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Words of Chinese origin have entered European languages, including English. Most of these were direct loanwords from various varieties of Chinese.However, Chinese words have also entered indirectly via other languages, particularly Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, that have all used Chinese characters at some point and contain a large number of Chinese loanwords.
Within the Chinese language, the same character 公 (gōng) is used as a noun in the terms for respected male relatives (e.g. 老公, lǎogōng, "husband", and 外公, wàigōng, "maternal grandfather") and as an adjective in the terms for various male animals (e.g. 公牛, gōngniú, "bull", and 公羊, gōngyáng, "ram" or "billy goat").
Kan (Chinese: 姦; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: kàn), literally meaning fuck, is the most common but grossly vulgar profanity in Hokkien. It's sometimes also written as 幹. It is considered to be the national swear word in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore. Used in a manner similar to the English word fuck, kan can express dismay, disgrace, and disapproval ...
The term jook-sing evolved from zuk-gong (竹杠; zhugang in Mandarin) which means a "bamboo pole" or "rod". Since gong (杠) is a Cantonese homophone of the inauspicious word 降 which means "descend" or "downward", it is replaced with sing (升), which means "ascend" or "upward".
There are other exonyms that are a combination of translation and transcription (meaning and sound) of the endonym. For example, Hamburg is written as 汉堡 (Hànbǎo), in which the second character 堡 (bǎo, fort, castle), is a translation of the German "burg", (fortress, castle); and the first character 汉 (Hàn) is a transcription of "Ham ...
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 (pánníxīlín), a neologism that 'translates' the word was later coined, 青霉素 (qīngméisù), which means 'blue/green mold ...
"row" — objects which form lines (words 詞 / 词, etc.); occupations in a field (idiom, spoken language); 行 could also be pronounced as xíng, see below. 盒: hé hap6: hap6 objects in a small "box" or case (e.g. mooncakes, tapes) 戶 / 户: 户: hù wu6: wu6 households (户 is common in handwritten Traditional Chinese) — household ...
As with function words, there are many differences between the content words of Classical Chinese and those of Baihua. Below are synonyms used in the two registers. Some Classical Chinese words can have more than one meaning. However, Classical Chinese words still exist among many chengyu, or Chinese idioms.