现今仍有新汉字被创造出来吗？
Are new Chinese characters still being invented?
译文简介
网友问是不是需要发明新的汉字来表达新概念？答主科普汉字表达新概念的方法。
正文翻译
Are new Chinese characters still being invented?
现今仍有新汉字被创造出来吗？
[Zhang Feng]
This is a very good question. The answer is yes, but only a few, most of which are names of new-found chemical elements.
The question can be decomposed to three questions:
What are Chinese characters made from?
How do Chinese characters convey concepts?
How do Chinese characters convey new concepts?
What are Chinese characters made from?
As a non-native speaker of Chinese you may think these characters are made from random strokes such as 一丨丿丶. In fact, however, strokes make character components or ‘radicals’ (部首), and most characters are made from radicals.
Radicals are not randomly improvised. Most of them represent either a meaning or a pronunciation. For example, 信 (xin4, ‘trust’) is made from 亻 (a slightly rearranged version of 人, ‘person’ or ‘human’) and 言 (yan2, meaning ‘to say’ or ‘word’). This indicates what a person says should be trustworthy. On the other hand, 妈 (ma1, ‘mother’) is made from 女 (nü3, ‘woman’) and 马 (ma3, ‘horse’). Obviously there is nothing in common between a woman and a horse; the 马 here merely suggests the pronunciation.
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
This is a very good question. The answer is yes, but only a few, most of which are names of new-found chemical elements.
The question can be decomposed to three questions:
What are Chinese characters made from?
How do Chinese characters convey concepts?
How do Chinese characters convey new concepts?
What are Chinese characters made from?
As a non-native speaker of Chinese you may think these characters are made from random strokes such as 一丨丿丶. In fact, however, strokes make character components or ‘radicals’ (部首), and most characters are made from radicals.
Radicals are not randomly improvised. Most of them represent either a meaning or a pronunciation. For example, 信 (xin4, ‘trust’) is made from 亻 (a slightly rearranged version of 人, ‘person’ or ‘human’) and 言 (yan2, meaning ‘to say’ or ‘word’). This indicates what a person says should be trustworthy. On the other hand, 妈 (ma1, ‘mother’) is made from 女 (nü3, ‘woman’) and 马 (ma3, ‘horse’). Obviously there is nothing in common between a woman and a horse; the 马 here merely suggests the pronunciation.
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
Knowing this, you can infer that if a new character have to be invented, it will be made from existing radicals (whose meanings or pronunciations are fixed) rather than from a new, random pattern of strokes. So it is.
Radicals in Chinese are quite similar to affixes in English. However, another type of ‘affixes’ in Chinese are described in the second part.
How do Chinese characters convey concepts?
In the simplest cases, basically every individual character has its own meaning. However, as the Chinese language has quite a long, evolving history (about some 5,000 years), new (and usually related) meanings and concepts have been attached to the original characters.
For example, 信, originally a verb ‘trust’, can also be used as an adjective ‘trustworthy’, or a noun ‘trustworthiness’, or an adverb ‘exactly’, or ‘believe’ or ‘faith’ or ‘signal’ or ‘message’ or ‘letter’ (the one you put in an envelope)…
However, since a single character can represent so many concepts (打, ‘hit’, has some 26 different meanings), how do native speakers tell what exactly it means?
Radicals in Chinese are quite similar to affixes in English. However, another type of ‘affixes’ in Chinese are described in the second part.
How do Chinese characters convey concepts?
In the simplest cases, basically every individual character has its own meaning. However, as the Chinese language has quite a long, evolving history (about some 5,000 years), new (and usually related) meanings and concepts have been attached to the original characters.
For example, 信, originally a verb ‘trust’, can also be used as an adjective ‘trustworthy’, or a noun ‘trustworthiness’, or an adverb ‘exactly’, or ‘believe’ or ‘faith’ or ‘signal’ or ‘message’ or ‘letter’ (the one you put in an envelope)…
However, since a single character can represent so many concepts (打, ‘hit’, has some 26 different meanings), how do native speakers tell what exactly it means?
In classical Chinese, this is a, well, slightly difficult job. Therefore, in modern Chinese, two or even more characters can be combined to specify what exactly they mean.
Take a look at our old pal, 信. In modern Chinese, we use 信任 for ‘trust’, 可信 for ‘trustworthy’, 信用 for ‘trustworthiness’, 信然 for ‘exactly’, 相信 for ‘believe’, 信仰 for ‘faith’, 信号 for ‘signal’, 信息 for ‘message’ and 书信 for ‘letter’.
Take a look at our old pal, 信. In modern Chinese, we use 信任 for ‘trust’, 可信 for ‘trustworthy’, 信用 for ‘trustworthiness’, 信然 for ‘exactly’, 相信 for ‘believe’, 信仰 for ‘faith’, 信号 for ‘signal’, 信息 for ‘message’ and 书信 for ‘letter’.
This is it. Every Chinese character can be used as a prefix or suffix. Certain combinations of characters can be used to convey more accurate concepts.
How do Chinese characters convey new concepts?
The two questions above answered, this question seems natural. There are three ways for this.
By inventing a new character. This happens only when extremely important scientific concepts are introduced, or a new chemical element is found. For example, we invented 熵 for ‘entropy’, 镄 for the 100th chemical element Fermium. Of course, these characters are made from existing radicals, whose meanings or pronunciations are already fixed. 熵 is a combination of 火(‘fire’, indicating ‘energy’) and 商 (‘quotient’), since the physics term ‘entropy’ is defined in a form of division. 镄 is made from 钅 (‘metal’) and 费 (which sounds like ‘fay’). As far as I know, there are perhaps no more than 50 newly invented characters.
By using a character combination indicating the pronunciation. This happened mainly in the late 19th century and early 20th century, during which a large number of new concepts were introduced from Europe and America. For example, 咖啡 for ‘coffee’, 巧克力 for ‘chocolate’. The combination 巧克力 literally makes no sense; it merely sounds like how a English speaker pronounce ‘chocolate’. And in the same way we translate names of people and places, e.g. 特朗普 (T-rum-p) for ‘Trump’, 英国 (En-country) for ‘England’ or ‘UK’.
By using a character combination, which assembles several meanings. For example, 自由主义 (‘liberalism’) is made from 自由 (‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’) and 主义 (‘theory’ or ‘doctrine’). And 自由 (‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’) itself is made from 自 (‘self’) and 由 (‘obey’). 外科 (‘surgery’) is made from 外 (‘outer’) and 科 (‘medical specialty’). If this sounds too much like prefixes and suffixes, here are some slightly different examples. 长颈鹿 (long neck deer) for ‘giraffe’. 牛肉 (cow meat) for ‘beef’. 动量 (movement measurement) for ‘momentum’. Nowadays, most new concepts introduced in scientific research and everyday life are expressed in Chinese this way. This is really helpful. Since every individual character has its own meaning, from the combination you can easily (and with much confidence) ‘realize’ what it means, even before knowing its definition, rather than memorizing a completely unrelated new word. In this way, Chinese has a vocabulary of about 3,500 frequently used characters and zero ‘new’ words, while English has only 26 letters in the alphabet but tens of thousands (and counting) of words.
By the way, there might be multiple ways of conveying the same concept at different periods in history. In early 20th century we used 德律风 (te-le-phone) for ‘telephone’; nowadays we use 电话 (‘electronic talk’) instead.
How do Chinese characters convey new concepts?
The two questions above answered, this question seems natural. There are three ways for this.
By inventing a new character. This happens only when extremely important scientific concepts are introduced, or a new chemical element is found. For example, we invented 熵 for ‘entropy’, 镄 for the 100th chemical element Fermium. Of course, these characters are made from existing radicals, whose meanings or pronunciations are already fixed. 熵 is a combination of 火(‘fire’, indicating ‘energy’) and 商 (‘quotient’), since the physics term ‘entropy’ is defined in a form of division. 镄 is made from 钅 (‘metal’) and 费 (which sounds like ‘fay’). As far as I know, there are perhaps no more than 50 newly invented characters.
By using a character combination indicating the pronunciation. This happened mainly in the late 19th century and early 20th century, during which a large number of new concepts were introduced from Europe and America. For example, 咖啡 for ‘coffee’, 巧克力 for ‘chocolate’. The combination 巧克力 literally makes no sense; it merely sounds like how a English speaker pronounce ‘chocolate’. And in the same way we translate names of people and places, e.g. 特朗普 (T-rum-p) for ‘Trump’, 英国 (En-country) for ‘England’ or ‘UK’.
By using a character combination, which assembles several meanings. For example, 自由主义 (‘liberalism’) is made from 自由 (‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’) and 主义 (‘theory’ or ‘doctrine’). And 自由 (‘liberty’ or ‘freedom’) itself is made from 自 (‘self’) and 由 (‘obey’). 外科 (‘surgery’) is made from 外 (‘outer’) and 科 (‘medical specialty’). If this sounds too much like prefixes and suffixes, here are some slightly different examples. 长颈鹿 (long neck deer) for ‘giraffe’. 牛肉 (cow meat) for ‘beef’. 动量 (movement measurement) for ‘momentum’. Nowadays, most new concepts introduced in scientific research and everyday life are expressed in Chinese this way. This is really helpful. Since every individual character has its own meaning, from the combination you can easily (and with much confidence) ‘realize’ what it means, even before knowing its definition, rather than memorizing a completely unrelated new word. In this way, Chinese has a vocabulary of about 3,500 frequently used characters and zero ‘new’ words, while English has only 26 letters in the alphabet but tens of thousands (and counting) of words.
By the way, there might be multiple ways of conveying the same concept at different periods in history. In early 20th century we used 德律风 (te-le-phone) for ‘telephone’; nowadays we use 电话 (‘electronic talk’) instead.
As introduced above, yes, a few characters are still being invented. But we don’t have to invent a completely new character every time there is something new in science and society - that won’t work for 5,000 years of history!
这个问题问得好。答案是有，但只有少量，大部分是新发现的化学元素的名称。
这个问题可以分解为三个问题：
汉字是由什么组成的？
汉字是如何传达概念的？
汉字如何传达新概念？
# 汉字是由什么组成的？
作为非汉语母语的人，您可能会认为这些字符是由随机笔画组成的，例如一丨丿丶。但事实上，笔画构成汉字的组成部分，或叫“部首”，而大多数汉字都是由部首构成的。
部首并不是随机产生的。它们中的大多数代表含义或发音。例如，信（xin4，“信任”）是由亻（人，“人”或“人”的稍微重新排列的版本）和言（yan2，意思是“说”或“词”）组成。这表明一个人所说的话应该值得信赖。另一方面，妈（ma1，“母亲”）是由女（nü3，“女人”）和马（ma3，“马”）组成的。显然，女人和马之间没有任何共同点。这里的“马”只是表示发音。
知道了这一点，你就可以推断，如果必须发明一个新字符，它将由现有的部首（其含义或发音是固定的）组成，而不是由新的、随机的笔画模式组成。就是这样。
中文中的部首与英语中的词缀非常相似。然而，汉语中的另一种“词缀”在第二部分中描述。
汉字是如何传达概念的？
在最简单的情况下，基本上每个字符都有自己的含义。然而，由于汉语有着相当长的、不断发展的历史（大约5000年），新的（通常是相关的）含义和概念已经被附加到原始字符上。
例如，信最初是动词“信任”，也可以用作形容词“值得信赖”，或名词“值得信赖”，或副词“完全”，或“相信”或“信仰”或“信号”或 “消息”或“信件”（您放入信封的那封信）...
然而，由于一个字符可以代表如此多的概念（打，“打”，有大约 26 种不同的含义），母语人士如何说出它到底意味着什么？
在文言文中，这是一项稍微困难的工作。因此，在现代汉语中，可以组合两个甚至更多的字符来明确它们的确切含义。
看看我们的老朋友信。在现代汉语中，我们用“信任”表示“trust”，“可信”表示“trustworthy”，“信用”表示“trustworthiness”，“信然”表示“exactly”，“相信”表示“believe”，“信仰”表示“faith”，“信号”表示“signal”， 信息代表“message”，书信代表“letter”。
就是这样。每个汉字都可以用作前缀或后缀。某些字符组合可用于传达更准确的概念。
# 汉字如何传达新概念？
上面两个问题已经回答了，这个问题看起来很自然。有以下三种方法。
1. 通过发明一个新字。只有当引入极其重要的科学概念或发现新的化学元素时才会发生这种情况。例如，我们发明了“熵”代表“entropy”，镄代表第100个化学元素Fermium。当然，这些字是由现有的部首组成的，其含义或发音已经固定。熵是火（“fire”，表示“能量”）和商（“quotient”）的组合，因为物理学术语“熵”是以除法的形式定义的。镄由钅（“metal”）和费（听起来像“fay”）组成。据我所知，新发明的汉字大概不超过50个。
2. 通过使用字符组合指示发音。这主要发生在19世纪末20世纪初，这一时期大量新概念从欧美引进。例如，“咖啡”代表“coffee”，“巧克力”代表“chocolate”。巧克力的组合从字面上看毫无意义。它听起来只是像说英语的人如何发音“巧克力”。以同样的方式，我们翻译人名和地名，例如特朗普 (T-rum-p) 代表“Trump”，英国 (En-country) 代表“England”或“UK”。
3. 通过使用字符组合，集合多种含义。例如，自由主义（‘liberalism’）是由自由（‘liberty’或‘freedom’）和主义（‘theory’或‘doctrine’）组成的。而自由（“自由”或“自由”）本身是由“自”（“self”）和“由”（“obey”）组成的。外科（“surgery”）由“外”（“outer”）和“科”（“medical specialty”）组成。如果这听起来太像前缀和后缀，这里有一些略有不同的示例。长颈鹿（long neck deer）意为“giraffe”。牛肉（cow meat），意为“beef”。动量（movement measurement）代表“momentum”。如今，科学研究和日常生活中引入的新概念大多都是用这种方式表达的。这真的很有帮助。由于每个单独的字符都有其自己的含义，因此即使在知道其定义之前，您也可以通过组合轻松（并且充满信心地）“意识到”它的含义，而不是记住一个完全不相关的新单词。这样，中文的词汇量约为3500个常用字符，“新”词为零，而英语只有 26 个字母，但却有数万个单词（并且还在增加）。
顺便说一句，在历史的不同时期可能有多种传达同一概念的方式。20世纪初，我们使用德律风（te-le-phone）来表示“telephone”； 如今我们使用电话（“electronic talk”）来代替。
正如上面所介绍的，是的，少量字符仍在被发明着。但我们不必每次科学和社会出现新事物时就发明一个全新的汉字——5000年历史下来，这样可行不通！
这个问题问得好。答案是有，但只有少量，大部分是新发现的化学元素的名称。
这个问题可以分解为三个问题：
汉字是由什么组成的？
汉字是如何传达概念的？
汉字如何传达新概念？
# 汉字是由什么组成的？
作为非汉语母语的人，您可能会认为这些字符是由随机笔画组成的，例如一丨丿丶。但事实上，笔画构成汉字的组成部分，或叫“部首”，而大多数汉字都是由部首构成的。
部首并不是随机产生的。它们中的大多数代表含义或发音。例如，信（xin4，“信任”）是由亻（人，“人”或“人”的稍微重新排列的版本）和言（yan2，意思是“说”或“词”）组成。这表明一个人所说的话应该值得信赖。另一方面，妈（ma1，“母亲”）是由女（nü3，“女人”）和马（ma3，“马”）组成的。显然，女人和马之间没有任何共同点。这里的“马”只是表示发音。
知道了这一点，你就可以推断，如果必须发明一个新字符，它将由现有的部首（其含义或发音是固定的）组成，而不是由新的、随机的笔画模式组成。就是这样。
中文中的部首与英语中的词缀非常相似。然而，汉语中的另一种“词缀”在第二部分中描述。
汉字是如何传达概念的？
在最简单的情况下，基本上每个字符都有自己的含义。然而，由于汉语有着相当长的、不断发展的历史（大约5000年），新的（通常是相关的）含义和概念已经被附加到原始字符上。
例如，信最初是动词“信任”，也可以用作形容词“值得信赖”，或名词“值得信赖”，或副词“完全”，或“相信”或“信仰”或“信号”或 “消息”或“信件”（您放入信封的那封信）...
然而，由于一个字符可以代表如此多的概念（打，“打”，有大约 26 种不同的含义），母语人士如何说出它到底意味着什么？
在文言文中，这是一项稍微困难的工作。因此，在现代汉语中，可以组合两个甚至更多的字符来明确它们的确切含义。
看看我们的老朋友信。在现代汉语中，我们用“信任”表示“trust”，“可信”表示“trustworthy”，“信用”表示“trustworthiness”，“信然”表示“exactly”，“相信”表示“believe”，“信仰”表示“faith”，“信号”表示“signal”， 信息代表“message”，书信代表“letter”。
就是这样。每个汉字都可以用作前缀或后缀。某些字符组合可用于传达更准确的概念。
# 汉字如何传达新概念？
上面两个问题已经回答了，这个问题看起来很自然。有以下三种方法。
1. 通过发明一个新字。只有当引入极其重要的科学概念或发现新的化学元素时才会发生这种情况。例如，我们发明了“熵”代表“entropy”，镄代表第100个化学元素Fermium。当然，这些字是由现有的部首组成的，其含义或发音已经固定。熵是火（“fire”，表示“能量”）和商（“quotient”）的组合，因为物理学术语“熵”是以除法的形式定义的。镄由钅（“metal”）和费（听起来像“fay”）组成。据我所知，新发明的汉字大概不超过50个。
2. 通过使用字符组合指示发音。这主要发生在19世纪末20世纪初，这一时期大量新概念从欧美引进。例如，“咖啡”代表“coffee”，“巧克力”代表“chocolate”。巧克力的组合从字面上看毫无意义。它听起来只是像说英语的人如何发音“巧克力”。以同样的方式，我们翻译人名和地名，例如特朗普 (T-rum-p) 代表“Trump”，英国 (En-country) 代表“England”或“UK”。
3. 通过使用字符组合，集合多种含义。例如，自由主义（‘liberalism’）是由自由（‘liberty’或‘freedom’）和主义（‘theory’或‘doctrine’）组成的。而自由（“自由”或“自由”）本身是由“自”（“self”）和“由”（“obey”）组成的。外科（“surgery”）由“外”（“outer”）和“科”（“medical specialty”）组成。如果这听起来太像前缀和后缀，这里有一些略有不同的示例。长颈鹿（long neck deer）意为“giraffe”。牛肉（cow meat），意为“beef”。动量（movement measurement）代表“momentum”。如今，科学研究和日常生活中引入的新概念大多都是用这种方式表达的。这真的很有帮助。由于每个单独的字符都有其自己的含义，因此即使在知道其定义之前，您也可以通过组合轻松（并且充满信心地）“意识到”它的含义，而不是记住一个完全不相关的新单词。这样，中文的词汇量约为3500个常用字符，“新”词为零，而英语只有 26 个字母，但却有数万个单词（并且还在增加）。
顺便说一句，在历史的不同时期可能有多种传达同一概念的方式。20世纪初，我们使用德律风（te-le-phone）来表示“telephone”； 如今我们使用电话（“electronic talk”）来代替。
正如上面所介绍的，是的，少量字符仍在被发明着。但我们不必每次科学和社会出现新事物时就发明一个全新的汉字——5000年历史下来，这样可行不通！
评论翻译
很赞 ( 11 )
收藏
Electronic talk . . . I never thought of diàn huà that way . . . Your observation is so true . . . Here’s the real quandary: as a Western student, I was naturally encouraged to start with Simplified Chinese and PinYin. With each level of progress, I discover, however, that Traditional Chinese is far “friendlier”, because it actually holds the different parts of each character like a miniature puzzle. If you manage to memorize the meaning of the main root radicals, you’re totally right, you can actually infer the meaning of a word without having necessarily seen it and learned it beforehand. I sometimes bless the fact that I was born and raised in France: I review French grammar every month (to keep it more or less current in my mind). This casual exercise reveals how “cruel” that language is: so many exceptions, twists, turns, “faux-amis” and other sleight-of-language tricks that it makes your head spin. And then, there’s the spoken language, at odds with the written language . . . And yes, if you studied Latin and Greek, surprise, you will be able to infer the meaning of a lot of medical or technical words. But just like English, these words need to be learned: you cannot just look at the letters and infer the word’s meaning . . . I feel Mandarin Chinese is far easier that way, once you overcome a misplaced “fear of “ writing Chinese characters as part of learning the language!
电子谈话……我从来没有这样想过diàn huà……你的观察很真实……真正的困境是：作为一名西方学生，我自然地被鼓励从简体中文和拼音开始。然而，随着每一个级别的进步，我发现繁体中文更加“友好”，因为它实际上像一个微型拼图一样包含了每个字符的不同部分。如果你能够记住主要词根部首的含义，那么你是完全正确的，你实际上可以推断出一个单词的含义，而无需事先看到和学习它。有时我庆幸自己在法国出生和长大：我每个月都会复习法语语法（或多或少地在我的脑海中保持最新状态）。这个随意的练习揭示了这种语言是多么“残酷”：如此多的例外、曲折、转弯、“假朋友”和其他令人头晕的语言技巧。然后，还有与书面语言不一致的口语……是的，如果您学习了拉丁语和希腊语，令人惊讶的是，您将能够推断出许多医学或技术词汇的含义。但就像英语一样，这些单词也需要学习：你不能只看字母就推断出单词的含义……我觉得普通话要容易得多——一旦你克服了对写汉字作为学习语言的一部分的不该有的“恐惧”！
It is phenomenal that you grasped the major differences between Chinese and European Languages. Good work and keep it up!
您掌握了中文和欧洲语言之间的主要差异，很了不起。干得好，继续努力！
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
Those are new Chinese words, not new characters.
那些是新中文词汇，不是新汉字。
In fact, if you have read the first or last paragraph, you would find the answer for new-invented characters.
What actually interested me is that the one who asked this question may be a non-native speaker of Chinese - this is Quora, remember?. He probably wondered if new characters have to be invented whenever there's a new introduced concept, as they do with English.
So this is the perfect time for explaining how Chinese character are composed, used, and refreshed. To native speakers these are common knowledge. To non-native speakers these are not.
If a few more people find themselves interested in hanzi and the Chinese language after reading my answer, it isn't all valueless, is it?
事实上，如果你读过第一段或最后一段，你就会找到关于新发明的汉字的答案。
真正让我感兴趣的是，问这个问题的人可能是一个非汉语母语的人——这是Quora还记得吗？他可能想知道，每当有新的概念引入时，是否就必须发明新的字符，就像英语一样。
因此，这是解释汉字如何构成、使用和更新的最佳时机。对于母语人士来说，这些都是常识。对于非母语人士来说，这些不是。
如果更多的人在阅读我的回答后发现自己对汉字和中文感兴趣，那也不是毫无价值，不是吗？
Thank you! As a student of your language, I found this highly informative. I looked up your answer because I had exactly this question, and your response makes perfect sense. How interesting that on occasion Chinese still adds new words not by combining characters, which is of course common, but by remixing radicals. And naturally you wouldn’t add new radicals. For one thing that wouldn’t fit existing dictionary lookup systems.
I find the way Chinese forms new words one of the best aspects of the language. It’s practical (like much of Chinese) and lets a learner reinforce their memory of the meaning of characters by seeing the same character in different combinations.
By the way, your written English is excellent. You have a very few unusual usages that suggest it’s not your first language. But your use of idiom, sentence structure and vocabulary is better than most native speakers I know. You must be a language scholar.
谢谢你！ 作为你们语言的学生，我觉得这回答的信息量很大。我查到了您的答案，因为我正有这个问题，并且您的回答非常有道理。有趣的是，有时中文仍然不是通过组合字符来添加新词（这当然很常见），而是通过重新混合部首来添加新词。当然你不会添加新的部首。一个原因是它不适合现有的字典查找系统。
我发现中文形成新词的方式是该语言最好的方面之一。它很实用（就像很多中文一样），可以让学习者通过看到相同字符的不同组合来加强对字符含义的记忆。
顺便说一下，你的英语写作非常好。您有一些不寻常的用法，这说明它不是您的母语。但你对习语、句子结构和词汇的使用比我认识的大多数母语人士都要好。你一定是一位语言学者。
As for 动量 (movement measurement) that you mentioned above, I think here 量 means quantity. So 动量 literally means “movement quantity”.
至于你上面提到的动量，我想这里的量是quantity的意思。 所以动量字面意思是“movement quantity”。
I did consider ‘quantity’ but used ‘measurement’ instead, as in 度量衡. Perhaps ‘quantity’ is better, since momentum is actually a 物理量 (physics quantity) of movement. Thanks for the advice!
我确实考虑过“quantity”，但用“测量”代替，就像“度量衡”中那样。 也许“数量”更好，因为动量实际上是运动的物理量（physics quantity）。感谢您的建议！
The most difficult part is sometimes the chemical element is misused for phonetic pronunciation and these characters are not found in the Chinese dictionary.
最困难的部分是，有时化学元素被误用为语音发音，而这些字符在汉语词典中找不到。
What do you think are the confusions? Most characters for chemical elements are made from one radical representing its Standard state, and another representing its pronunciation. E.g. 氢 (qing1, ‘Hydrogen’) is made from 气 (‘gas’) and 坙 (as in 轻 (qing1, ‘lighweight’). Most characters for elements are pronounced just as their pronunciation radicals are. And, as far as I know, the name of the 112nd element Copernicium, 鎶 was added into the dictionary 7 years ago or even earlier.
您认为有哪些困惑？ 大多数化学元素字符都是由一个代表其标准状态的部首和另一个代表其发音的部首组成。 例如。 氢（Qing1，'Hydrogen'）由气（'gas'）和坙（如轻（Qing1，'轻量级'）组成。元素的大多数字符的发音与其部首的发音相同。而且，据我所知，第112号元素Copernicium，鎶这个名字早在7年前甚至更早的时候就被加入字典了。
Perhaps it’s fine when the chemical element is used correctly as you have done. What is more confounding is when combinations of chemical elements are used to create new words that have not been assigned a character yet.
也许像您一样正确使用化学元素就可以了。更令人困惑的是，当使用化学元素的组合来制造尚没有对应汉字的新单词时。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处
I was with you until i got to “. In this way, Chinese has a vocabulary of about 3,500 frequently used characters and zero ‘new’ words, while English has only 26 letters in the alphabet but tens of thousands (and counting) of words.”
First, Chinese characters equate to neither words nor letters. Most Chinese 'words' are formed of two characters not one, so the comparison is off by a large factor. Second you compare frequently used Chinese characters with the full lexicon of English words. Most English speakers get by with far fewer on a daily basis. Third you can often deduce the meaning of English words from their parts just like Chinese. eg hydrogen. hydro-water gen-create. hydrogen is that which makes water when burned, but just like Chinese, there are multiple word forming systems so it is not always easy to see. And finally, Chinese is regularly forming new 'words’ by new combinations of old characters as you say, just as English does with its 26 letters which, since the introduction of printing have not changed at all.
我一直同意你的看法，直到我看到“这样，中文的词汇量约为3500个常用字符，“新”词为零，而英语只有 26 个字母，但却有数万个单词（并且还在增加）。”
首先，汉字既不等于单词，也不等于字母。大多数中文“单词”都是由两个字符而不是一个字符组成，因此比较结果有很大偏差。其次，你把常用汉字与完整英语词典进行比较了。大多数说英语的人每天用得要少得多。第三，你通常可以像汉语一样从英语单词的各个部分推断出其含义。例如hydro-水，gen-生成。hydrogen是燃烧时生成水的物质，但就像中文一样，有多种构词方法，因此并不总是容易看清楚。最后，正如你所说，中文经常通过旧字符的新组合形成新的“单词”，就像英语用它的 26 个字母所做的那样，自从印刷术的引入以来，这些字母根本没有改变。