Foreign words in the modern chinese language

[kwonjangho]

every day new words are introduced into different languages. its the same in chinese. western words such as gene (ji yin) or clone (ke lon) have been integrated into the chinese language. but where do these words come from? who made this words? who decided to pu ji and yin together to mean gene?

most other languages do not have this problem because they have an alphabet system. foreign words are written according to what they sound like, using their alphabet systems. but chinese does not have an alphabet. so who creates these new words? is it the government? is it scholars? do scientists of groups of people have a meeting and decide to call this word ji yin?

foreign names of companies and such have chinese english names, like ken de ji (KFC), or Mai dang lao (Mc Donalds) and obviously these names are made by the company themselves. but what about everyday words? words, not names, which arent owned by a company or a person?

if any body has any idea, please reply.

Kwon

[demoore]

Here is a list of foreign words in Chinese:
http://www.chinese-tools.com/characters ... words.html

[kwonjangho]

wow, thanks for that list. that's pretty cool.

anyone have any idea where these words come from? who came up with these words?

[jane]

As a Chinese, I think the new word introduced to China was created by the first person who introduce it.

for the words like "ji yin(gene)", I believe when the scientist introduce the concept of GENE to chinese, he must let readers understand how to pronounce it. It very difficult to creat a new word to show what GENE is by old chinese. he choose the two chinese word only have same pronouncition as GENE.

but sometimes an new word is different in China Inland and Taiwan. a country like Newzeland, in inland we call it "xin xi lan", but in Taiwan they call it "new xi lan". Because we translate the word "new" while Taiwan just pronounce it.

it is first time i write something in English, hope it is clear.