I was out for a beer with my friend Chris, the self-described language geek, and he mentioned that he'd looked up the periodic table in Chinese - try to convince me that doesn't belong on the Geek Test!
- Sid
Comments and observations on science fiction and fantasy.
"Revolution is everywhere, in everything. It is infinite. There is no final revolution, no final number.
- Yevgeny Zamyatin
Just for your information, the simplified 'radical' on the left hand side of a lot of the elements (metals especially) is the symbol for 'metal' (jin), one of the five elements in the old Chinese 'order of things' (or whatever you want to call it). The other four elements are the same as ours.
ReplyDeleteChris
Correction, the five elements or wu xing (wu meaning 5) and xing having many translations, one of which is 'changing states of being' are fire, earth, water, metal and wood.
ReplyDeleteChris
Hmmm...this would seem to refute the plot concept from "Omnilingual" by H. Beam Piper, in which the periodic table is used as a Rosetta Stone for an alien society - Martian, to be specific. I'm reasonably sure that the standard table of elements doesn't include "wood".
ReplyDelete- Sid
Well there are the ancient elements which one can count on your hand which weren't worked into a table, and the periodic table which has at least 100 which can be categorized into rows based on the fickleness of their electrons. Too bad they have the same word attached to them and it intersected in my discourse.
ReplyDeleteChris