Chinese měiguórén for example, is derived from a word for the United States, měiguó, where měi is an abbreviation for Yàměilìjiā " America " and guó is " country ".

Martin had to invent the word quanli to translate the Western concept of " rights " in the process of translating Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law into classical Chinese.

And yet, Searle points out, " I don't speak a word of Chinese.

Although it is usually translated as " element ", the Chinese word xing literally means something like " changing states of being ", " permutations " or " metamorphoses of being ".

( For example, " tiānqì ", literally " sky breath ", is the ordinary Chinese word for " weather ").

Its name derives from the Sanskrit word for " wheel " or " turning " ( चक ् र ं, pronounced in Hindi ; Pali: cakka चक ् क, Oriya: ଚକ ୍ ର, Malayalam: ചക ് ര ം, Thai: จ ั กระ, Telugu: చక ్ రo, Tamil: சக ் கரம ், Kannada: ಚಕ ್ ರ, Chinese: 輪 / 轮, pinyin: lún,, Wylie: khor lo ).

According to Needham, though there is no way of answering the question of whether the crossbow first arose among the cultures neighboring ancient China before the rise of Chinese culture in their midst, or whether it spread outwards from China to all the environing peoples, the former seems the more probable hypothesis given linguistic evidence, which posits that the Chinese word for ' crossbow ' came from an Austroasiatic language.

An opposite example is the case of Chinese, whose variations such as Mandarin and Cantonese are often called dialects and not languages, despite their mutual unintelligibility, because the word for them in Mandarin, 方言 fāngyán, was mistranslated as " dialect " because it meant " regional speech ".

The word for four in Chinese is a homophone of the word for death and is considered unlucky ; it is probable that red fours are of Indian origin.

The root Chinese word 道 " way, path " is romanized tao in the older Wade – Giles system and dào in the modern Pinyin system.

In loanword terminology, English Taoism / Daoism is a " calque ", " loan-rendering ", or " hybrid " that blends a borrowed word with a native element, for example, chopstick ) blends Chinese Pidgin English chop (< Cantonese kàp, pinyin kuài 快 " fast ; quick ") with English stick.

" The semantics of this Chinese word resemble English virtue, which developed from a ( now archaic ) sense of " inner potency " or " divine power " ( as in " healing virtue of a drug ") to the modern meaning of " moral excellence " or " goodness.

The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of people with common roots, particularly movements of an involuntary nature, such as the expulsion of Jews from the Middle East, the African Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the southern Chinese during the coolie slave trade, or the century-long exile of the Messenians under Spartan rule.

As early as the 7th century the word 天皇 ( which can be read either as sumera no mikoto, divine order, or as tennō, Heavenly Emperor, the latter being derived from a Tang Chinese term referring to the Pole star around which all other stars revolve ) began to be used.

Hiragana gave written expression to the spoken word and, with it, to the rise in Japan's famous vernacular literature, much of it written by court women who had not been trained in Chinese as had their male counterparts.

According to Chinese sources, the meaning of the word Tūjué was " combat helmet " ( 兜鍪 ; Pinyin: dōumóu, Wade-Giles: tou-mou ), reportedly because the shape of the Jinshan ( 金山 jīnshān, Altai Mountains ), where they lived, was similar to a combat helmet-hence they called themselves 突厥 ( Tūjué / T ' u-chüeh ).

The principal types of graphemes are logograms, which represent words or morphemes ( for example, Chinese characters, or the ampersand & representing the English word and ; also Arabic numerals ); syllabic characters, representing syllables ( as in Japanese kana ); and alphabetic letters, corresponding roughly to phonemes ( see next section ).

For instance, the Arabic word naft transitioned from denoting naphta to denoting gunpowder, and the Chinese word pao evolved from meaning catapult to referring to cannon.

Xiongnu is the modern Mandarin Chinese pronunciation, while it is pronounced as " Hung-no " in modern Cantonese Chinese and the word is reconstructed to be pronounced as " Hunnu " in classical Chinese.

And, after becoming the right-hand man of Enver Pasha, he is sent by the latter to pave the way for a new Turkish Empire embracing `` the union of all Turks throughout Central Asia from Adrianople to the Chinese oases on the Silk Trade Route ''.

At Geneva in 1954, to get the war in Indo-China settled, the British and French gave in to Russian and Communist Chinese demands and agreed to the setting up of a Communist state, North Viet Nam -- which then, predictably, became a base for Communist operations against neighboring South Viet Nam and Laos.

Although modern scholars have expressed surprise that `` the simple magic square of three '', a mere `` mathematical puzzle '', was able to exert a considerable influence on the minds and imaginations of the cultured Chinese for so many centuries, they could have found most of the answers right within the square itself.

Such an analysis speedily reveals why the middle number of the Lo Shu, 5, was so vitally significant for the Chinese ever since the earliest hints that they had a knowledge of this diagram.

The tremendous emphasis on the 5 in the Lo Shu square -- for purely mathematical reasons -- and the fact that this number so neatly symbolized the heart and center of the universe, could well explain why the Old Chinese seem to have so revered the number 5, and why they put so much stress on the concept of Centrality.

Although the primary mathematical properties of the middle number at the center of the Lo Shu, and the interrelation of all the other numbers to it, might seem enough to account for the deep fascination which the Lo Shu held for the Old Chinese philosophers, this was actually only a beginning of wonders.

but in this respect it was merely following the accepted Chinese convention for all maps.

); its design was planned by the government of the day ; and it places individual letters in syllable clusters with equal dimensions, in the same way as Chinese characters, to allow for mixed-script writing ( one syllable always takes up one type-space no matter how many letters get stacked into building that one sound-block ).

While Zhuyin is not used as a mainstream writing system, it is still often used in ways similar to a romanization system — that is, for aiding in pronunciation and as an input method for Chinese characters on computers and cellphones.

From the 2000s many Chinese have settled and started up small businesses, while at least as many have come as workforce for large ( construction or other ) enterprises.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited Angola in June 2006, offering a US $ 9 billion loan for infrastructure improvements in return for petroleum.

The first known references to mouth rinsing is in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, about 2700 BC, for treatment of gingivitis.

As of early 2011, trade with China is dominated by imports of Chinese goods and accounts for about 10 percent of Armenia's foreign trade.

There is, however, speculation that local criminal gangs barter abalone illegally with Chinese nationals in exchange for chemicals used in the production of drugs, reducing the need for the use of money and hence avoiding money laundering difficulties.

* 1951 – Tibetan delegates to the Central People's Government arrive in Beijing and draft a Seventeen Point Agreement for Chinese sovereignty and Tibetan autonomy.

It was also widely used by the Chinese for its healing chemicals, curing illnesses such as infections, rashes, and migraines.

Restaurants ( along with Chinese laundries ) provided an ethnic niche for small businesses at a time when the Chinese people were excluded from most jobs in the wage economy by ethnic discrimination or lack of language fluency.

Sometimes the Chinese troops would place small projectiles within the barrel that would also be projected when the gunpowder was lit, but most of the explosive force would create flames.

The original predecessor of all firearms, the Chinese fire lance and European hand cannon were loaded with gunpowder and the shot ( initially lead shot, later replaced by cast iron ) through the muzzle, while a fuse was placed at the rear.

In the centuries following the Chinese discovery, gunpowder weapons began appearing in the Arab world, Europe, and India.

After the Mongols conquered China and founded the Yuan Dynasty, they used the Chinese gunpowder-based weapons technology in their invasion of Japan ; they also used gunpowder to fuel rockets.

The mainstream scholarly consensus is that gunpowder was invented in China, spread through the Middle East, and then into Europe, although there is a dispute over how much the Chinese advancements in gunpowder warfare influenced later advancements in the Middle East and Europe.

At this battle the Mongols not only used gunpowder in early Chinese firearms but in the earliest grenades as well.

The Chinese wasted little time in applying gunpowder to the development of weapons, and in the centuries that followed, they produced a variety of gunpowder weapons, including flamethrowers, rockets, bombs, and land mines, before inventing guns as a projectile weapon.

Several sources mention Chinese firearms and gunpowder weapons being deployed by the Mongols against European forces at the Battle of Mohi in 1241.

The famous 14th century Chinese text of the Huolongjing, which was the first to describe hollow cast iron cannonball shells filled with gunpowder, was also the first to describe the invention of the land mine in greater detail than references found in texts written beforehand.

Ottoman science and technology had been highly regarded in medieval times, as a result of Ottoman scholars ' synthesis of classical learning with Islamic philosophy and mathematics, and knowledge of such Chinese advances in technology as gunpowder and the magnetic compass.

Although the Chinese invented gunpowder, and firearms had been in continual use in Chinese warfare since as far back as the Song Dynasty, the advent of modern weaponry resulting from the European Industrial Revolution had rendered China's traditionally trained and equipped army and navy obsolete.

The terminology used by al-Rammah indicated a Chinese origin for the gunpowder weapons he wrote about, such as rockets and fire lances.

The Arabs attached " Chinese " to various names for gunpowder related objects.

The Chinese of the Song period also discovered the explosive potential of packing hollowed cannonball shells with gunpowder.

During the Ming Dynasty ( AD 1368 – 1644 ), the Chinese were very concerned with city planning in regards to gunpowder warfare.

* Chinese text the Huolongjing by Jiao Yu describes fire lances, fire arrows ( rockets ), rocket launchers, land mines, naval mines, bombards, cannons, and hollow cast iron cannonballs filled with gunpowder, and their use to set ablaze enemy camps.

* 1161: the Song Dynasty Chinese navy, employing gunpowder bombs launched from trebuchets, defeats the enormous Jin Dynasty navy in the East China Sea in the Battle of Tangdao and on the Yangtze River in the Battle of Caishi.

* 1044: the Chinese Wujing Zongyao, written by Zeng Gongliang and Yang Weide, is the first book to describe gunpowder formulas ; it also described their use in warfare, such as blackpowder-impregnated fuses for flamethrowers.

* 1076: the Chinese Song Dynasty places strict government monopolies over the production and distribution of sulfur and saltpetre, in order to curb the possibility of merchants selling gunpowder formula components to enemies such as the Tanguts and Khitans.

* In 919, the first use of gunpowder in battle occurred with the Chinese Battle of Lang-shan Jiang ( Wolf Mountain River ), where the naval fleet of the Wen-Mu-King defeated Chien Yuan Kuan because Wen had used ' fire oil ' ( huo yóu, 火油 ) of gunpowder-fuse ignited flamethrowers to burn Chien's fleet.