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"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 pr
by 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.
- muddyrivers 11y agoI think it is a false statement that "there are so many homophones". In mainland system, I haven't found two elements with the same (pronunciation, tone). They could sound the same for non-native speakers, but they sound different for native speakers. I don't think this is hard to understand.
- jzwinck 11y agoHow do Chinese people differentiate 珠 "pearl" from 朱 "vermilion" in a spoken context such as "What material is best worn by an emperor?" These seem to be homophones, yet the words are similar enough in usage that it may not be clear from the context which one is meant (as opposed to 豬 "pig" which again has the same pronunciation but is less likely to be ambiguous).
- vysaga 11y agoThere are other equivalent words. For instance, 珍珠 for pearl (I actually never heard anyone use 珠 alone）. No idea what "vermilion" means in your question. If it refers to the color, then you can say “朱红” or “朱红色”. In fact, very few words in spoken Chinese are monosyllabic, so it is highly unlikely to confuse a chemical element with other things. Moreover, you can always say "chemical element" + 元素 (element) or 原子 (atom) if you are afraid of confusing people; for instance, 氢原子，碳元素, though it is hardly necessary, as I never encountered the problem the author described in my 5+ years of studying chemistry in Chinese.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoSimply a tone difference doesn't prevent confusion, though. Tones can be gotten wrong or misheard. If tones always solved this, then four would not be associated with death, surely?
- allemagne 11y agoAt the very least the phrases "great problems" and "challenging, to say the least" are called into question by the first-hand experience of the user you're responding to.
- adventured 11y ago"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." That doesn't make any sense as a reference. What do chemical ingredients in packaged food, and understanding what that is for American consumers, have to do with chemical elements in Chinese, and understanding how those sound when spoken? One is auditory comprehension, the other is knowledge.
- muddyrivers 11y agoWhat I mean was this: except those elements whose names are also common words in everyday language, like iron, copper, silver, etc. all the other elements's names are foreign to the general public. Like Neodymium, Samarium, etc, even if general public can pronounce them, they don't really know what they are. This applies to chemical compounds, like those listed as ingredients in packaged food, as well. It doesn't matter it is in Chinese or in English. The general public don't know what they really are.
- xiaoma 11y agoI spent a huge chunk of my adult life in Taiwan, studied there and worked there. I was familiar with about 40 of the words for elements. >* If people have no difficulty in communicating with other monosyllabic characters, why would they get confused when they refers to chemical elements?* People don't communicate with monosyllabic characters. They communicate with words most of which are polysyllabic in modern Mandarin. Characters and words are not the same, not even remotely. The relationship is character to syllable. I absolutely agree with you that it's natural to create new characters. This is fine. The issue is that the more homophones in a given discussion the more likely you'll have to give some more context and say something like "x__的x" as way to clarify which "x" you're talking about.