The Influence of English on Chinese

The Language Log has written another interesting post regarding the Chinese language, only this time it is about the influence (or invasion, depending on your perspective) of English on Chinese.  Interestingly, the arguments advocating for the purity of language free from foreign influence are usually heard in countries such as France and South Korea; rarely do I hear these ideas in China. 

In fact, foreign influence on Chinese language has a long historical precedence.  In the nineteenth century, China absorbed much of the vocabulary of modernity from Japan.  Japan took western concepts such as nation-state, economy, etc. and adapted them to their language.  China later absorbed these recycled terms into its own language (similarities between Chinese characters and Japanese kanji facilitated this exchange, see Wikipedia for more detail).

Linguistically speaking, the foreign influence on Chinese is multifaceted.  Chinese have different ways of adapted English vocabulary to Chinese script.  (In fact, Carleton college professor Mark Hansell is one of the most well known scholars on this area.)  This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but I thought I would go over some major ones, as well as ones not covered in linguistics textbooks. 

Direct transfer:
In popular culture, there are terms that are used directly from English

Out: out of fashion
Ex: Ge, ni out le
Translation: Man, you're out/out of fashion

High: crazy, intoxicated, often used in the context of having fun (partying, drinking, karaoke), and not necessarily in reference to drugs
Ex: Ni men wan'er de hen high
Translation: You guys were really crazy/partied hard

Fashion: fashionable, often used in humorous contexts, emphasis is given when spoken in highly accented manner or with a heavy dialectal influence (in many southern dialects, the f is pronounced like h)
Ex: Ta hen fashion

Translation: He is very fashionable

PPT: power point presentation
It is interesting how technology has affected language. This has spawned a number of similar terms such as PS for Photoshop; the full English name is too difficult for many Chinese to say and this abbreviation is also much easier than translating the entire word into Chinese.

Acronyms/abbreviations:
The usage of acronyms has already emerged in internet forums to express slang and profanity.  These are abbreviations for Chinese terms, not English ones.  Examples include:
BT: bian tai (perverted)
MM: mei mei (sister/young woman)
LZ: lou zhu (originator of a post)
NB: niu bi (can mean arrogant/cocky, or confident, daring, impressive.  This, however, is a difficult term to translate. For more, see the explanation from Insideoutchina's post)
TMD: ta ma de (goddamn)

In formal Chinese, terms like GDP and WTO are often just expressed as the acronym, as the acronym itself is shorter than the full proper name, but when explained, Chinese is used. 

For a more comprehensive list, see blog chinaSMACK's glossary.

Direct translation:
For some English words, Chinese speakers translate the literal meaning of the word and use it as a replacement. 
re gou: hot dog (first character means hot, the second means dog)

Transliteration:
For other words, Chinese have chosen characters that sound like the original English
mai ke feng: microphone (however, there is also the synonym hua tong, which does not fit under this category)
han bao: hamburger
pai dui: party
fen si: fans (as in a fan of a movie star)

Of course, these are not all black and white.  There are a number of interesting mixes in both formal and slang Chinese.  Words such as yin te wang (internet) mix transliteration with the word wang, which means web/network.  Among slang terms, there are also compounds that mix one letter abbreviations with Chinese characters such as: niu B (see above), zhuang bility (where zhuang bi means to act cool/tough, adding -bility makes it a noun), and sha B (dumbass).