QA:中文有哪些优点和缺点？

【来源龙腾网】

评论原创翻译：

Xianpeng Li

Chinese is a perfect language for the periodic table, because all the elements are composed of only one character and therefore one syllable. In China, the periodic table is not provided in chemistry exams, therefore students need to memorize at least the basic frxwork of the table. Most Chinese students can at least recite the first 20 elements without any difficulty, for science students they might memorize over 40.

The minimal memorization for a Chinese science student in high school:

Horizontal: 氫氦鋰鈹硼(1-5) 碳氮氧氟氖(5-10) 鈉鎂鋁硅磷(11-15) 硫氯氬鉀鈣(15-20)

Vertical: IA: 氫鋰鈉鉀銣銫鈁 IIA: 鈹鎂鈣鍶鋇鐳 IIIA: 硼鋁鎵銦鉈 IVA: 碳硅鍺錫鉛 VA: 氮磷砷銻鉍 VIA: 氧硫硒碲釙 VIIA: 氟氯溴碘砹 VIIIA:氦氖氬氪氙氡

Because all characters are monosyllabic, students can memorize these elements like a poem. It is fairly easy to distinguish metallic elements from non-metallic elements, because all the metallic elements have the radical of "釒or 钅" (gold), as well as gas elements, as all of them have "气” (air/gas) above.

In fact, Chinese can be very convenient in the entire chemistry nomenclature. In organic chemistry, for instance, there is a ordinal sequence "甲乙丙丁戊己庚辛壬癸" that is used in the nomenclature, indicating the number of carbon atoms from one to ten in a molecule. Those with more than ten carbon atoms would take the number directly.

甲烷(methane) CH4 literal: one + alkane

乙烯(ethene) C2H4 two + alkene

丙炔(propyne) C3H4 three + alkyne

丁醛(butyraldehyde) C4H8O four + aldehyde

戊酸(valeric acid) C5H10O2 five + acid

己酮(hexanone) C6H12O six + alkone

乙酸乙酯 (ethyl acetate) CH3CH2COOCH3 two acid two ester

十二烷 (dihexyl) C12H26 twelve + alkane

Also, in inorganic chemistry, names are much more straightforward. For instance:

氢氧化钠 sodium hydroxide NaOH Oxygen Hydrogen combined with Sodium

氢溴酸 hydrobromic acid HBr Hydrogen bromine acid

高锰酸钾 potassium permanganate KMnO4 High manganese acid (refers to MnO4-) potassium

双氧水 Oxydol H2O2 Two oxygen water

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etc.

There are many other examples. In Chinese, medical terminologies are usually compounds. In English they are also compounds, but in many cases they are borrowed from Latin or Ancient Greek. In Chinese, however, because the characters and words already indicate the meanings, people who have never received professional medical education would at least be able to guess something out from it.

I''ve noticed that there are remarks about Chinese being not accurate enough. It''s partially true. However, Chinese can be pretty accurate just like any other language when you are very good at it. It takes more effort to reach the same level of accuracy in Chinese writing than in that of English, but that doesn''t make Chinese a less accurate language.

Xianpeng Li

中文是元素周期表下的完美语言，因为所有的元素都是由一个字符组成，因此只有一个音节。在中国，化学考试不提供元素周期表，所以学生至少需要记住元素周期表的轮廓。大多数中国学生至少能毫无困难地背诵前20个元素，而对于理科生来说，他们可能会记住40多个。

中国理科学生的最低记忆水平:

横向—— 氢氦锂铍硼(1-5) 碳氮氧氟氖(5-10) 钠镁铝硅磷(11-15) 硫氯氩钾钙(15-20)

竖向—— IA: 氢锂钠钾铷铯钫 IIA: 铍镁钙锶钡镭 IIIA: 硼铝镓铟铊 IVA: 碳硅锗锡铅 VA: 氮磷砷锑铋 VIA: 氧硫硒碲钋 VIIA: 氟氯溴碘砹 VIIIA:氦氖氩氪氙氡

因为所有的汉字都是单音节的，学生可以像记诗一样记住这些元素。它是相当容易区分金属元素和非金属元素的,因为所有的金属元素都有部件“釒或钅”(金),以及气体元素都有“气”(空气/气体)。

事实上，中文在整个化学命名中是很方便的。在有机化学，人们会用“甲乙丙丁戊己庚辛壬癸”来分别命名1个碳原子到10个碳原子。而超过十个的直接上数字。

Xianpeng Li

ncluding Gwydion Madawc Williams

I believe so. I don''t think most of these characters existed in Classical Chinese, and most of them are pretty phonetic.

我相信是这样的。

我不认为这些汉字大部分存在于文言文中，而且大部分都是音标。

Michael Jarosz

This touches on an interesting topic. How does Chinese create neologisms? I once was talking with a Chinese women who said the Chinese for polyester was very interesting. We were interrupted and I never got the answer. "woman subject doctor" actually looks like the way German does it with compound words like "Frauenartzt"

这涉及到一个有趣的话题。

汉语如何创造新词?我曾经和一个中国女性聊过，她说中国人对涤纶很感兴趣。后来我们的谈话被打断了，我至今一直没有找到这句话的答案。

"女学科博士（woman subject doctor）"看起来就像德语中的"Frauenartzt"。

Ryan Chew

It does. Most Modern Chinese terms are compound words akin to the German system, but without having to change the words to glue them together.

Actual coinage of new characters is rare.

确实如此。大多数现代汉语词汇都是类似于德语系的复合词，但不需要改变这些词来把它们粘在一起。

汉字新造字其实是很罕见的。

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鼎

汉字就像二维码,拼音文字就像条形码.Chinese characters are like two-dimensional codes, and alphabetic writing is like a bar code.(Google Translation)

提到中国汉字的优势,中国版的化学元素周期表绝对体现的淋漓尽致.When it comes to the advantages of Chinese characters, the Chinese version of the periodic table of chemical elements is absolutely true.(Google Translation)

Krist Pan

including Gwydion Madawc Williams

I will give you a example. The element Hydrogen（氢） has three isotopes, protium(1H), deuterium(2H) and tritium(H3). Chinese scientists invented three new characters for them, protium is 氕, deuterium is 氘, tritium is 氚。They all share the same part 气，which indicates that they are kinds of "gas" elements, the number of bars inside the 气 shows the mass of their nucleuses.

这里我要举个例子。

氢元素拥有3个同位素，中国科学家发明了三个新的字符,氕、氘、氚。它们都共享相同的部件“气”,这表明他们的气体。

其中“气”里的每条竖线代表了原子的质量。

Anonymous

Information theory shows that the more symbols you have in your alphabet, the less symbol you need to encode a vocabulary. Chinese languages have thousands of commonly used symbols, while English only have 26 of them, which makes Chinese a much more compact language than English. This means Chinese people can write less, speak less and read less to communicate the same mount of information. They can also memorize more information with the same level of memory of an English speaker. The common example is that Chinese people often can do simple arithmetic without papers or calculator such as this one "12 times 13".

The disadvantage is that the language is too compact and heavily relying on Chinese cultural back ground. This is not necessarily a disadvantage. If China is the most advanced country in the world, this would in fact to be a disadvantage for all other languages in the world. However, China is still not the leading country where people seeking ideas. Therefore, when importing western words, Chinese often have to create lots of words that are meaningless and ugly in terms of traditional Chinese literature standard. As a native Chinese speaker who know English as second language, I often find the Chinese translation of English text is much harder to understand than the original English text.

信息论表明，你的字母表中符号越多，你需要对词汇进行编码的符号就越少。汉语有数千个常用符号，而英语只有26个，这使得汉语比英语更紧凑。这意味着中国人在交通相同数量的信息时可以写得少，说得少，读得少。他们也可以用和英语母语者相同的记忆水平来记忆更多的信息。常见的例子是，中国人经常可以在没有纸和计算器的情况下做简单的算术，如“12乘以13”。

缺点是语言过于紧凑，严重依赖中国文化背景。但这未必是一个缺点。如果中国是世界上最先进的国家，这实际上对世界上所有其他语言都是不利的。然而，中国仍不是人们寻求创意的领先国家。因此，中国在引进西方词语时，往往要创造出大量在中国传统文学标准下毫无意义、丑陋不堪的词语。作为一个以英语为第二语言的中国人，我经常发现英语文本的中文翻译比原文更难理解。