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Results for pizza in Chinese are numerous

  • 比乍

  • 披莎

  • 比萨

  • 匹萨

  • 批萨

  • 皮萨

  • 披薩

I'm never sure which to use.

Is there a most common/most well-known translation or transliteration for Pizza in Chinese?

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  • 2
    When there's no standard, choose anyone you like. – Stan Nov 13 '15 at 6:30
  • @Stan I'll make up my own then: 毴洒, sounds nice? – Mou某♦ Nov 13 '15 at 6:35
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    I pronunciated it as pīsa, so I'll vote for 匹萨 or 批萨. – user4072 Nov 13 '15 at 6:40
  • Sounds comical. Seriously speaking, statisticians may start by checking how many google results they have, but I think the choice depends on what kind of effect you need. Inventing a new one is often not a good idea – if you insist on doing that anyway, no one can judge it ungrammatical in an authoritative sense. BTW, personally I write 批萨. – Stan Nov 13 '15 at 6:52
  • @songyuanyao In mainland China, pǐ is the only pronunciation for 匹 in mandarin. Taiwan has pī as well as pǐ. – Stan Nov 13 '15 at 6:58
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批萨 and 匹萨 are the most common ones.

比萨 only used to reference the tower - Leaning Tower of Pisa.

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From Baidu Baike：

比萨（Pizza），又称为比萨饼、匹萨、批萨、披萨 ...

And actually all these names are used throughout the article.

All these should be acceptable in mainland China, and the pronunciation are similar in Mandarin.

In other Chinese speaking areas, there might be other transliterations.

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  • Peculiarly, the Baidu article uses both 比萨 and 披萨 in different places. – Becky 李蓓♦ Mar 6 '20 at 6:34
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“外国煎饼” Just kidding. Any one of them is OK. Cuz they are all transliterations, and we Chinese can understand what you mean. Btw, we call Leaning Tower of Pisa '比萨斜塔'

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Here's the results from Google Trends:

Google Trends plot, showing 披薩 (blue) and 比萨 (red) with some interest, and 匹萨 with comparatively little interest.
(China friendly image.)

We see that 披薩 and 比萨 are both popular, and there's no real standard. 匹萨 doesn't seem all that common. None of the others returned any data.

While 比萨 also refers to Pisa, the Italian city, note that 比萨 is used at Pizza Hut (必胜客) which is likely the most familiar pizza restaurant in China.

Screenshot of Pizza Hut webpage showing multiple instances of 比萨 being used to mean "pizza".
(China friendly image.)

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    Google is blocked on the mainland, so it's not clear how useful the Google Trends data is here. – julian Mar 6 '20 at 4:26
  • Fair criticism, although the other answers presented no evidence whatsoever. (And the Pizza Hut link contradicts the accepted answer.) – Becky 李蓓♦ Mar 6 '20 at 4:29
  • I can’t present the kind of evidence you’re looking for, but the accepted answer is consistent with my own (admittedly limited) experience. When living in Beijing or traveling around, I never heard pizza referred to as 比萨，only pi1sa4 or pi1sa. I think this makes sense because this pronunciation is closer to the original word, which Chinese are well aware of, especially the younger generations – julian Mar 6 '20 at 5:06

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