# How are new words given characters?



## Jacobtm

When a ''new'' word, such as ''internet'' comes around, how are characters come up with in Chinese languages?

Are they usually made up of a combination of pre-existing characters, or does a completely new character develop out of nothing?


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## xiaolijie

Jacobtm said:


> Are they usually made up of a combination of pre-existing characters, or does a completely new character develop out of nothing?


 They're almost always made up with a combination of pre-existing characters. I'm yet to see a new character developed for this (but on the other hand, it's conceivable that they may employ very old or even obsolete characters for new words)


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## Jacobtm

Could you explain perhaps some technology based characters, internet types of words? Is email simmilar to english, electronic+mail?

Thanks,
Jacob


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## Ghabi

For "internet", we have the new word_ hu4lian2wang3_. It's a new word but all the three morphemes that the word consists of are not new, and they already have their own characters. Therefore, there's no need to coin new characters.

In the old days, the Buddhist monks coined some characters when they had to transliterate Sanskrit (e.g. 迦 for the syllable /ka/); and in the 19th century the chemists had to create some new characters for the elements (e.g. 氦 hai4 for "helium"). These are the instances I can think of at the moment.


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## blancey

Chinese is not like English or other western language, to describe an item or to name it, it is usually a combination of characters rather than creating new words with prefix and suffix, unless it is completely new idea, such as new elements, which the case is mentioned by Ghabi. The combination of characters usually reflects the natures of the new objects or pronounces similar to it.

For email, it's similar to English, it is a combination of two characters 電 & 郵, it reflects the nature of email, it's electronic (電) mail (郵).


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## Ghabi

To be more linguistically precise, dian4you2 is a calque of English "electronic mail", consisting of the morphemes dian4 "electric" and you2 "post/mail". Both dian4 and you2 are existing morphemes that already have their own characters. There's no need to coin new characters for them.


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## Jacobtm

What about a words like internet, website, are those again just formed of 2 preexisting words, much as it is in English?

What about words like bicycle, ice-cream, taco, guitar? These are things that the Chinese did not invent, but encountered at some point in their history, how have these words been treated?


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## Ghabi

I think your question is about coining new characters. Let's stick to the topic of the thread, which is something the WR forums require us to do. For a new topic, we can always open a new thread.


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## kenjoluma

I think in this case there is no difference at all between English and Chinese. As a matter of fact, any given languages would not be different at all.

Even English does not come up with a completely new word when there is a 'new word'. If we take an example of 'internet' as you did, it is 'inter' + 'net' which are pre-existing.  I believe this is well explained by many users in this thread. Anyway, this is the first way to coin the new term. Find the pre-existing words and compound them.

The second way: Chinese just import the word from somewhere else and make up the special character for this specific word: 乒乓球 咖啡 etc. These are NOT pre-existing. Someone made up these brand new characters for the brand-new concept. But this is very exceptional.

[edit] Even today, there are some new characters being created by someone around China. The point is, whether this 'new character' could be popular or not. Most of them fail to be used by many people. But sometimes, very few of them succeed to be on the dictionary. Then, sadly, (alas!) Chinese people have one more new character to memorize. Luckily this doesn't happen very often.


The third way: try to imitate the imported word and the pronunciation just the way it sounds.
Chocolate to 巧克力(qiao ke li）or Guitar to 吉他(jita). If you look at the meaning of every single letter, it doesn't make any sense, but the letters in these words merely represent the pronunciation.


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## Jacobtm

Interesting. So the two characters that make up ´´guitar´´, what do they mean individually?


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## kong.zhong

Jacobtm said:


> Interesting. So the two characters that make up ´´guitar´´, what do they mean individually?


 
The meaning of the separated 吉他 (guitar) has nothing to do with guitar. 吉means lucky, and 他means he(him).


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## xiaolijie

In addtion to what kong.zhong has said. I'd say that the meanings of 吉 and 他 are accidental, but if they happen to sound negative, then other characters with the same sounds may have to be chosen.

Incidentally, I must remind all that the _WR forums are for questions on specific problems in languages and not really for general knowledge questions._ So for questions like this one, I think you'd find more comprehesive answers elsewhere (such as Wiki) and I'd encourage you to do that. (Just a reminder but if anyone has questions on this, please PM me.)


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## bamboobanga

it all depends..  it can be really random


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## dumplingvinegar

To recap, the new phrase is either coined from pre-existing characters based on meaning (such as internet, 互联网, _hulianwang, _which literally means 'interlinked-net'), or coined from pre-existing characters based solely on sound (such as guitar, 吉他, _jita.. _which doesn't 'mean' anything in Chinese when put together).

Just my two cents regarding the 'appropriateness' of the topic: I think general questions like these are fascinating, and discussing them on forums such as these together might give rise to new insights or specific examples, or even awesome interlingual chemistry, that Wikipedia & co. might not necessarily be able to provide. : )

Anyway, I actually really love the creativity of Chinese when it comes to coining or incorporating new terms into the language. More often than not the language tries to interpret the new concept in some way. And because of the structure of the language, the formation of the new term is easily evident, so there are many tiny but fun insights to be had just from a superficial break-down of many of these foreign words.

For example, the Chinese word for 'computer' is '电脑', _diannao_, literally 'electric/digital brain'.
Rocket, 火箭, _huojian_, is literally 'fire-arrow'.
Rock music, on the other hand, became 摇滚乐_,_ _yaogunyue, _literally 'shaking and rolling music'. So you can see the translation comes from the earliest phrase 'rock 'n roll', and the Chinese tried their best to come up with the closest equivalent to the English verb 'rock', which turned out to be 'shake/sway'.
Countless more..! : )


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## Jacobtm

Good job with Rock & Roll. The name itself comes from a song where the singer tells a girl he'll ''rock and roll'' her all night long.


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