鈤 (rì) would’ve been a good choice if IUPAC ever named a chemical element Japanium. But a team at Japan's RIKEN research institute discovered a synthetic element in 2004 and proposed Nihonium in honor of Japan. Nihonium was officially approved by IUPAC in 2016 and is translated as 鉨 (nǐ) in Chinese

Every element has [at least one] name in Chinese that is a single character, and new elements require the selection/creation of a new character.

Because of Standard Chinese phonology and the large number of elements, there are now homophones, e.g. Se 硒 is pronounced the same as Sn 锡.

鈤 was ambiguous; it was also used as the sinograph for radium, which is now written as 鐳.

There are two ways to write 'Germanium' in Chinese. The older one is 鈤, composed of 'metal' 金 and ri 日, short for Ri'erman 日耳曼 ('Germanic'). The newer way of translating it doesn't show the national/ethnic link and has 者 (zhe) as phonetic element for Ger-: 鍺 /

Arrived🥰

And beside the poster, there was also a additional postcard included.

So our Chinese students call Zhang Junmai 張君勱, one of the most important constitutionalists of the Republic of China, Zhang Jun Shaomai 張君燒賣. 🤣 Since Zhang was from Jiading 嘉定, I am sure he was (like me) a fan of Shanghai-style Siu Mai with sticky rice filling! 😋

While 鳥語 "bird speech" is considered a derogatory term when referring to speech or language of foreign peoples and southern Sinetic languages, the idiom 鳥語花香* (birds are singing and flowers are fragrant) is used to describe beautiful scenery, especially in spring

*first used by Song poet 呂本中

In 1722 黃叔璥 Huang Shujing, a Mandarin-speaking Qing official, arrived Taiwan where he spent 2 years. He recorded in 臺海使槎錄 “Records from the mission to Taiwan and its Strait” (1736) how the language spoken by Taiwanese was totally unintelligible—like barbarian gibberish and birds talking (鴃舌鳥語，全不可曉)

Link: qsyj.ruc.edu.cn/CN/article/d...

Vor allem in Bezug auf die Stellung des Kaisers, Vorstellungen einer ungebrochenen Kaiserlinie und so weiter.

Kurz gesagt geht es darum, daß traditionellerweise betont wird, wie die späte Qing-zeitliche Verfassung die japanische Verfassung übernommen hat; dieser Artikel versucht ergänzend, einheimische Traditionslinien herauszuarbeiten.

"...Dieser Artikel verortet die Grundlinien der Kaiserlichen Verfassung von 1908 einerseits im traditionellen Ritualsystem, ... . Andererseits werden ... die Unterschiede zwischen der (Qing-Verfassung, der Meiji-Verfassung sowie des Koreanischen Verfassungsdokuments herausgearbeitet."

新文章頗有趣
李富鹏，「欽定憲法大綱」 的禮儀淵源, 清史研究 5 (2025): 131-44.

The “original” character (本字) for tháu in Hokkien/Taiwanese and tau2 in Cantonese is likely 㪗 which means “to open” (漢典/集韻：他口切，展也)

Interestingly, 㪗氣/敨氣 in Cantonese “tau2 hei3” means “to breathe” while in Hokkien “tháu-khuì” means “to to vent one's feelings; to get something off one’s chest”

Oops, Cantonese at its best again 😅. That meaning was not intended… 🫣

Sinograph and Hokkien/Taiwanese word of the day: tháu 敨, ‘to open’ 😍, often also written 透. Apparently it’s cognate to Cantonese tau2, meaning ‘to breathe; to rest’ and mostly written 唞.
早唞啦大家！

Our trilogy with @ivansablin.bsky.social is close to completion … stay tuned 😎

Coming soon @egasmb.bsky.social www.routledge.com/From-Empire-...

Speaking of which, here is a sign in Hong Kong using the variant character 噐 (器 Jyutping: hei3)

港九電噐工程電業噐材職工會
H.K. & KLN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING & APPLIANCES TRADE WORKERS UNION

I love how 噐 is used here, perhaps to emphasize the workers 職工

The character 器 (representing the word hei3, 'utensil') has a common allograph 噐. It's originally just a graphic development, but early on ppl thought the element 工 ('labour') made more sense than the orthodox 犬 ('dog'): 【正字通】噐始於工，工制之，而後人用之，故从工。

may all sentient beings be at peace om mani padme hum om mani padme hum om mani padme hum om mani padme hum 🐀 唵嘛呢叭咪吽🐂 唵嘛呢叭咪吽🐅 唵嘛呢叭咪吽🐇 唵嘛呢叭咪吽🐉 唵嘛呢叭咪吽🐍 唵嘛呢叭咪吽🐎 唵嘛呢叭咪吽🐑 唵嘛呢叭咪吽 🐒 🐈 唵嘛呢叭咪吽👻唵嘛呢叭咪吽 😈唵嘛呢叭咪吽 🌍 唵嘛呢叭咪吽🌎 唵嘛呢叭咪吽🌏 唵嘛呢叭咪吽 唵嘛呢叭咪吽ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་| ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་| ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་| ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་| ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་|

PSA:
Modern speakers do not own ancient versions of their languages.

What the fuck is "finish the job"? Is Netanyahu going to kill every Palestinian on the ground that some of them were terrorists?

Even Nazis got trials and that was a hundred years ago. We don't live in a world where we execute people by association. 1/

This one also good