You're absolutely right. It's just that, at least in the case of isotope, most people wouldn't realize that "iso" and "tope" have meanings. They might notice th

You're absolutely right. It's just that, at least in the case of isotope, most people wouldn't realize that "iso" and "tope" have meanings. They might notice that "iso" also occurs in "isolate" but probably wouldn't look much beyond that. The author's point is that the Chinese use simple, everyday words instead of archaic words from dead versions of languages.