Kilo Lingo
Mandarin grammar Part of Chapter 11

CEFR A2

3 min read

Test yourself (19 questions)

Mandarin Loanwords: 咖啡, 沙发, 巧克力 and More

By Michael McGettrick and Wee Khang LinUpdated 12 October 2026

Mandarin has no cognates with English: the two languages share no ancestor. What it has is loanwords, made in three ways. Some copy the sound, some mix a sound with a meaning, and most build the new word from characters that already mean something.

Quick check

Three quick questions on what you have just read. The full practice is further down.

Pick the right one

0/3

What does the 电 (diàn) in each word mean?

  1. 电脑 (diànnǎo, computer)

  2. 电视 (diànshì, television)

  3. 电影 (diànyǐng, film)

The whole system on one screen

The colours stay the same all page long:

borrowed for the soundbuilt from meaningWhat do the colours mean?
KindWordPinyinWhat the parts do
By soundkāfēisound like "coffee"
Sound + meaningpíjiǔ"beer" sound + alcohol
From meaningdiànnǎoelectric + brain: computer

Sound loans are the ones you can almost hear. Meaning loans are the ones you can read, once you know the characters.

Pure soundPure meaning
  1. 咖啡kāfēi: coffee
  2. 幽默yōumò: humour, with a wink
  3. 啤酒píjiǔ: beer sound + alcohol
  4. 电脑diànnǎo: electric brain

Borrowed by sound

borrowed for the soundWhat do the colours mean?

Mandarin picks characters that sound roughly right and accepts that, together, they mean nothing:

WordPinyinEnglishThe characters say
kāfēicoffeenothing: kept for this job
shāfāsofasand-send
qiǎokèlìchocolateskilful-overcome-strength
沙shāshālāsaladsand-pull
吉jíjítāguitarlucky-he
  • coffeecoffee
  • chocolatechocolate
  • salad沙shāsalad

Do not look for meaning here. (shāfā) is not a comment on sofas; it is two syllables that sounded about right. This trips up learners who have been taught, correctly, that characters carry meaning: in a sound loan they deliberately do not.

The tones are Mandarin's own, so learn them like any other word: (kāfēi) is two first tones, and (qiǎokèlì) is third, fourth, fourth.

Some sound loans pick characters with a nod to the meaning. (yōumò), humour, sounds like the English and reads as "deep and silent", a fair description of the dry kind. The writer Lin Yutang chose it as the word for humour in 1924, and it stuck.

Half sound, half meaning

borrowed for the soundbuilt from meaningWhat do the colours mean?

A common compromise: one syllable carries the sound, and a native character says what kind of thing it is.

WordPinyinEnglishParts
píjiǔbeer"beer" + alcohol
kǎchēlorry"car" + vehicle
YīngguóBritain"England" + country
MěiguóAmerica"America" + country
FǎguóFrance"France" + country

The (kǎ) in (kǎchē) is usually explained as the English "car", which in Mandarin narrowed to mean a lorry.

The country names shorten an older, longer sound loan to its first syllable: 英 (yīng) from 英吉利 (Yīngjílì), (měi) from 利 (Měilìjiān), (fǎ) from 兰 (Fǎlánxī). Then 国 (guó), country, finishes the word. (měi) does mean beautiful, but in (Měiguó) it is a sound, and nobody hears a compliment.

Built from meaning

built from meaningWhat do the colours mean?

Far more common, and far more useful. Mandarin builds the new word from characters that already mean something:

WordPinyinLiterallyEnglish
diànnǎoelectric braincomputer
diànhuàelectric speechtelephone
diànyǐngelectric shadowfilm
diànshìelectric visiontelevision
huǒchēfire vehicletrain
fēijīflying machineaeroplane
shǒujīhand machinemobile phone
  • computercomputer
  • traintrain
  • mobile phonemobile phone

Look at (diàn), electric: brain, speech, shadow, vision. Learn one character and four words come with it. 机 (jī), machine, does the same for (fēijī) and (shǒujī).

A few meaning loans translate the foreign word piece by piece: 篮 (lánqiú) is basket-ball. Most simply describe the thing, as (huǒchē) describes the first steam trains.

When a sound loan and a meaning word compete, meaning often wins. The telephone arrived as (délǜfēng), by sound, and lost to (diànhuà).

Traps

TrapExampleWhy
finding meaning (shāfā)sand-send: the characters are sounds
English sounds (kāfēi)the loan has Mandarin tones
expecting a loan (diànnǎo)most new words are built from meaning
missing the sound (Měiguó) (měi) is a sound here, not "beautiful"

What to do next

  1. Do the drill below.
  2. Next time you meet a word whose characters make no sense together, say it aloud and listen for an English word.
  3. Then read Mandarin false friends, and the suffixes in 性 (xìng) and 化 (huà) that build words from parts.

Practise: test yourself

Sort into groups

0/6

How was each word made?

Tap a word, then the group it belongs in.

Matching

0/5

These were borrowed by sound. Match each to the English word it came from.

Matching

0/5

These are built from meaning. Match each to what its parts say.

Pick the right one

0/3

What does the 电 (diàn) in each word mean?

  1. 电脑 (diànnǎo, computer)

  2. 电视 (diànshì, television)

  3. 电影 (diànyǐng, film)

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Frequently asked questions

Does Mandarin have cognates with English?
No. Cognates come from a shared ancestor, and Mandarin and English have none: one is Sino-Tibetan, the other Indo-European. What they share is modern borrowing, almost all of it into Mandarin and almost all of it from the last two centuries. So Mandarin vocabulary has to be learned rather than decoded.
How does Mandarin borrow a foreign word by sound?
It picks characters that sound roughly like the foreign word. Coffee became (kāfēi), two characters used for almost nothing else. Sofa became (shāfā), literally sand-send, which means nothing and is not meant to. Chocolate became (qiǎokèlì). Do not look for meaning in a sound loan: there is none.
What is a meaning-borrowing in Mandarin?
Instead of copying the sound, Mandarin builds a new word from characters that already mean something. A computer is (diànnǎo), an electric brain; a telephone is (diànhuà), electric speech; a train is (huǒchē), a fire vehicle. The parts explain the whole, so these are much easier to remember.
Which is more common in Mandarin, sound-borrowing or meaning-borrowing?
Meaning-borrowing, by a distance. Sound loans cluster in brand names, foreign place names, food and drink. Technical words are nearly always built from native parts, and sometimes a meaning word pushes a sound loan out: the early (délǜfēng) for telephone lost to (diànhuà).
Why do , and end in 国 (guó)?
They are half and half. The first syllable is a shortened sound loan, 英 (yīng) from 英吉利 (Yīngjílì), England, (měi) from 利 (Měilìjiān), America, (fǎ) from 兰 (Fǎlánxī), France, and 国 (guó), country, says what kind of thing it is. That is why (Měiguó) is not 'the beautiful country' in anyone's mind.