6 ms·

Names of the chemical elements in Chinese

39 points by breadbox 11y ago

leeoniya 11y ago
I've pondered on multiple occasions, what if computing was born somewhere other than the west and we had to use roman numerals and/or Chinese/Arabic for software development. I could never understand how anyone can quickly discern/read a huge dictionary of such dense and wildly intricate glyphs.
- somerandomone 11y ago
  Inventing computer with Chinese/Arabic is inherently harder because it's more difficult to type such characters. Once you pass the punctuation card stage, now what? Build a huge keyboard with 10s of thousand of Chinese characters? It took 13 years for MS-DOS to support typing in Chinese.
  - qsun 11y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_typewriter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_typewriter http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Chinese_typewriter.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Chinese_t...
  - zac1944 11y ago
    That's an English way to think about Chinese.
    - DrStalker 11y ago
      How do the Chinese approach this problem? Even something as simple things as looking up a word in a dictionary seems impossible in a language like Chinese where every work is a unique cahracter but obviously the people who actually deal with the language will have solutions I've not thought of.
      - NaNaN 11y ago
        (Disclaimer: Not to argue for who invented computers first.) Yeah, there is a famous computer geek who invented a super nice Chinese input method named "Cangjie" in Assembly and it can be used with a special Chinese CPU. (Now he is an old man.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_Bong-Foo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_Bong-Foo
      - muddyrivers 11y ago
        To answer your question on looking up a character in a dictionary, there are 3 ways, which are 3 indexing systems, all present in a dictionary. One can decide which index to use, either based on its pronunciation or its composition.
      - gizmo686 11y ago
        I can't speak directly to Chinese, but I am studying Japanese, which has a writing system derived from Chinese. Essentially each character can be broken up into smaller components (called radicals). This allows characters to be ordered somewhat 'alphabetically'. In theory, the radicals also carry some sementic and phonetic meaning, although (at least in Japanese) many characters have deviated significantly from what you would expect from the roots. Also, although Japanese has been (through deliberate effort) simplified to about 2,000 characters needed to be considered literate, it still takes until high-school for students to be able to fully read and write all 2,000.
      - univerio 11y ago
        Two ways. If you know what it sounds like, you look in the phonetic index, which is ordered alphabetically according to the pronunciation; if you know what it looks like, you can look in the radical index, which lists characters by their radicals, ordered by how many strokes they have.
      - evincarofautumn 11y ago
        Human ingenuity always finds a way. In Chinese dictionaries, there are simply multiple indices: you can look up characters by pronunciation (if you know the word but not how to write it) or by shape (if you know the character but not how to say it). The latter works because there is a small set of shapes (“radicals”) that are combined to produce new characters.
  - mchaver 11y ago
    Hard to really guess what would have happened but it's possible that a Chinese speaker could have opted to start with one of the romanization systems or zhuyin fuhao and then build a system to inputs characters at a later point. For Arabic the challenge is more akin to this type of problem: "create a computer that can handle a cursive form of the Latin alphabet". You could start with something really rudimentary like allow for Arabic characters in isolated form. It would be ugly and challenging to read, but a start. Wouldn't be too hard to add the initial, medial and final forms, eventually diacritics as well.
  - meric 11y ago
    The first solution that came into my mind, type using strokes. Here is a list of 11 strokes: http://www.121chineselessons.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Chinese-Writing-Strokes.jpg?99685b http://www.121chineselessons.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/... Every word's strokes has a pre-determined "correct" order. Once you list out the word's strokes, there are only a a couple of possibilities of characters left. A blog post on `Chinese Python`. http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/11/21/chinese-python-translating-a-programming-language/ http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/11/21/chinese-python-translat...
    - vorg 11y ago
      Unfortunately, Chinese Python maps English words to 2-character Chinese words, so the translation requires spaces between the Chinese words. So while running: guess = int(raw_input('Enter integer: ')) if guess == number: print 'Congratulations' running = False elif guess < number: print 'No, higher' else: print 'No, lower' translates to 當運行: 猜測 = 整數(輸入('輸入數字: ')) 如果猜測 == 數字: 印出 '恭喜' 運行 = 假假使猜測 < 數字: 印出 '錯了, 再大' 否則: 印出 '錯了, 再小' But if we map English words in programming to single Chinese characters, we wouldn't need spaces, so perhaps 當運: 猜=整(輸('輸入數字: ')) 如猜==數: 印'恭喜' 運=假否如猜<數: 印'錯了, 再大' 否: 印'錯了, 再小' And if we made the syntax more C-like to fully make use of the spaceless syntax 當運{ 猜=整(輸('輸入數字: ')) 如猜==數{印'恭喜';運=假} 否如猜<數{印'錯了, 再大'} 否{印'錯了, 再小'} } One could program on one's smartphone screen on the train!
      - meric 11y ago
        You can use semi-colons in Python to put multiple lines in one line, as well as inline blocks next to the colon. So, you can remove the braces, too. Added parenthesis for python 3. 當運: 猜=整(輸('輸入數字: ')) 如猜==數:印('恭喜');運=假; 否如猜<數:印('錯了, 再大'); 否:印('錯了, 再小')
  - runn1ng 11y ago
    Arabic would actually be easier. It has about the same amount of letters and no capital letters.
- jl6 11y ago
  For what it's worth, although English is based on a small alphabet, we read whole words at a time (rather than one letter at a time). So although we are bewildered by the idea of learning thousands of characters, we exercise similar skill in recognising tens of thousands (out of a total of millions) of English words.
  - satuon 11y ago
    Also English is not that phonological. In reality, you need to learn how combinations of 3-4 letters are mapped to sound. It's more like syllabary, really, except you don't have a separate glyph for each syllable.
  - davidgerard 11y ago
    English has middling-simple grammar [+] and you really can make a good start with a few hundred words. But learning those first few hundred words ... about half of them have such completely ridiculous spelling, you might as well be learning pictograms anyway. (I'd like you to picture trying to explain this to a confused four-year-old. Her spelling's good now, a few years later ...) [+] no genders, no inflection, not many cases. Of course, articles are just ridiculous, and I challenge any English speaker to explain to a native Russian speaker the rules for when and when not to use "a" and "the" without looking it up ...
    - leeoniya 11y ago
      i'm native russian and english, Russian rules and exceptions are even more ridiculous and have all the [+]
- yen223 11y ago
  I had a similar thought. I think if modern computing arose in China, technological progress would have been slower by a decade or so, simply because you need 16-bit computing before you can do any reasonable Chinese word processing. After all, the printing press was invented in China, but it went nowhere there.
  - satuon 11y ago
    I've read that in China they didn't have typewriters and everything was hand-written right up till they got computers. Edit: They had printing presses, but those are for newspapers etc. Ordinary people had to handwrite.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      China did have typewriters, but the sheer number of keys made them impractical. The first practical ones came after the invention of dot matriz printing.
- lnanek2 11y ago
  It only seems difficult because you lack knowledge. Once you study a little you can break everything up into radicals pretty easy. It's one of the first things you learn so that you can lookup unfamiliar symbols in the dictionary by something other than stroke count.
- vysaga 11y ago
  If computer languages were invented by Chinese, it would be written in pinyin and it would be as easy as English syntax is (the vocabulary used in computer languages are very limited after all). People always find ways to simply things, so no need to worry.
zac1944 11y ago
just want to point out that is traditional Chinese which only used in Taiwan, no main land.
- getsat 11y ago
  It's also interesting to note that the traditional characters are called "standard" characters in Taiwan.
- peter2783 11y ago
  Traditional chinese is also used in Hong Kong.
- hoangtrung 11y ago
  It isn't. Traditional Chinese widely used in China town all over the world, in Macao, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guang Dong.
muddyrivers 11y ago
"The first thing we may say about the names of the chemical elements in Chinese is that every single one of them is monosyllabic. This actually causes great problems for Chinese chemists and other scientists, as well as the lay public, since there are so many homophones and near-homophones among them and with other monosyllabic words not on the list. Listening to a lecture or holding discussions that mention chemical elements and hearing the elements referred to by these monosyllabic names is challenging, to say the least." -- It is untrue that "[this] actually causes great problems for Chinese chemists and other scientists, as well as the lay public." Chinese is a highly context-sensitive language. If people have no difficulty in communicating with other monosyllabic characters, why would they get confused when they refers to chemical elements? That does't sound making sense. It is definitely hard to lay public, so is the case in English for American, at least for the people I know. They have no idea what most of the chemical ingredients listed in packaged food are, which is not surprising since the majority of people don't major nor minor in chemistry in college. It is definitely not challenging for chemists and students who study chemistry, at least not for me and my college classmates, to understand lectures and have discussions on chemistry in Chinese. For example, when one refers to 铬 (Chromium) in a discussion in chemistry, the others wouldn't confuse it with other characters with the same pronunciation and tone, like 个，各，硌， etc. based on the context. It is correct that most of the chemical element characters were invented from scratch in the last 150 years. Is a language supposed to evolve like that? Is it the similar case in English? I know most of the new elements were named after the scientists who discovered them. But what is wrong to create a Chinese new character for a new element based on the way how most Chinese characters have been created? Disclaimer: I have studied inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, analytical chemistry in college. If it were in US, I could have at least had a minor in chemistry.
- peteretep 11y ago
  > Chinese is a highly context-sensitive language. If > people have no difficulty in communicating with other > monosyllabic characters, why would they get confused > when they refers to chemical elements? That does't sound > making sense. From what you quoted, emphasis my own. > "there are so many homophones and near-homophones *among them*" If the context is "chemical elements", and lots of them sound very similar, I suspect that's going to be a problem.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
chuan92 11y ago
In China, almost every dictionary book has a back cover containing periodic table.
narrator 11y ago
>The vast majority of the Chinese characters for the elements contain the "gold / metal" radical 金. Next in number are characters that contain the "gas / vapor" radical 气. After that comes a smaller group of characters containing the "stone / rock" radical 石. Last, there are two characters that contain the water radical 氵/ 水: xiù 溴 ("bromine") and gǒng 汞 ("mercury"). In terms of the classification of the elements by state (solid, liquid, gas, unknown) and type (metals [alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, lanthanoids, actinoids, transition metals, post-transition metals], nonmetals [halogens, noble gases, other nonmentals]), and metalloids, the division (according to character radicals) into metal, gas, stone, and water is not accurate. Didn't anyone tell them to make their primary keys factless? By encoding all this information in the name they'll never be able to change it if they discover some new fact about it that contradicts all this information they put in the primary key.
- kccqzy 11y ago
  Then it could be reduced to merely a historical coincidence. There aren't many English element names (or the etymology) that still accurately reflect the properties of the elements. Human names do not need to reflect any facts; and even they once did, they did not need to remain updated as our knowledge is updated.
- mjklin 11y ago
  Well a crocodile is also a "fish" in Chinese (鳄鱼) and the word for egg has the insect radical (蛋). Must be based on old concepts, but nobody has a problem with it except foreigners.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  You'll never get far if you condemn the users of natural languages for how they form their words!
- Sniffnoy 11y ago
  We have this in English too. Helium's not only found on the sun. Oxygen is not an essential component of acids. Etc. Fortunately, in chemistry, the symbol is more of the primary key than the name. Or, really, the primary key is the atomic number -- which is certainly not factless, but the facts follow from it as a result of nature; you don't have to worry that things will change and it won't work anymore.
est 11y ago
> I was both surprised and disappointed by how hard it was to find a simple numerical list giving the following information for each element: number, symbol, English name, Chinese character (traditional and simplified), Pinyin. I find wikipedia is ze best tool for cross-language reference research 1. go to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table 2. click the last language item on the left column 3. you got this http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%83%E7%B4%A0%E5%91%A8%E6%9C%9F%E8%A1%A8 http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%83%E7%B4%A0%E5%91%A8%E6%...
- simias 11y ago
  Unless I'm missing something I don't see the pinyin in wikipedia's table so it still doesn't fit the author's requirements.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
vysaga 11y ago
The author clearly has limited knowledge about Chinese. Most of his/her claims are wrong.
- breadbox 11y ago
  Wow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_H._Mair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_H._Mair

39 points by breadbox 11y ago

I've pondered on multiple occasions, what if computing was born somewhere other than the west and we had to use roman numerals and/or Chinese/Arabic for software development. I could never understand how anyone can quickly discern/read a huge dictionary of such dense and wildly intricate glyphs.

somerandomone 11y ago
Inventing computer with Chinese/Arabic is inherently harder because it's more difficult to type such characters. Once you pass the punctuation card stage, now what? Build a huge keyboard with 10s of thousand of Chinese characters? It took 13 years for MS-DOS to support typing in Chinese.
- qsun 11y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_typewriter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_typewriter http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Chinese_typewriter.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Chinese_t...
- zac1944 11y ago
  That's an English way to think about Chinese.
  - DrStalker 11y ago
    How do the Chinese approach this problem? Even something as simple things as looking up a word in a dictionary seems impossible in a language like Chinese where every work is a unique cahracter but obviously the people who actually deal with the language will have solutions I've not thought of.
    - NaNaN 11y ago
      (Disclaimer: Not to argue for who invented computers first.) Yeah, there is a famous computer geek who invented a super nice Chinese input method named "Cangjie" in Assembly and it can be used with a special Chinese CPU. (Now he is an old man.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_Bong-Foo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_Bong-Foo
    - muddyrivers 11y ago
      To answer your question on looking up a character in a dictionary, there are 3 ways, which are 3 indexing systems, all present in a dictionary. One can decide which index to use, either based on its pronunciation or its composition.
    - gizmo686 11y ago
      I can't speak directly to Chinese, but I am studying Japanese, which has a writing system derived from Chinese. Essentially each character can be broken up into smaller components (called radicals). This allows characters to be ordered somewhat 'alphabetically'. In theory, the radicals also carry some sementic and phonetic meaning, although (at least in Japanese) many characters have deviated significantly from what you would expect from the roots. Also, although Japanese has been (through deliberate effort) simplified to about 2,000 characters needed to be considered literate, it still takes until high-school for students to be able to fully read and write all 2,000.
    - univerio 11y ago
      Two ways. If you know what it sounds like, you look in the phonetic index, which is ordered alphabetically according to the pronunciation; if you know what it looks like, you can look in the radical index, which lists characters by their radicals, ordered by how many strokes they have.
    - evincarofautumn 11y ago
      Human ingenuity always finds a way. In Chinese dictionaries, there are simply multiple indices: you can look up characters by pronunciation (if you know the word but not how to write it) or by shape (if you know the character but not how to say it). The latter works because there is a small set of shapes (“radicals”) that are combined to produce new characters.
- mchaver 11y ago
  Hard to really guess what would have happened but it's possible that a Chinese speaker could have opted to start with one of the romanization systems or zhuyin fuhao and then build a system to inputs characters at a later point. For Arabic the challenge is more akin to this type of problem: "create a computer that can handle a cursive form of the Latin alphabet". You could start with something really rudimentary like allow for Arabic characters in isolated form. It would be ugly and challenging to read, but a start. Wouldn't be too hard to add the initial, medial and final forms, eventually diacritics as well.
- meric 11y ago
  The first solution that came into my mind, type using strokes. Here is a list of 11 strokes: http://www.121chineselessons.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Chinese-Writing-Strokes.jpg?99685b http://www.121chineselessons.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/... Every word's strokes has a pre-determined "correct" order. Once you list out the word's strokes, there are only a a couple of possibilities of characters left. A blog post on `Chinese Python`. http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/11/21/chinese-python-translating-a-programming-language/ http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/11/21/chinese-python-translat...
  - vorg 11y ago
    Unfortunately, Chinese Python maps English words to 2-character Chinese words, so the translation requires spaces between the Chinese words. So while running: guess = int(raw_input('Enter integer: ')) if guess == number: print 'Congratulations' running = False elif guess < number: print 'No, higher' else: print 'No, lower' translates to 當運行: 猜測 = 整數(輸入('輸入數字: ')) 如果猜測 == 數字: 印出 '恭喜' 運行 = 假假使猜測 < 數字: 印出 '錯了, 再大' 否則: 印出 '錯了, 再小' But if we map English words in programming to single Chinese characters, we wouldn't need spaces, so perhaps 當運: 猜=整(輸('輸入數字: ')) 如猜==數: 印'恭喜' 運=假否如猜<數: 印'錯了, 再大' 否: 印'錯了, 再小' And if we made the syntax more C-like to fully make use of the spaceless syntax 當運{ 猜=整(輸('輸入數字: ')) 如猜==數{印'恭喜';運=假} 否如猜<數{印'錯了, 再大'} 否{印'錯了, 再小'} } One could program on one's smartphone screen on the train!
    - meric 11y ago
      You can use semi-colons in Python to put multiple lines in one line, as well as inline blocks next to the colon. So, you can remove the braces, too. Added parenthesis for python 3. 當運: 猜=整(輸('輸入數字: ')) 如猜==數:印('恭喜');運=假; 否如猜<數:印('錯了, 再大'); 否:印('錯了, 再小')
- runn1ng 11y ago
  Arabic would actually be easier. It has about the same amount of letters and no capital letters.
jl6 11y ago
For what it's worth, although English is based on a small alphabet, we read whole words at a time (rather than one letter at a time). So although we are bewildered by the idea of learning thousands of characters, we exercise similar skill in recognising tens of thousands (out of a total of millions) of English words.
- satuon 11y ago
  Also English is not that phonological. In reality, you need to learn how combinations of 3-4 letters are mapped to sound. It's more like syllabary, really, except you don't have a separate glyph for each syllable.
- davidgerard 11y ago
  English has middling-simple grammar [+] and you really can make a good start with a few hundred words. But learning those first few hundred words ... about half of them have such completely ridiculous spelling, you might as well be learning pictograms anyway. (I'd like you to picture trying to explain this to a confused four-year-old. Her spelling's good now, a few years later ...) [+] no genders, no inflection, not many cases. Of course, articles are just ridiculous, and I challenge any English speaker to explain to a native Russian speaker the rules for when and when not to use "a" and "the" without looking it up ...
  - leeoniya 11y ago
    i'm native russian and english, Russian rules and exceptions are even more ridiculous and have all the [+]
yen223 11y ago
I had a similar thought. I think if modern computing arose in China, technological progress would have been slower by a decade or so, simply because you need 16-bit computing before you can do any reasonable Chinese word processing. After all, the printing press was invented in China, but it went nowhere there.
- satuon 11y ago
  I've read that in China they didn't have typewriters and everything was hand-written right up till they got computers. Edit: They had printing presses, but those are for newspapers etc. Ordinary people had to handwrite.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    China did have typewriters, but the sheer number of keys made them impractical. The first practical ones came after the invention of dot matriz printing.
lnanek2 11y ago
It only seems difficult because you lack knowledge. Once you study a little you can break everything up into radicals pretty easy. It's one of the first things you learn so that you can lookup unfamiliar symbols in the dictionary by something other than stroke count.
vysaga 11y ago
If computer languages were invented by Chinese, it would be written in pinyin and it would be as easy as English syntax is (the vocabulary used in computer languages are very limited after all). People always find ways to simply things, so no need to worry.

zac1944 11y ago

just want to point out that is traditional Chinese which only used in Taiwan, no main land.

getsat 11y ago
It's also interesting to note that the traditional characters are called "standard" characters in Taiwan.
peter2783 11y ago
Traditional chinese is also used in Hong Kong.
hoangtrung 11y ago
It isn't. Traditional Chinese widely used in China town all over the world, in Macao, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guang Dong.

muddyrivers 11y ago

"The first thing we may say about the names of the chemical elements in Chinese is that every single one of them is monosyllabic. This actually causes great problems for Chinese chemists and other scientists, as well as the lay public, since there are so many homophones and near-homophones among them and with other monosyllabic words not on the list. Listening to a lecture or holding discussions that mention chemical elements and hearing the elements referred to by these monosyllabic names is challenging, to say the least." -- It is untrue that "[this] actually causes great problems for Chinese chemists and other scientists, as well as the lay public." Chinese is a highly context-sensitive language. If people have no difficulty in communicating with other monosyllabic characters, why would they get confused when they refers to chemical elements? That does't sound making sense. It is definitely hard to lay public, so is the case in English for American, at least for the people I know. They have no idea what most of the chemical ingredients listed in packaged food are, which is not surprising since the majority of people don't major nor minor in chemistry in college. It is definitely not challenging for chemists and students who study chemistry, at least not for me and my college classmates, to understand lectures and have discussions on chemistry in Chinese. For example, when one refers to 铬 (Chromium) in a discussion in chemistry, the others wouldn't confuse it with other characters with the same pronunciation and tone, like 个，各，硌， etc. based on the context. It is correct that most of the chemical element characters were invented from scratch in the last 150 years. Is a language supposed to evolve like that? Is it the similar case in English? I know most of the new elements were named after the scientists who discovered them. But what is wrong to create a Chinese new character for a new element based on the way how most Chinese characters have been created? Disclaimer: I have studied inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physical chemistry, analytical chemistry in college. If it were in US, I could have at least had a minor in chemistry.

peteretep 11y ago
> Chinese is a highly context-sensitive language. If > people have no difficulty in communicating with other > monosyllabic characters, why would they get confused > when they refers to chemical elements? That does't sound > making sense. From what you quoted, emphasis my own. > "there are so many homophones and near-homophones *among them*" If the context is "chemical elements", and lots of them sound very similar, I suspect that's going to be a problem.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

chuan92 11y ago

In China, almost every dictionary book has a back cover containing periodic table.

narrator 11y ago

>The vast majority of the Chinese characters for the elements contain the "gold / metal" radical 金. Next in number are characters that contain the "gas / vapor" radical 气. After that comes a smaller group of characters containing the "stone / rock" radical 石. Last, there are two characters that contain the water radical 氵/ 水: xiù 溴 ("bromine") and gǒng 汞 ("mercury"). In terms of the classification of the elements by state (solid, liquid, gas, unknown) and type (metals [alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, lanthanoids, actinoids, transition metals, post-transition metals], nonmetals [halogens, noble gases, other nonmentals]), and metalloids, the division (according to character radicals) into metal, gas, stone, and water is not accurate. Didn't anyone tell them to make their primary keys factless? By encoding all this information in the name they'll never be able to change it if they discover some new fact about it that contradicts all this information they put in the primary key.

kccqzy 11y ago
Then it could be reduced to merely a historical coincidence. There aren't many English element names (or the etymology) that still accurately reflect the properties of the elements. Human names do not need to reflect any facts; and even they once did, they did not need to remain updated as our knowledge is updated.
mjklin 11y ago
Well a crocodile is also a "fish" in Chinese (鳄鱼) and the word for egg has the insect radical (蛋). Must be based on old concepts, but nobody has a problem with it except foreigners.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
You'll never get far if you condemn the users of natural languages for how they form their words!
Sniffnoy 11y ago
We have this in English too. Helium's not only found on the sun. Oxygen is not an essential component of acids. Etc. Fortunately, in chemistry, the symbol is more of the primary key than the name. Or, really, the primary key is the atomic number -- which is certainly not factless, but the facts follow from it as a result of nature; you don't have to worry that things will change and it won't work anymore.

est 11y ago

> I was both surprised and disappointed by how hard it was to find a simple numerical list giving the following information for each element: number, symbol, English name, Chinese character (traditional and simplified), Pinyin. I find wikipedia is ze best tool for cross-language reference research 1. go to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table 2. click the last language item on the left column 3. you got this http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%83%E7%B4%A0%E5%91%A8%E6%9C%9F%E8%A1%A8 http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%83%E7%B4%A0%E5%91%A8%E6%...

simias 11y ago
Unless I'm missing something I don't see the pinyin in wikipedia's table so it still doesn't fit the author's requirements.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

vysaga 11y ago

The author clearly has limited knowledge about Chinese. Most of his/her claims are wrong.

breadbox 11y ago
Wow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_H._Mair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_H._Mair