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How does Chinese handle the propagation of neologisms? A rough 1:1 phonetic correspondence between oral and written languages intuitively (to me at least) woul
by malandrew 10y ago
How does Chinese handle the propagation of neologisms?
A rough 1:1 phonetic correspondence between oral and written languages intuitively (to me at least) would be more fit for the creation and propagation of news words, or am I missing some other natural form of conveyance and propagation that exists in the Chinese writing system?
- contravert 10y agoIt's actually extremely easy to create new words using Chinese characters. You simply put existing characters together. To use some computing related terms for example: mobile phone: 手机 （hand machine) programming: 编程 （compose orders) QR code: 二维码 （2d code) hacker: 黑客 （black guest, this also sounds phonetically like "hacker") For brands and other names, there is a system of transliterating sounds using characters, or simply a literal translation of the name, e.g. Android: 安卓 (an zhuo) Microsoft: 微软 （small soft) Apple: 苹果 （literally apple)
- jarboot 10y agoNote that what the author said was "danger plus oppertunity" for the word for crisis -- 危机 -- shares the same last character as 手机。 While easy to compose and sometimes understand, it's not as simple as the author implied.