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Where does all the weird Chinese component terminology come from?
HwAoRrDk:
I was looking for some parts on LCSC today and it got me wondering where all the weird terminology comes from that the Chinese use to describe in English certain types of electronic components (or their attributes). You come across it in datasheets, parts catalogues, AliExpress listings, and so forth.
One of these terms is "brick nogging". They use this name to describe many types of surface-mount headers and connectors. But that name makes almost no sense in the context of such a component! ??? Brick nogging appears to be a very old construction technique where bricks are used to infill the spaces in the wooden frame of a building, and in general (at least in British English) a "nogging" is a horizontal bracing piece of wood used in a wooden wall frame or floor joists. The only (tenuous) link I can possibly imagine is that of the slight similarity to the staggered pattern of brickwork for SMD legs that alternate between sides of the part along its length.
Another one is "tube", which refers to transistors, but also LEDs or LED assemblies (e.g. 7-segment displays). That's perfectly understandable for the former, as of course tubes are what predated transistors, so I can see how the terminology stuck. But for LEDs? One possible explanation for that I found in Bunnie Huang's book The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen, where he explains a little about technical language in Chinese. The common term for transistor is 三级管, or "three-pole tube", and similarly for diodes 二极管, or "two-pole tube". So I guess it follows that because an LED is a form of diode, so they are also "tubes".
Anyone come across any other weird and seemingly-inexplicable forms of electronics vocabulary eminating from China?
retiredfeline:
They often refer to soldering as welding because that is han teh (weld iron) whereas soldering is han sik (weld tin, the element not the container).
bg8aak:
not 三级管 but 三极管
极 means "pin"
:-DD
niconiconi:
--- Quote from: HwAoRrDk on July 21, 2022, 03:14:16 am ---One of these terms is "brick nogging". They use this name to describe many types of surface-mount headers and connectors. But that name makes almost no sense in the context of such a component! ???
--- End quote ---
As a native Chinese speaker, "brick nogging" is gibberish and completely incomprehensible to me. :-DD I was curious and just looked it up, apparently it was a mistranslation of "立贴".
"立" means "standing" or "vertical", and "贴" is the short-hand for "贴片", which means "pick-and-place" or "SMD", so it just means "vertical SMD".
One thing to know about Chinese is that one can create almost entirely arbitrary abbreviations and short-hands by combining characters from different words, a bit similar to Soviet and Russian government agency names like GosPlan, RosCosmos, or RosKomNadzor.
The result is often not found in the dictionary, or by coincidence, they may clash with another existing but obscure word in the dictionary. In both cases, machine translation would produce incomprehensible results. For example, in this case it happens to form a word from architectural history.
--- Quote ---Another one is "tube", which refers to transistors, but also LEDs or LED assemblies (e.g. 7-segment displays). That's perfectly understandable for the former, as of course tubes are what predated transistors, so I can see how the terminology stuck. [...] So I guess it follows that because an LED is a form of diode, so they are also "tubes".
--- End quote ---
Yep. The term "diode" was originally translated to "two-electrode tube". And after the semiconductor and light-emitting versions came into existence, the same terminology is reused. So all diodes are known as "two-electrode tubes" although the "tube" part has lost its meaning. Similarly, transistors were known as "crystal triodes" and "semiconductor triodes", and today it's still the standard terminology in China.
When you think about it, it's actually quite strange how the term "diode" is a generic name for both vacuum and semiconductor rectifiers in English, but the same pattern didn't apply for three-terminal devices - "triode" is exclusive to vacuum tubes, and the semiconductor version got its own name. Of course, it was because crystal rectifiers were as old as tubes, while transistors were not invented until many decades later.
niconiconi:
--- Quote from: bg8aak on July 21, 2022, 07:54:33 am ---not 三级管 but 三极管
极 means "pin"
:-DD
--- End quote ---
In this case, "极" is a short-hand for "电极", or "eletrode". Just like how the suffix "-ode" in "diode" and "triode" came from "eletrode" in English. The terminology was originally a faithful translation.
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