This study is about the adoption and sinicization of foreign words in China. It focuses on the types of Mandarin loanwords. Some Mandarin loanwords were temporarily produced, but they disappeared some time later, because those words had not been used frequently by Mandarin speakers in their daily life. Many loanwords belonging to this situation are usually pure phonetic loans(PPL), since they do not fit the nature of Chinese characters. Chinese character is ideograph, in which meaning is the most important element, but PPL simply ignored the meaning of Chinese characters. On the other hand, some types of Mandarin loanwords have been used well in Chinese people’s daily life for the long time. They usually fit the nature of Chinese characters. The first example is one kind of phonetic loans, which is called yinyijianyi(音意兼译). They consider both the pronunciation of the source language and the meaning of the Chinese characters. The next example is the types of translating the meaning of the loanword. This kind of loanword can be classified into two types, namely semantic loan and loan translation. The formal translates the concept or things of source language, and the latter translates the morphemes which consist of the source language word. Both types consider the meaning in priority. The last example is graphic loan, which only borrows the characters of source language. They are usually borrowed from Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese. Mandarin speakers pronounce those loanwords as Mandarin pronunciation of the characters, and change the shape of characters as Chinese style. Thus, this kind of loanword is very familiar to Mandarin speakers, and survives well after borrowed into China.

본고는 중국의 외국어 수용 방식에 대한 고찰이다. 논의는 수용 방식에 따라 중국어 어휘 에서 부정적인 영향을 미치는 경우와 반대로 중국화를 통해 중국어 어휘로 잘 정착하는 경우를 나누어 다루고 있다. 부정적 기능을 하는 어휘는 일시적으로 어휘의 공백을 채우기 위해 생겨났지만 언중의 호응을 얻지 못해 사멸하는 경우와 여러 가지 변체로 인해 언어생활에 혼란을 일으키는 경우라고 할 수 있다. 중국화를 통해 잘 정착하는 어휘는 대체로 중국의 공식 서사체계인 한자의 본질인 표의 기능의 장점을 최대한 살려 언중에게 오래도록 애용됨으로써 토착화에 성공하는 경우라고 할 수 있다. 이는 비록 중국의 사례에 대한 논의지만 음역어의 남용으로 정확한 맞춤법조차 알기 어려운 우리 언어생활에도 시사하는 바가 있을 것이다.