Lexical Borrowing from English in the Internet Era

The paper focuses mainly on the Chinese language evolution and transformation due to the influence of computer science in the Internet era. Internet started spreading through China in the 1980s, bringing with it an unprecedented degree of innovation. The impact of this medium was so great that it galvanized the other means of information, as can be seen from the fact that at present almost all Chinese newspapers provide an online edition. Although, during the centuries, Chinese lexicon has already absorbed a large number of loans, the recent phenomenon is causing huge changes in the Chinese morphology and in its synonymic and stylistic systems as well. In the evolution of modern Chinese, the rapid advancement of computing technology and global communication play a substantial role in the acquisition of new terms and borrowings especially from English. Since Chinese has a logographic script, words in the roman script must be transformed into expressions in Chinese characters when they are introduced into Chinese. Beside, additional changes have been brought about the use of acronyms, and other alphabetic short forms (such as text messages) especially in Internet communication. The Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), and, more generally, the new electronic communication, including the chat and SMS varieties - called Technically Mediated Communication (TMC) being now available many devices - is a sector that has recently taken on importance not only from the language point of view but also from that of sociolinguistics. At the same time Chinese language purists are making a determined effort to preserve the cultural identity of the Chinese language, which is perceived as being threatened by a contamination with Internet English.