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:
“Take us generally as a people, we are neither lazy nor idle; and considering how little we have to excite or stimulate us, I am almost astonished that there are so many industrious and ambitious ones to be found; although I acknowledge, with extreme sorrow, that there are some who never were and never will be serviceable to society. And have you not a similar class among yourselves?”
—Maria Stewart (1803–1879)
“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)