The world's most comprehensive English-Chinese character translation key for the Periodic Table of the elements is now available at the Language Log blog.
There are several instances where the Taiwanese representation and the People's Republic of China representation differ. Mandarin Chinese seeks to represent all of the chemical elements with a single syllable.
It is very nice to know that you are interested in Linguistics {which is the HIGHEST expression of Nature}. I will thus strongly recommend the book "Linguistics Manifesto (ISBN 978-3-8383-9722-1)” which discussed the details of natural languages (English, Chinese, …) and the language of physics and of mathematics.
ReplyDeleteChinese language does play a major example in this linguistics universe. But, “Language Log” is a joke if one wants to know Chinese language, let alone to say about linguistics. Please review { http://www.chineselanguageforums.com/chinese-idioms/part-three-the-new-chinese-etymology-t229.html }, and you will know that my comment about the ‘joke’ is quite fair.
In the meantime, let’s get back to physics. The falsifiability is now viewed as silly by the papabear {Steven Weinberg said: " First of all, this business of falsifiability is a silly criterion imposed on physical science by Karl Popper, who was looking for some way of discrediting Marxism and psychoanalysis. Our most important theories, like Newtonian mechanics and quantum mechanics, are not falsifiable, because they do not make predictions by themselves, but provide general frameworks for more specific theories, which do make predictions. Further, if we find some future theory that does make successful predictions about a lot of things, which turn out to be true rather than false, and if that theory also predicts the existence of a multiverse, then we should take that prediction seriously even though it can’t be tested directly.” See http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2015/05/01/nobel-laureate-steven-weinberg-still-dreams-of-final-theory/ }.
I hope that Weinberg’s saying can save a few physicists’ soul from the Popperianism joke (total nonsense). See, https://4gravitons.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/outreach-as-the-end-product-of-science/comment-page-1/#comment-2312 .
Language Log is as much an academic humor blog as it is a serious linguistics blog. It covers topics of a general interest that are often amusing or water cooler worthy. But, it does a good job at what it is trying to do, which reminds you of why you might want to get seriously interested in linguistics at a deeper level.
ReplyDelete