number of them being from Japanese.
Numerous words were borrowed from Japanese - mostly graphic loans; Sino-Japanese morphemes were compounded in new ways to translate modern terms, for example 民主 ‘people + dominate → democratic’. Terms from classical Chinese texts were repurposed for new concepts, such as 经济 ‘to govern + to benefit → economy’. These modern terms consisting of Sino-Japanese morphemes were reborrowed back to China - since the Japanese neologisms were themselves based on Classical Chinese, their status as "loanwords" in Chinese is subject to debate.
Dictionary of Loanwords in Chinese (汉语外来语词典) (1984), lists around 882 loan words from Japanese. Initially, the term ‘telephone’ was semantically loaned 德律风 (de2 lu4 feng1), ‘democracy’ was rendered as 德谟克拉西 (de2 mo2 ke4 la1 xi1); eventually several Western phonemic loans were substituted with Japanese loanwords. 德律风 (de2 lu4 feng1) was replaced by 电话 (dian4 hua4), and 德谟克拉西 (de2 mo2 ke4 la1 xi1) was transformed into 民主 (min2 zhu3).

20世纪初，大量词汇从欧洲语言和日语借入汉语——这在1910年代的新文化运动（新文化运动）中达到高潮，给汉语带来了巨大变革，因此被视为现代普通话的起点（Wang, 1944/1984: 434; Kratochvil, 1982: 287）。在五四运动前后，大量音素借词从欧洲语言（包括英语）进入汉语，但其中大多数最终被语义借词取代——其中许多来自日语。
大量词汇从日语借入——主要是文字借词；日语用汉字新组合方式翻译现代术语，例如“民主”（人民+主宰 → 民主）。古典中文文本中的术语被重新用于新概念，例如“经济”（治理+利益 → 经济）。这些由汉日语素构成的现代术语被重新借回中国——由于这些日语新词本身基于古典中文，它们在汉语中作为“外来词”的地位存在争议。
《汉语外来语词典》（1984年）列出了约882个来自日语的外来词。最初，“电话”被意译为“德律风”(dé lǜ fēng)，“民主”被译为“德谟克拉西”(dé mó kè lā xī)；最终，多个西方音译词被日语借词取代。“德律风”被“电话”取代，“德谟克拉西”被转化为“民主”。

The first class of Japanese loanwords in Chinese were originally loaned into Japanese from other languages, transliterated using kana and retransliterated into Chinese - for example, 虎列拉 (hu3 lie4 la1) from コレラ (cholera), 百斯笃 (bai3 si1 du3) from ペスト (pest). The second class of Japanese loanwords include Japanese coinages utilizing Classical Chinese, which were in turn reappropriated into Modern Chinese; a lot of these loanwords have been very well integrated into Chinese - examples include 科学 (ke1 xue2 : science), 催眠 (cui1 mian2 : hypnotize).

第一类日语借词最初是从其他语言借入日语，用假名音译，再音译回汉语——例如，“虎列拉”(hǔ liè lā) 来自 コレラ (cholera)，“百斯笃”(bǎi sī dǔ) 来自 ペスト (pest)。第二类日语借词包括利用古典中文创造的日语新词，这些词又被现代汉语重新采用；其中许多借词已很好地融入汉语——例如“科学”(kē xué：science)、“催眠”(cuī mián：催眠)。

An intriguing point to note is that languages that were formerly mostly written using Hanzi characters (Korean and Vietnamese for example - arguably Kana in Japanese as well) are much more likely to be less resistant to phonemic loans. To conclude, when loanwords become un-analyzable, transliterations are usually abandoned and replaced with calques or semantic translations in Chinese, as the graphic morpho-syllables have a looser association with their phonetic form than their semantic form.

一个值得注意的有趣点是，那些以前主要使用汉字书写的语言（例如韩语和越南语——可以说日语的假名也是如此）往往对音素借词的抵触较小。总之，当外来词变得不可分析时，音译通常会被放弃，取而代之的是仿译词或语义翻译，因为汉字的音义结合单位与其语义形式的关联比其语音形式更松散。

Finally, it is essential to acknowledge the pervasive undercurrent of linguistic purism within the Sinosphere. Given the premise of this article, which posits the inherent characteristics of the writing system as a significant determinant in the propensity for lexical borrowing, an analytical comparison of writing systems such as Hangul, Quốc Ngữ, and Kana becomes particularly pertinent. These writing systems, having partially or completely supplanted the use of Chinese characters in their respective languages, would offer insights into the relationship between orthographic systems and lexical borrowing.

最后，必须承认汉字文化圈内普遍存在的语言纯洁主义暗流。鉴于本文的前提，即书写系统的内在特性是决定词汇借用倾向的重要因素，对韩文（Hangul）、国语字（Quốc Ngữ）和假名（Kana）等书写系统进行分析比较就显得尤为重要。这些书写系统在各自语言中部分或完全取代了汉字的使用，将为探讨正字法系统与词汇借用之间的关系提供洞见。

Huang Yi
First of all, we have some transliterations, like 沙发(sofa)、巧克力(chocolate)、可乐(cola)、坦克(tank).

Then, I think “translation” is to make a word or a sencence be described in another language, which means if you can describe it by words in your language and the descxtion is short enough, you don’t have to loan words.
I always believe that using loanwords while it’s possible to having a word or few words to describe something is a signal of cultural colonization. Or, in another way, Japan and South Korea are facing cultural invasion from the west and losing their own culture.

首先，我们确实有一些音译词，比如 沙发 (sofa)、巧克力 (chocolate)、可乐 (cola)、坦克 (tank)。
然后，我认为“翻译”是指用另一种语言来描述一个词或一句话，这意味着如果你能用自己语言的词汇来描述它，并且描述足够简短，你就没有必要借用外来词。
我一直认为，在可以用一个词或几个词描述事物的情况下仍使用外来词，是文化殖民的信号。或者说，日本和韩国正面临西方的文化入侵，并正在失去自己的文化。

Han
Because Chinese have a much longer history for us to have our own words. Most of the basic words came from drawing, which is how ancient people saw and understood the world. For example, 日 came from the drawing of the sun, and 木 came from the drawing of the tree.
Unless there’s something that we don’t have in our language, we may use loanwords to call it, but we write it and pronounce it in Chinese. For example, sofa is shafa(沙发), chocolate is qiaokeli(巧克力), cola is kele(可乐), brandy is bailandi(白兰地), champagne is xiangbin(香槟), coffee is kafei(咖啡), cookie is quqi(曲奇), curry is gali(咖喱), hamburger is hanbao(汉堡), motor is motuo(摩托), bus is bashi(巴士), and so on.

因为我们有更悠久的历史，拥有自己的词汇。大多数基础词汇源于图画，即古人观察和理解世界的方式。例如，“日”来自太阳的图画，“木”来自树的图画。
除非我们语言中没有对应的东西，我们可能会借用外来词来称呼它，但我们用汉字书写并用中文发音。例如，沙发 (shāfā)、巧克力 (qiǎokèlì)、可乐 (kělè)、白兰地 (báilándì)、香槟 (xiāngbīn)、咖啡 (kāfēi)、曲奇 (qūqí)、咖喱 (gālí)、汉堡 (hànbǎo)、摩托 (mótuō)、巴士 (bāshì) 等等。

Danny Stone
They do! There are many words in the Chinese language (particularly names) which do not or cannot be translated directly therefore the Chinese have a “sounds alike” or “borrowed word”.
For instance I live in Birmingham in England. The name Birmingham comes from the Old English Beormingahām, meaning the home or settlement of the Beormingas – a tribe or clan whose name means 'Beorma's people' and which may have formed an early unit of Anglo-Saxon administration.
Obviously the Chinese have no knowledge of this or what it means and because there are insufficient characters in the Mandarin language to create the word in full, the Chinese use a “sounds alike” 伯明翰 “Bó míng hàn”.

他们确实会！中文里有很多词（尤其是名称）无法或不能直接翻译，因此中国人会使用“音似”或“借词”。
例如，我住在英格兰的伯明翰。伯明翰这个名字源于古英语Beormingahām，意思是“比尔明加斯人（Beormingas）的家园或定居地”——这是一个部落或氏族，其名字意为“比尔马（Beorma）的人”，可能构成了早期盎格鲁-撒克逊行政单位的一部分。
显然，中国人对这个名称的来源和含义一无所知，而且由于普通话中没有足够的汉字来完整地拼出这个词，中国人就使用音似的“伯明翰”(Bó míng hàn)。

Guidepeggy
Chinese has been a large number of transliteration, mainly Buddhism into China for a period of time, Sanskrit and western vocabulary. One problem is that there are no special Chinese characters for transliteration. Katakana for Japanese, Korean for their letters, but Chinese for homonyms, and each word has its own meaning, leading to the spread of Buddhism, some simple transliteration of words, the meaning of the chosen word was taken for granted. Sidan was originally a transliteration of the Sanskrit word Siddhanta. Later generations had Nanyue Master Nanyue Huisihuisi looking at the text and saying that it meant "All things are perfect." Sandan was a transliteration of the Sanskrit word dana, meaning "Giving.", so Sidan is giving the idea everywhere. For example, today we see some transliteration words that also have this tendency, such as Gauss for men, silk for women, Elise, and Di, Audrey, and Diven for men. Transliteration should also consider the gender differences in the use of words, elegant or not. When translating Indian sutras, the ancient people had the same situation, so they used more obscure words, such as JIA, PI, Lu, and so on. So as not to be ungrateful. This is a problem, before there is a special transliteration of Chinese characters, transliteration will remain this way, the literal meaning also has to be taken into account in the dilemma (imagine using pinyin transliteration, there would be no difference between silk and Dai Dai) . This creates a certain amount of trouble for transliteration, which can lead to confusion if the country doesn't agree on a single transliteration method. For example, Facebook must die. This is the conventional transliteration, indecent, but everyone says so. In fact, if there is an official transliteration of FB certainly would not be like this. In addition, free translation needs to create words, independent morphemes are important, English will also create words, mostly in the biochemical aspects, using Latin Greek roots.

汉语有大量的音译现象，主要集中在佛教传入中国的一段时间，涉及梵语和西域词汇。一个问题是，汉语没有专门用于音译的汉字。日语有片假名，韩语有自己的字母，但汉语使用同音字，每个字都有其自身含义，这导致在佛教传播过程中，一些简单的音译词，其选用的字义被想当然地理解。例如，“悉檀”最初是梵语“Siddhanta”的音译，后人看到“悉”和“檀”两个字，南岳大师慧思就望文生义，说它意为“一切皆圆满”。而“檀”又是梵语“dana”（布施）的音译，于是“悉檀”就被理解为“处处布施”的意思。再如，今天我们可以看到一些音译词也有这种倾向，比如“高斯”用于男性，“丝”用于女性，“伊丽莎”、“蒂”、“奥黛丽”、“迪文”用于男性。音译时也应考虑用词的性别差异、是否雅致。古代人在翻译印度佛经时就有同样的情况，所以他们使用了更多生僻字，如“迦”、“毗”、“噜”等，以免不敬。这是一个问题，在出现专门用于音译的汉字之前，音译将一直如此，字面意义也必须被考虑的困境中（想象一下用拼音音译，“丝”和“戴戴”就没有区别了）。这给音译带来了一定的麻烦，如果国家不统一音译方法，就可能导致混乱。例如，“Facebook”被音译为“非死不可”，这是约定俗成的音译，虽然粗俗，但大家却都这么说。事实上，如果有官方统一的音译，肯定不会是这样。此外，意译需要创造新词，独立的语素很重要，英语也会造词，大多在生化领域，使用拉丁语和希腊语词根。

Duncan Harris
The obvious answer is that they do use some, although not very many.
Bye-bye has become 拜拜 (bàibài)
Pudding has become 布丁" (bùdīng)

App has become APP /eɪ pi: pi:/
Ibuprofen has become 布洛芬 (bù luò fēn)

显而易见的答案是，他们确实用了一些，尽管不是很多。
“Bye-bye”变成了“拜拜”(bàibài)
“Pudding”变成了“布丁”(bùdīng)
“App”变成了“APP” /eɪ pi: pi:/
“Ibuprofen”变成了“布洛芬”(bù luò fēn)

Tae-Whan Kim
Because Chinese isn’t a phonetic alphabet, they can’t just make up words in a sequence that sounds like the original but also makes sense at the same time.

因为中文不是拼音文字，他们无法简单地按原词发音顺序造出既像原音又有意义的词。

Shigetada Nakajima
We believe that one important reason for this is that Chinese has no phonetic characters. Japanese language uniquely has hiragana and katakana phonograms, while Korean has only hangul, a phonetic alphabet. Therefore, it is easy to import into Japanese and Korean a foreign words and imitate its pronunciation. In the case of Chinese, it is more complicated to do the same thing; first the matching kanji characters with similar pronunciations need to be sexted, and then to consider which of those characters is best suited.

我们认为，其中一个重要的原因是，中文没有表音字符（答者知识不够汉语有注音字母）。日语独特地拥有平假名和片假名这两种音符，而韩语只有韩文（Hangul）这一种拼音字母。因此，将外语词汇输入日语和韩语并模仿其发音很容易。而对于中文来说，做同样的事情则更为复杂；首先需要选择发音相近的汉字，然后考虑这些汉字中哪一个最合适。

In the past, the Japanese translated foreign words into Japanese and created new Japanese words instead of easily mimicking the pronunciation. In recent years, however, the Japanese become lazy and simply imitated the pronunciation without making such efforts, resulting in a flood of so-called katakana characters. It is also foolish that many people are under the illusion that such an attitude is attractive.

过去，日本人会将外语词汇翻译成日语，并创造新的日语词，而不是简单地模仿发音。然而近年来，日本人变得懒惰，只是简单地模仿发音而不做这样的努力，导致了所谓的片假名词汇泛滥。更愚蠢的是，许多人还误以为这种态度很时髦。

X Chen
Actually, this is an example of colonial influence, and I'm surprised not to see this mentioned. Before World War II, the Japanese made significant contributions to converting Western language terms into kanji. The usage of kanji was extremely high even at the time of Japan's surrender, which even led MacArthur to abandon the plan of Latinizing Japanese. After World War II, despite the increase in education rates in Japan, the usage of kanji decreased. Many words from Western languages that had previously been converted into kanji became katakana, which are always confusing for both Japanese and foreign individuals learning Japanese.

实际上，这是一个殖民影响的例子，我惊讶于没有人提到这一点。第二次世界大战前，日本在将西方语言术语转换为汉字方面做出了重大贡献。即使在日本投降时，汉字的使用率也极高，这甚至导致麦克阿瑟放弃了将日语拉丁化的计划。第二次世界大战后，尽管日本的教育普及率提高，但汉字的使用率却下降了。许多之前被转换为汉字的西方语言词汇变成了片假名，这总是让学习日语的日本人和外国人都感到困惑。

Messi Leonel
A phenomenon that people think that Chinese barely has any English loanwords could boils down to the supermacy of China and superior mentality of their people in the recent years, probably cotributed by their goverment policy and education system. China has been attempting to initiate a ‘de-Englishfication’ wave in the past few years. It was ludicrous when the Chinese goverment announced that all the English translation shown in the signboard would be replaced by the Hanyu Pinyin (let’s say a Chinese character ’我‘ , and you pronounce it as ‘wo’）.

人们认为中文几乎没有英语借词这一现象，可能归因于近年来中国的强大及其人民优越的心态，这可能受到政府政策和教育体系的影响。过去几年，中国一直试图发起一场“去英语化”浪潮。当官方宣布所有招牌上的英文翻译都将被汉语拼音取代时（比如说汉字“我”，你读作“wo”），这简直荒谬。

It is ridiculuous, imagine you as a tourist visits China, and you are urgent really want go to pee, you search for toilet by looking at the signboard showing the direction. Instead of getting a clear direction, you may struggle because you can’t read the signboard as all the English translations have been removed, leaving only Hanyu Pinyin. Rather than just putting ‘toilet’ on the signboard, they choose to put ‘ce suo’ (Hanyu Pinyin of 厕所). Until today I still can’t get their intention on this ‘reform’, but if I were those tourists, I probably will get frustrated as this Chinese goverments opinionated and meaningless ‘refrom’ is asinine. Yes it did enhance the strength and confidence of the Chinese, but it is creating unnecessary hassle to the foreigner because of wanting to show the demeanor of their great power.

这很可笑，想象一下你作为游客去中国，急着上厕所，你通过看招牌来寻找方向。结果你找不到清晰的方向，因为你看不懂招牌——所有的英文翻译都被移除了，只剩下汉语拼音。他们不是在招牌上写“toilet”，而是写“ce suo”（厕所的拼音）。直到今天我仍然无法理解他们这种“改革”的意图，但如果我是那些游客，我可能会感到沮丧，因为这种武断且毫无意义的“改革”简直是愚蠢透顶。是的，这确实增强了中国人的力量和自信，但它却因为想展示大国风范而给外国人制造了不必要的麻烦。

To clarify, Chinese did use some English loanwords and they quite comfortable with it. For example, ’披萨‘ is an English loanwords, the Chinese pronounce it as ‘pi sa’. There are numerous of loanwords such as ka fei (coffee), zhi shi (cheese), qiao ke li (chocolate), shan wen zhi (sandwich) and so on. In day-to-day life, those words are frequently used in daily conversation and different occasions. So they did use English loanwords like any other places.

需要澄清的是，中文确实使用了一些英语借词，而且他们对此相当自在。例如，“披萨”就是一个英语借词，中国人读作“pi sa”。还有大量的借词，如“ka fei”（咖啡）、“zhi shi”（奶酪）、“qiao ke li”（巧克力）、“shan wen zhi”（三明治）等等。在日常生活中，这些词在日常对话和不同场合中经常被使用。所以他们确实像其他地方一样使用英语借词。

Kirigawa Yoshikuni
Simply Chinese writing is limited that cannot mimics the loan words, it must always try to translate into Chinese first then use the close approximate letters which is hard and sometimes impossible so that's why. Japanese are lot flexible and superior because we use three types of writing scxts that can mimics the loan words much better than Chinese.

简单来说，中文书写是受限的，无法很好地模仿外来词，它必须先尝试翻译成中文，然后使用发音相近的字母，这很难，有时甚至不可能，这就是原因。日语则灵活得多，也更优越，因为我们使用三种书写系统，能比中文更好地模仿外来词。

Mayoi
There are a couple reasons why Chinese incorporates fewer English loanwords compared to a language like Japanese:

中文吸收的英语借词比日语等语言少，有几个原因：

Translation vs. transliteration: Chinese tends to create new words by translating concepts from English into characters that already exist within the language. Japanese, on the other hand, more often adopts English words directly, adapting them to the Japanese sound system (transliteration). For example, "computer" becomes 电脑 (diàn电 nǎo电) in Chinese, meaning "electric brain", while it's コンピューター (konpyūtā) in Japanese, a transliteration of the English word.
Historical power dynamic: Historically, China has been a cultural and economic powerhouse in East Asia. This means they were often the source of new ideas and vocabulary for Japan. So, in the past, many Japanese loanwords actually came from Chinese, not English.
Cultural exposure: Japan has a longer history of actively engaging with Western culture, especially after the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century. This openness to Western influence led to a larger influx of English loanwords.

意译vs音译：中文倾向于通过将英语概念翻译成语言中已有的汉字来创造新词。而日语则更常直接采用英语单词，将其适应日语的语音系统（音译）。例如，“computer”在中文里变成“电脑”(diànnǎo)，意思是“电子大脑”，而在日语里是“コンピューター”(konpyūtā)，是英语单词的音译。
历史权力格局：历史上，中国一直是东亚的文化和经济强国。这意味着他们过去常常是向日本输出新思想和词汇的源头。因此，在过去，许多日语借词实际上来自中文，而不是英语。
文化接触：日本有着更长的历史，积极地与西方文化接触，尤其是在19世纪明治维新之后。这种对西方影响的开放态度导致了大量英语借词的涌入。

While Chinese incorporates fewer English loanwords overall, it's important to note that English loanwords are still present in the language. These loanwords are most commonly used for new concepts or products that don't have direct equivalents in Chinese characters. Additionally, the use of loanwords can vary depending on the domain of speech. For example, technical fields like business and technology might be more likely to use English loanwords than everyday conversation.

虽然中文总体上吸收的英语借词较少，但重要的是要指出，英语借词在中文中仍然存在。这些借词最常用于那些在汉字中没有直接对应概念或产品的新生事物。此外，借词的使用也可能因说话领域而异。例如，商业和技术等专业领域可能比日常对话更有可能使用英语借词。