General > General Technical Chat
Where does all the weird Chinese component terminology come from?
harerod:
pdenisowski, first of all - thanks for your effort. Out of curiosity - have you met Jim Breen? He is a hero for many students of Japanese.
Regarding "shared words" in Asian langauges - I am fully with you guys. What I actually meant to say: Learning my first Asian language (Japanese) made me feel like a toddler, because it made me start at about zero vocab and grammar. Things are improving. Of course one can find some familiar terms, it always makes me smile when I see technical terms based on old German works. My hometown is the birthplace of Siebold, a doctor who may have brought lots of medical terms into the Japanese language.
The examples chosen by coppice show how easily one can browse Chinese datasheets. One knows what to expect, hanzi and unit give a hint or serve as a sanity check.
schmitt trigger:
Every language has its own idiosyncrasies.
In Spanish, cargar means, to charge, to load or to lift.
Therefore the phrase: carga la bateria, could mean charge the battery, load the battery or lift the battery. The true meaning is known by context.
Also, when one actually wants to mean to load the battery, one uses a more complete sentence like apply the load to the battery, aplica la carga a la batería.
gamalot:
--- Quote from: harerod on November 17, 2023, 12:33:12 pm ---Quote from: coppice on Today at 13:26:57
...You write that like is makes some obvious sense. :) Native Cantonese speaking engineers just shrug their shoulders when asked to explain it. 火牛 isn't just a transformer. Its the name used for complete power supplies, like an ATX supply for a PC.
--- End quote ---
Assuming that your native language is English: Even your mother tongue names step-down converters after male ungulates... >:D
The fun with Asian languages (in my case Japanese) is that you lack all those levers, which make gaining a basic understanding of multiple Western languages so simple...
--- End quote ---
In Cantonese, the term "牛" is used to specifically refer to a transformer. Some people call modern power adapters and even ATX power supplies "牛" just because they think those devices are also transformers. :-//
coppice:
--- Quote from: gamalot on November 18, 2023, 02:52:00 am ---In Cantonese, the term "牛" is used to specifically refer to a transformer. Some people call modern power adapters and even ATX power supplies "牛" just because they think those devices are also transformers. :-//
--- End quote ---
So, A power supply is a transformer on fire?
Bud:
Yes. Submarine-iron fish, bomber-pregnant bird. If there will be shortage of Navajo people by next world war, we could recruit some Chinese to talk code.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker
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