This is about an earlier part of the discussion, but I wanted to make a small point. Some people were speculating that 浪漫 might have been borrowed from Chinese. Let's not go overboard! There are a few Chinese loan words in English but relatively few compared to the number we've borrowed from other Western languages, mainly Latin and Norman French. Let's give credit where it's due. In a few hundred years world history's probably going to credit Chinese civilization with everything. For now, lets stick with known facts about Western History. Chinese contact with the West had very little influence on the language in the past. "Romantic" for example, comes from the French "romantique." Spanish, Italian and a list of other languages have borrowed the term but it's a French original.
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June 20, 2009 at 11:38 PMThis is about an earlier part of the discussion, but I wanted to make a small point. Some people were speculating that 浪漫 might have been borrowed from Chinese. Let's not go overboard! There are a few Chinese loan words in English but relatively few compared to the number we've borrowed from other Western languages, mainly Latin and Norman French. Let's give credit where it's due. In a few hundred years world history's probably going to credit Chinese civilization with everything. For now, lets stick with known facts about Western History. Chinese contact with the West had very little influence on the language in the past. "Romantic" for example, comes from the French "romantique." Spanish, Italian and a list of other languages have borrowed the term but it's a French original.