The present study was undertaken to explore and describe the lexical borrowing in
China English. By doing so, it was hoped, a better understanding could also be obtained
of the lexical nativization of English, of which lexical borrowing is a crucial part, in the
Chinese context.
The Data
The data in this study were collected from two English newspapers in China,
China Daily and Beijing Weekend. First published in 1981, China Daily is China’s
leading English newspapers. It is still the country’s only national English newspaper
published daily. Launched in 1991, Beijing Weekend is also a publication of China Daily
Newspaper Group, and comes out every Friday.
Similar to major newspapers in any language with a national and international
circulation, China Daily has a great deal of coverage of important events in China and
around the world. Visits by Chinese leaders to foreign countries, important policies of
the Chinese government, fightings in Iraq, and hurricanes in the US are all featured in the
stories regularly or frequently carried in China Daily. On the other hand, Beijing
Weekend targets primarily the English speakers residing in this city, be they native or
nonnative. It features shopping, travel, performances, and dinning in and round the
nation’s capital, as well as various aspects of the average Beijinger’s life.
It is considered that the English found in these newspapers by the China Daily
group, the leading English newspaper group in China, represents the Chinese variety of
English, in vocabulary as well as grammar, which was mainly why these two newspapers
were chosen.
Convention