Writing foreign terms in Chinese
用汉字表示外语词汇
Christophoer D. Godwin 高德文

Abstract 摘要
The comparative rarity of foreign loans in Chinese has often been remarked on. Novotna (1967), for example, reports finding about 650 loanwords from European languages, with a further 800 hybrids (loanblends). He attributes the smallness of these figures to various linguistic factors: ‘the impermeability of the Chinese phonemic system’ and ‘the phonoideographic character of Chinese writing’. Novotna made his count ‘naturally excluding geographic names’. The present paper aims to show that the study of sinified names, personal and commercial as well as geographic, can reveal certain interesting facts about the Chinese script.

外来语虽然在汉语比较少见，可是＂中文化＂的外来人名，地名和消费品名越来越多．本论文所分析的是香港报纸上怎样用汉字表示外国名称，希望就以下两个问题加以讨论：一．外来语＂中文化＂时，有没有一套特定的字用来表示外语的声音？二．汉字是一种含义的文字．外来语被＂音译＂时所选用的汉字除了表音外，还能否表义？

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