New words for old things

[holy king]

A group of three - Troika (from Slavic languages). It's used a lot in the media these days...

we use that in german too, always thought it was greek. (without much thinking about it, i have to say)

 

[Artifis]

Cafe: Tavern of caffeine
Shower: Dispensary of cleanliness
Water: Liquid of life
Morning: Dawninglight
Out: Into the Great World

As I got up from my coffin simulator in the dawninglight I made my way to the dispensary of cleanliness. The cold liquid of life washed my body as I thought about going to the tavern of caffeine. I put on my pseudo-skin as I looked at my image in the deception pane.

Not too shabby today.

With that, I went into the Great World.

 

[Cheetah]

Troika is in semi-common usage in Norwegian as well actually.

 

[carmen510]

Republican is now "job creator".

 

[aronnax]

Chinese is full of these things because they translate scientific English words into Chinese.

For example, sperm in Chinese is '精子' jingzhi which sort of mean 'essence thing'
But when a word was needed for 'spermatocytes', which is a stage that a sperm develops from, the chinese word '精母细胞' Jīng mǔ xìbāo was used.
The second character is 母 or 'mother', 'maternal'. 细胞 just means cell.
The reason why they used a 'mother' character in the development of a male gamete was because spermatocytes undergo a process that splits it into two spermatids which develop into sperm. In scientific terms, the spermatocyte is the mother cell of the two daughter cell spermatids. Thus some Chinese scientist popped 'maternal' into that word!

Another one is the word 'neutron' which is particle in the atom that has no charge. Obviously, the word is derived from the word 'neutral'. Neither positive or negative.
The Chinese call 'neutron' 中子 zhongzhi or center thing, middle thing which relates to the fact that neutrons are neither positive or negative charge, they are inbetween, neutral charge, so the middle of positive and negative.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I don't know if I'd translate 子 with thing. Depending on the context (and the first character) it can also mean 'a very small thing', 'child/offspring' or 'seed' which makes it sound more poetic.
I really like their word for electron: '电子' diàn​zǐ, lightning child; lightning seed.
And then there's the chinese practice to name electrical devices by adding 电 (diàn, lightning) as a prefix.
Telephone: lightning speech
Computer: lightning brain
Movie: lightning image

 

[mayor]

Fun fact: the literal translation of the German word for gloves is "handshoes".

Dutch has the samen.. "Handschoen" (try and pronounce that nondutchies )

Movie: lightning image

shouldn't that be "Lightning images" as a movie consist of multiple images

 

[aronnax]

I don't know if I'd translate 子 with thing. Depending on the context (and the first character) it can also mean 'a very small thing', 'child/offspring' or 'seed' which makes it sound more poetic.
I really like their word for electron: '电子' diàn​zǐ, lightning child; lightning seed.
And then there's the chinese practice to name electrical devices by adding 电 (diàn, lightning) as a prefix.
Telephone: lightning speech
Computer: lightning brain
Movie: lightning image

子 is a generic word noun. It usually means nothing by itself. I have never heard anyone use it as child except for 孩子 haizi, in which case, it is the 孩 that means child and not the 子. I don't know where you got your translation from but 子 is usually used to denote that something is an object. e.g 椅子 chair，鞋子 shoes，梳子 comb。

And 电 doesn't mean lightning. It means electricity. Lightning is 闪电，literally flashing electricity.
Telephone is thus electric speech
Computer is electric brain
Movie 电影 is electric shadow (why? I don't know) 影 ying, alone means shadow. It only means image or picture or portrait if you add other things like 影片，影像.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I get my most of my translation from mdgb.net.
Zi has many uses, and the most important one now is as a noun suffix but the character originally meant child or offspring.
I thought dian means lightning because it's usually the character used in compound words containing lightning and I assumed 闪电 is one of those many two-syllable words that Chinese often only use one syllable for.
I also assumed ancient Chinese didn't have a concept of 'electricity' when the character -which by the way looks to me like something coming out of a cloud ( + rain in the classical version 電)- came about.
Most importantly, 'lightning child' sounds much better than 'electricity thing'.

About 影 , my bad. I learned 电影 as movie and mdgb gave me shadow, image and reflection as possible translations. I just thought image makes more sense in this context.

 

[civ-addicted]

子 is a generic word noun. It usually means nothing by itself. I have never heard anyone use it as child except for 孩子 haizi, in which case, it is the 孩 that means child and not the 子. I don't know where you got your translation from but 子 is usually used to denote that something is an object. e.g 椅子 chair，鞋子 shoes，梳子 comb。

子 ('ko') by itself means child in Japanese. Possibly the creators of the site got it confused.

 

[aronnax]

I get my most of my translation from mdgb.net.
Zi has many uses, and the most important one now is as a noun suffix but the character originally meant child or offspring.

Perhaps the character meant child in the past. As civaddicted said, it does mean child in Japanese. But I haven't heard or used the character 子 used in that way before. Not by my parents or teachers or television shows before.

I thought dian means lightning because it's usually the character used in compound words containing lightning and I assumed 闪电 is one of those many two-syllable words that Chinese often only use one syllable for.
I also assumed ancient Chinese didn't have a concept of 'electricity' when the character -which by the way looks to me like something coming out of a cloud ( + rain in the classical version 電)- came about.

Your theory does make sense. 电/電, does look like it is derived as lightning from the clouds. Again, perhaps it did mean lightning in the distant past. It is probably one of those words that shifted in meaning. I usually hear 电 being used as: 着个要用电吗？ (Does this need electricity?) 我的手机没电. (My cellphone has no power.) Whilst when referring to lightning, the character 闪 is always there.

Most importantly, 'lightning child' sounds much better than 'electricity thing'.

Perhaps, but I would imagine directly translating electron as lightning child
a rather bad weird translation of 电 and 了.

About 影 , my bad. I learned 电影 as movie and mdgb gave me shadow, image and reflection as possible translations. I just thought image makes more sense in this context.

No problem. My guess is that they initially used shadow because people did portraits and their portraits were shaped like them like how our shadows shape us (影像 shadow similar/same). Then it's a simple move from 影像(portrait) to 电影(film, movie)(electric shadow)

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On-topic, Singaporeans use the term 'handphone' for 'cellphone' and I know German people call their 'cellphone' 'handy'.