Chinese loanwords facts for kids

Chinese loanwords are words that have been borrowed from the Chinese language into other languages. This is especially true for languages in East Asia, like Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.

Long ago, China shared its writing system with these countries. Because of this, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese ended up borrowing many Chinese words. Even though these languages have very different ways of making sounds, they all have their own ways of saying these borrowed Chinese words. These different pronunciations are called Sino-Xenic pronunciations. It's a bit like how words borrowed from Latin or French sound different when spoken in English. For example, the word "pizza" sounds different in English than it does in Italian!

At one time, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese all used Chinese characters for writing. Today, Japanese is the only one of these languages that still uses Chinese characters in everyday life. In Japanese, these characters are called kanji. They are used to write both native Japanese words and the Chinese words that were borrowed.

Korean now mostly uses its own alphabet called hangul. However, Koreans sometimes use Chinese characters, called hanja, especially for Chinese loanwords when the meaning might be unclear if only written in hangul. They also use hanja when writing their own names.

Vietnamese no longer uses Chinese characters at all. Instead, they use the Latin alphabet, which is the same alphabet English uses. In Vietnamese, this writing system is called chữ Quốc ngữ. Today, Chinese characters are mostly seen as decoration in Vietnam, and only a few people study them.

How Chinese words sound in East Asian languages

This chart shows how some Chinese words are pronounced in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. You can see how they are similar but also different!