List of loanwords in Chinese

Loanwords have entered written and spoken Chinese from many sources, including ancient peoples whose descendants now speak Chinese. In addition to phonetic differences, varieties of Chinese such as Cantonese and Shanghainese often have distinct words and phrases left from their original languages which they continue to use in daily life and sometimes even in Mandarin. As a result of long-term direct relationships with northern peoples, starting from the Qin-Han period, there have been many exchanges of words. In addition, there were times when northern tribes dominated China. As a result, there are also a number of loanwords from nearby languages such as various Turkic languages, Mongolian, and Manchu.
Throughout China, Buddhism has also introduced words from Sanskrit and Pali. More recently, foreign invasion and trade since the First and Second Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century has led to prolonged contact with English, French, and Japanese. Although politically minded language reform under the Republic and People's Republic of China have generally preferred to use calques and neologisms in place of loanwords, a growing number particularly from American English have become current in modern Chinese. On the mainland, transcription into Chinese characters in official media and publications is directed by the Proper Names and Translation Service of the Xinhua News Agency and its reference work Names of the World's Peoples.
Since Hong Kong was under British control until 1997, Hong Kong Cantonese borrowed many words from English such as 巴士, 的士, 芝士, and 麥當勞/麦当劳, and such loanwords have been adopted into Mandarin, despite them sounding much less similar to the English words than the Cantonese versions.
Foreign businesses and products are usually free to choose their own transliterations and typically select ones with positive connotations and phonetic similarity to their products: for example, 宜家 is "proper home". Owing to antonomasia and genericization, these can then enter general Chinese usage: for example Coca-Cola's has led to becoming the common Chinese noun for all colas.
Since the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, relations between the ROC and PRC had been hostile, thus communication between Taiwan and mainland China became limited. For that reason, many loanwords and proper names became quite different from each other. For example, "cheese" in mainland China is, while cheese in Taiwan is.

Sanskrit

The majority of Sanskrit loanwords entered Chinese in and before the Tang dyansty. As such, Baxter's transcription for Middle Chinese is provided for all terms. Many of the following, such as 尸陀林 and 舍利子, are hybrids between a loaned element and a native element, and some terms may have irregular pronunciations to better match the original Sanskrit pronunciation. This is most famous in the conclusion mantra of the Heart Sutra:
Which is rendered in Chinese as:

Chinese Word	Pinyin	Baxter	Meaning	Original word	Original pronunciation	Original meaning
阿彌陀佛	,	'a mjie da bjut	Amitābha	अमिताभ		limitless light
波羅蜜多		pa la mjit ta		पारमिता		perfection
剎那		tsrhaet na	instant	क्षण		instant
訶子		xa tsi^X	chebulic myrobalan	हरीतकी
涅槃		net ban	nirvana	निर्वाण		nirvana
蘋果			apple	बिम्बा		apple
菩提		bu dej	bodhi	बोधि		supreme knowledge
舍利子		syae^H lij^H tsi^X	relic;	शरीर		body
尸陀林		syij da lim	shmashana	शीत		cold
曇花		dom xwae	epiphyllum	उदुम्बर		cluster fig tree
須彌山		sju mjie srean	Mt. Sumeru	सुमेरु		Mt. Sumeru
閻魔羅闍		yem ma la dzyae	Yamaraja	यमराज		Yamaraja

English

Chinese words of English origin have become more common in mainland China during its reform and opening and resultant increased contact with the West. Note that some of the words below originated in other languages but may have arrived in Chinese via English. English acronyms are sometimes borrowed into Chinese without any transcription into Chinese characters; for example "IT", "PPT", "GDP", "APP", "KTV", or "DVD". A rarer occurrence is the blending of the Latin alphabet with Chinese characters, as in "卡拉OK", “T恤”, "IP卡". In some instances, the loanwords exists side by side with neologisms that translate the meaning of the concept into existing Chinese morphemes. For instance, while the loanword for 'penicillin' is 盘尼西林, a neologism that 'translates' the word was later coined,, which means 'blue/green mold extract/essence'. In contemporary Chinese, neologisms using native Chinese morphemes tend to be favored over loanwords that are transliterations. In the case of penicillin, the term 青霉素 is used almost exclusively, while 盘尼西林 is viewed as an early 20th century relic. Similarly, 'science' is now known as 'subject/specialty study' rather than, though it should be pointed out that the characters 科学 were actually coined in the late 19th century by the Japanese as a kanji compound.

Malay

These words are only used in Singapore and Malaysia.

Malay	Pinyin	Chinese	Meaning	Notes
tolong			help
kampung			village
sagu			sago	sagu + 米
tumpang			to stay with somebody
tanjung			cape