Talk:Chinese characters for chemical elements

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject China, a project to improve all China-related articles. If you would like to help improve this and other China-related articles, please join the project. All interested editors are welcome.

China To-do: edit purge Project Maintenance Recruit more members Tag relevant articles Article content New articles Lingnan architecture Unit 1855 Unit 2646 Gao Jin Su Mei Song-Tangut Wars Qiandao Lake Incident Article expansions China Western Development Chinese classical music Chang'an Great Wall of China Heaven worship Sport in China Min Bei Revitalize Northeast China Rise of Central China Plan Sino-African relations Zhang Daqian Islam in China Translations zh:评弹 zh:嶺南 ja:2005年沖縄近海における台湾漁船の抗議行動 zh:功夫茶 zh:孟尝君 ja:孟嘗君 zh:战国四公子 ja:戦国四君 zh:金陵灯会 zh:南水北调工程 Current disputes Falun Gong Portal:Taiwan naming Peer reviews FA candidates Tofu Image Requests Cleanup Siege of Tuyen Quang Battle of Tzeki

This article was nominated for deletion on 23 June 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Relevancy 2 Elements 104 and above 3 A bug? 4 Request for screenshots 5 Korean characters? 6 The Basis of the Entire Article 7 Traditional characters for the elements? 8 Where should this page go? 9 utility of wiktionary

[edit] Relevancy

Cute and colorful but perfectly irrelevent in the English-language Wikipedia, no? User:Wetman

Wetman, please sign your comments (I have done so for you above). Thanks.

Anyway, regarding your question, not so. This is perfectly relevant. The reason that a Chinese periodic table is encyclopedic and we do depict a periodic table in Chinese but not in other languages is because Chinese is one of the few languages, perhaps the only language, that uses characters instead of the usual one or two letter abbreviations for elements. Also, the page has some information about the history, ways the characters are chosen, and uses of the Chinese periodic table. --Lowellian 00:53, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Elements 104 and above

The Chinese names of the elements with atomic number larger than 104 -

No.	Sym.	Name	Trad. Chinese	Sim. Chinese
104	Rf	Rutherfordium	鑪, 釒拉	钅卢
105	Db	Dubnium	𨧀, 釒杜, 釒都	钅杜
106	Sg	Seaborgium	𨭎, 釒喜, 釒希	钅喜
107	Bh	Bohrium	𨨏, 釒波	钅波
108	Hs	Hassium	𨭆, 釒黑	钅黑
109	Mt	Meitnerium	䥑, 釒麥	钅麦
110	Ds	Darmstadtium	鐽	钅达
111	Rg	Roentgenium	No Chinese name yet

(If your computer did not have a Unicode-3.1-font, you can only see spaces or garbage squares.)

The traditional Chinese names of elements 105 through 109 use characters that are only available in Unicode 3.0 or Unicode 3.1 -

	105	106	107	108	109
Unicode (Hex)	289C0	28B4E	28A0F	28B46	4951
Unicode (Dec)	166336	166734	166415	166726	18769

The simplified Chinese names of elements 104 through 110 have not been encoded even in the newest version (4.01) of Unicode. --Hello World! 07:34, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. One additional comment to what you said: The issue is not just whether they have been encoded, but also whether the operating system or web browser supports rendering of surrogate pair characters. —Lowellian (talk) 08:18, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A bug?

The character for stone (U+77F3) is now showing. Seemingly it is connected with recent changes in Wikipedia engine. See the third paragraph:

< All symbols for metals (except Hg) contain the radical 钅 or 金 ("gold"), for solid nonmetals 石 ("stone"), for liquid elements 水 ("water"), and for gases 气 ("steam"), in reference to their usual states at room temperature and standard pressure. >

— Monedula 05:57, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It seems that this bug is fixed now. — Monedula 13:43, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for screenshots

Could someone who has the appropriate fonts please take a screenshot of the tables and post them as pictures? This would enable those of us who lack the fonts to see this information. One-dimensional Tangent 04:15, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Here you are: Traditional and Simplified. Dunno how to upload images properly so I put them in my webspace; the images were captured with HyperSnap-DX 5 by me.--G.S.K.Lee 01:10, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! I've cropped and uploaded them, and am placing a link on the article page so that people can see them even when you remove the original screenshots from your webspace. One-dimensional Tangent 18:15, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Korean characters?

In reference to the following sentence from the second paragraph of the article:

These characters specially-invented for the periodic table are not used in Japan or Korea even though the Japanese and Korean languages also use Chinese characters.

As far as I know, the Korean alphabet, Hangul is completely unique and entirely distinct from Chinese, sharing no characters. Thus, I have removed the reference to Korean characters from the sentence, as it is irrelevant. Uniqueuponhim 22:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Then I am afraid your knowledge to East Asian cultures is still not adequate. You should check Hanja for more. -- G.S.K.Lee 13:00, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

While some of the characters are the same, the Korean alphabet is phonetic and composed of a small number of letters and therefore in no need of special symbols like these. Indrian 17:52, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

---

Look again:

These characters specially-invented for the periodic table are not used in

 Japan or Korea even though the Japanese and Korean languages

 also use Chinese characters.

There is no single error in the statement of this sentence, though this is no longer relevant since the article has had a new name. -- G.S.K.Lee 14:53, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Basis of the Entire Article

It recently occurred to me that this article is not about the Periodic Table. It is about the elements. What should we do? Am I right in this assumption? AdamBiswanger1 00:33, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Traditional characters for the elements?

I suspect that the Chinese had words for at least some common elements, like silver, copper, carbon, sulphur, iron, or mercury, well before a periodic table was erected in Chinese. The names of the elements here seem to have been regularized with the standard prefixes that refer to their usual state. It might be worthwhile to point out what the original characters for these elements was, and also to explain the derivations of at least some of the new characters added to the table; in addition to the classifier, the second element may have meant something as well. Smerdis of Tlön 04:32, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

• Good idea. Maybe we can contact someone in the Chinese Wikipedia AdamBiswanger1 23:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

there're no such regularisations: naturally there were copper and iron before the table was erected in Chinese, and the same characters were and are used before or after that (銅、鐵). Here the part "金" is not a "chemical prefix", but a "semantic component". The same for 汞 (mercury). Hope the information helps.--K.C. Tang 02:24, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks alot for your help. I added what I could to the article. AdamBiswanger1 02:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

indeed I noticed the article some time ago... Frankly, as a Chinese, I can't see its raison d'être... anyway, it has officially been announced to be kept. No more arguments.:)--K.C. Tang 03:00, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I believe this character "碳" did not exist before the periodic table or modern chemistry was introduced into China. There was only 炭 in ancient texts. -- G.S.K.Lee 14:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where should this page go?

Now that it's been kept, it should really be moved to a better title... Suggestions? -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 21:42, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

• Ok, well I guess that works. -Goldom ‽‽‽ ⁂ 02:47, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] utility of wiktionary

I've added some wiktionary links, often for just radicals, but wiktionary is an underrated tool which may be of some interest to readers (and a project which has immense potential but needs more attentioon) so I'm wondering how far we should go? Elle _{vécut heureuse} ^{à jamais} (Be eudaimonic!) 22:40, 2 July 2006 (UTC)