loan words/ near cognates/ transliterations, or whatever...

[the bear]

Today at work I overheard two teachers conversation (in Chinese) and one inserted what sounded like "pow po" into her sentence. From her context I knew she was talking about PowerPoint.
I'm hearing more and more of "bu-sz" for bus, "OK de", etc.

AFAIK PowerPoint has no Chinese name. You're probably hearing the mispronunciation of common English terminology that is becoming ubiquitous in Taiwanese offices. This deserves its own thread. I am the only westerner in an office of 1000 people and I hear this stuff all day long; all the hard consonants get dropped i.e. software becomes so-ware.

[Taffy]

I am the only westerner in an office of 1000 people and I hear this stuff all day long; all the hard consonants get dropped i.e. software becomes so-ware.

Along with its cousins fuh-ware and ha-ware.

[Chris]

Thai เรียน (rian "study", "learn") -- Chinese 練 (lian "practice", "train", "drill")

Probably coincidental, but it's good to remember.

[Chris]

肉體 Taiwanese: ba the ( = body)

[Chrisk]

there's a cool book on this.
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=safari&rls=en&oe=UTF-8&q=translingual+practice&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=11034874467406521618&sa=X&ei=EiykT_iOFuKqiQKatpCoAg&ved=0CGgQ8wIwAw#ps-sellers

[Chris]

Indonesian anagram pseudocognates:

dan - and
dik - kid
hantu - haunt

[Chris]

Thai เรียน (rian "study", "learn") -- Chinese 練 (lian "practice", "train", "drill")

ขอ khaw - request
求 kau (Cantonese) - request

กว้าง kwaang - wide
廣 guang - wide

แขก khaek - guest
客 khek (Taiwanese, literary reading) - guest

ถ่าน thaan - charcoal
炭 tan - charcoal

อย่าง yaang - type, kind
樣 yang - type, kind

เสียง siang - sound
響 xiang/聲 sheng - sound

And so on. Some perhaps coincidental, other borrowings.

[hansioux]

Thai เรียน (rian "study", "learn") -- Chinese 練 (lian "practice", "train", "drill")

ขอ khaw - request
求 kau (Cantonese) - request

กว้าง kwaang - wide
廣 guang - wide

แขก khaek - guest
客 khek (Taiwanese, literary reading) - guest

ถ่าน thaan - charcoal
炭 tan - charcoal

อย่าง yaang - type, kind
樣 yang - type, kind

เสียง siang - sound
響 xiang/聲 sheng - sound

And so on. Some perhaps coincidental, other borrowings.

It's possibly not borrowed. Since features such as tones, and same words that seems unlikely to be borrowed are shared, some theorize that as human migration from the Asia steppes pushes original East Asian population on a southward migration themselves, and at some point (1600 BC or earlier) languages from the Thai-Kadai family used to be spoken in present day China. As new arrivals adopts and contributes to the language fusion, the original thai language family groups moved further south and eventually the languages becomes very different under different influences.

[archylgp]

Thai เรียน (rian "study", "learn") -- Chinese 練 (lian "practice", "train", "drill")

ขอ khaw - request
求 kau (Cantonese) - request

กว้าง kwaang - wide
廣 guang - wide

แขก khaek - guest
客 khek (Taiwanese, literary reading) - guest

ถ่าน thaan - charcoal
炭 tan - charcoal

อย่าง yaang - type, kind
樣 yang - type, kind

เสียง siang - sound
響 xiang/聲 sheng - sound

And so on. Some perhaps coincidental, other borrowings.

It's possibly not borrowed. Since features such as tones, and same words that seems unlikely to be borrowed are shared, some theorize that as human migration from the Asia steppes pushes original East Asian population on a southward migration themselves, and at some point (1600 BC or earlier) languages from the Thai-Kadai family used to be spoken in present day China. As new arrivals adopts and contributes to the language fusion, the original thai language family groups moved further south and eventually the languages becomes very different under different influences.

Old-timer! You're not a linguistics student in China, are you?

[bababa]

And so on. Some perhaps coincidental, other borrowings.

Surely it is neither coincidental, nor borrowed. Aren't Chinese and Thai related languages?