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How and when "pinyin" became an English word, or not yet? How to tell?

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  • Welcome to ELL! Why do you believe it is (or might be) an English word? Did you look in a dictionary?
    – ColleenV
    Feb 11, 2015 at 20:16
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    Late 1970's? NGrams: books.google.com/ngrams/…
    – Adam
    Feb 11, 2015 at 20:27
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    OED's first citation is from McGraw-Hill Mod. Chinese-Eng. Dict, 1963. As to how, they say it's Chinese pīnyīn < pīn to put together + yīn sound. For earlier use of the Chinese word in an English context compare: 1959 W. Simon Chinese Radicals & Phonetics rev. ed. p432 A further Scheme, apparently to be regarded as final,..on 11th February 1958 was approved by the Fifth Session of the First National People's Congress. Its Chinese name is Hanyu-Pinyin-Fang'an (Chinese Language Spelling Scheme). Feb 11, 2015 at 20:35
  • @ColleenV in Google translation, "pinyin" as English gives the correct Chinese characters.
    – PdotWang
    Feb 11, 2015 at 20:52
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    Seems like Google translates it successfully either way: translate.google.com/#en/zh-CN/pinyin OR translate.google.com/#auto/en/%E6%8B%BC%E9%9F%B3
    – Adam
    Feb 11, 2015 at 21:04

2 Answers 2

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Etymonline claims 1963:

pinyin (n.) system of Romanized spelling for Chinese, 1963, from Chinese pinyin "to spell, to combine sounds into syllables," from pin "put together" + yin "sound, tone." Adopted officially by the People's Republic of China in 1958. Outside China gradually superseding the 19c. Wade-Giles system (Mao Tse-tung is Wade-Giles, Mao Zedong is pinyin).

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  • It's interesting to me that it's not capitalized. Shouldn't it be as the proper name of a system?
    – ColleenV
    Feb 11, 2015 at 22:21
  • I'm assuming it's not a proper name. It's just a compound of two common nouns. Feb 12, 2015 at 0:53
  • I'm not saying it's wrong, just odd given the definition and that Romaji is typically capitalized when I see it. Actually looking at more examples, I'm thinking it shouldn't be capitalized. Back when I do more research
    – ColleenV
    Feb 12, 2015 at 1:42
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No, I do not consider pinyin to be an English word.

You will know that pinyin has become an English word when you see native speakers doing all of the following:

  • deriving other words from pinyin (by using English prefixes and suffixes),
  • neither underlining "pinyin", nor putting it in quotes, nor italicizing it.
  • not feeling the need to define the word shortly before or after using it for the first time.

Contrary to catiya's comment, it is easy to find native speakers using esoteric words without immediately defining the terms. And these words have related words that differ only in prefixes and suffixes. For example:

  • esoteric, esoterica
  • niche, niches (Note that the American English version of the word is pronounced differently from the French version, niche. The French version is indicated by italicization.)
  • viscous, inviscid, viscosity
  • difference, differential, differentiable, differentiability
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    By that argument, half of the words used (in English) would not be English words... a word being rare and not commonly recognized doesn't mean it isn't a word... it just means it has a niche audience.
    – Catija
    Feb 11, 2015 at 22:20
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    I'm sorry, but I don't consider any of those words you just listed to be particularly esoteric. I'll just put on my shakos and march on out of here, though. No need for argument.
    – Catija
    Feb 11, 2015 at 23:36
  • 'niche' Eng is pronounced differently? Only by the illiterate. It doesn't rhyme with rich. Feb 12, 2015 at 8:43
  • @Tetsujin Actually, niche has been anglicized and it is fairly common for educated people to pronounce it nitch without anyone blinking an eye. Unless someone is of course itching to start the toe-may-toe / toe-mah-toe debate. I still say nouveau riche ala Français though :) Most dictionaries list both pronunciations, with nitch predominate when you restrict your search to AmE.
    – ColleenV
    Feb 12, 2015 at 21:12

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