This compiles familiar loanwords that have moved between Mandarin Chinese and English, to easily boost early vocabulary. Ported from Pleco, though I've made a few myself where it lacked entries (eg. 武夷茶 Wǔyí chá, Wuyi/Borea tea). I've also added some AwesomeTTS voice lines for sound association.
A lot of loanwords are related to foreign dance and drinks, political terms, computing, scientific terms, etc. Typically, if it's highly specific, there's a loanword for it. I've tried to limit the more technical stuff, focusing on words you can reasonably expect to use at least once. Some words are Mandarin words that exist in English (eg. 麻将 májiàng mahjong) - these are extremely rare, but worth having. 炒面 chǎomiàn, anyone?
Naturally, some words will be rather vulgar or even perverted, but in the age of the internet, well, you get the idea. On the other hand, some words, like 酷 (kù, cool) and 歇斯底里 (xiēsīdǐlǐ, hysterical) are pretty mundane, but also important.
Loanwords are common in Shanghai and Taiwan, which tend to be more globalised. Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong will likely feature more for the same reason, though Mandarin isn't as common in these areas, so language contact may not be as prevalent.
That said, though, temper your expectations. You're not suddenly becoming fluent from this - loanwords are not used as much as they look. They're quite rare and aren't always in-vogue; from what I've seen, many die off in favour of more familiar language. Therefore, if there's an alternative, use that one. It's nothing like your French, Greek, Latin, or Scandinavian words, so don't expect instantaneous transfer.
Additionally, not all loanwords are the same. Most are phonetic (巧克力 chocolate), consisting of largely unrelated characters. Some are word-by-word transliterations (eg. 死线 deadline, lit. "dead thread"). Also, many have varying spellings - I've tended to use more related characters in these cases.
I've tried to restrict the loanwords to those used in English. Note "used" - this doesn't necessarily mean it came from English proper, some may be coincidences (eg. 傲娇 tsundere, which we use, so it's in). Linguistic accuracy in this regard isn't a goal.
Pleco is usually a good source of information, so I would trust that everything here is at least used in some capacity.
If there's something wrong, you can contact me here: Chippy2001@live.co.uk
Please be nice!!
After the file is downloaded, double-click on it to open it in the desktop
program.
At this time, it is not possible to add shared decks directly to your
AnkiWeb account - they need to be added from the desktop then synchronized
to AnkiWeb.