Similar Systems
In East Asia, a similar role to Latin and Greek has been played by Chinese, with non-Chinese languages both borrowing significant number of words from Chinese, and using morphemes borrowed from Chinese to coin words, particularly formal or technical language. See Sino-Japanese vocabulary, Sino-Korean vocabulary, and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary for discussion.
The coinage of new native terms on Chinese roots is most notable in Japanese, where it is referred to as wasei kango (和製漢語?, Japanese-made Chinese-words). Many of these have been subsequently borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, with the same (or corresponding) characters being pronounced differently according to language, just as happens in European languages – compare English biology and French biologie.
For example, 自動車 (Japanese jidōsha, Korean jadongcha) is a Japanese-coined word meaning “automobile”, literally self-move-car; compare to auto (self) + mobile (moving).
Read more about this topic: Classical Compound
Famous quotes containing the words similar and/or systems:
“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air- conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)