Atomic Physics in Pure Anglo-Saxon | Hacker News Reader

Atomic Physics in Pure Anglo-Saxon

ling.upenn.edu

43 pointsxelxebar13 comments

It works like this in some languages; e.g. Japanese technical terminology is linked word formation originating from Chinese.

Atom: 原子: (genshi) "primitive progeny".

Element: 原素: (genso) "primitive element".

Hydrogen: 水素: (suiso) "water element".

Oxygen: 酸素: (sanso) "acid element".

Carbon: 炭素: (tanso) "charcoal element".

Chlorine: 塩素: (enso) "salt element".

Coal: 石炭: (sekitan) "stone charcoal".

Carbon dioxide: 二酸化炭素 (nisan-ka tanso): "two acid/'oxid' -ized carbon".

Line, ray: 線: line, ray.

Ultraviolet ray: 紫外線 (shigaisen): "purple outside-of ray".

Infrared ray: 赤外線 (sekigaisen): "red outside-of ray".

Deep infrared: 遠赤外線 (ensekigaisen): "far red outside-of ray".

Yamanote train line: 山手線 (yamanotesen). :)

Amplification: 増幅 (zōfuku) "increase width".

Instrument: 器 (ki).

Amplifier: 増幅機 (zōfuku ki) "increase width instrument".

Difference: 差 (sa)

Differential amplifier: 差動増幅器 (sadō zōfukuki) "difference movement increase width instrument"

I'm amazed at how much I could understand of that. I presume ymirstuff is uranium. Many of the others are more obvious.

Odd: "Germanstuff" for Titanium.. did Poul mean Entstuff? (Didn't read enough Tolkien?)

Was perhaps actually inspired by modern German.. surprisingly, "Stoff" is from old french via early modern(!) Dutch. Proper A-S might be "andwork/anwerk[.de]"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/andweorc

Cathay-andwork (for chinesium)

Unbeget-andwork (for unobtainium)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Stoff#German

If titanium is germanstuff, whose stuff is germanium? :)

Germanium is used to dope silicon, excuse me, sometimebernlikestuff, so i guess it might be gridnudgestuff.

I doubt that there was a "german" word in Old English.

There are 2 "german" words. One refers to what were previously called Teutonic people, from the name they used themselves, which was later changed to the name used in Latin by Caesar for them.

The second "german" word, which is also spelled "germane" comes from a completely unrelated Latin word which refers to siblings who share both parents, whence "hermano" in Spanish.

The second sense "germane" seems older in English. Perhaps it already existed as a Latin borrowing in Old English.

Otherwise, perhaps the author has used "Germanstuff" because no word for Titans existed in Old English and "titanium" was discovered and named by a German, i.e. by Klaproth, from whom a lot of chemical element names have come.

Ahh a bit late.

Ents was the direct Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Titans. Maybe even cognate.

Vanir - Titans - Ents

Aesir - Olympians - Ese

god-generations in proto-Indo-European mythology.

The wikipedia article linked to in the beginning contains a glossary if you want to understand this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding

We need to start teaching everything in Anglo-Saxon:

"Some of the higher samesteads are splitly. That is, when a neitherbit strikes the kernel of one, as for a showdeal ymirstuff-235, it bursts into lesser kernels and free neitherbits; the latter can then split more ymirstuff-235. When this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of the whole, but nevertheless it is awesome."

This is so great and such a great example of the sociolinguistic prestige given to certain types of words in English.

It's so funny how all this is doing is naming things in almost exactly the same manner we did name them but using germanic words instead of latin or french words and yet words like "stuff" feel so plain whilst "matter" feels much more erudite.

It's 2026 and we still have this incredibly strong bias which probably originally arose when the roman empire carved europe into civilised and uncivilised parts. A bias which has been reinforced by medieval scholars, the normans and various others until it's part of the bones of english. Latin = clever, Germanic = plain/direct.

Justice for Anglish!

And here's the original, in the mid-Dec 1989 issue of Analog Science Fact & Fiction magazine (at the bottom of the page) on the unparalleled Luminist Archives website:

https://readitfree.org/SF/AN_2.htm

(Luminist is one of the jewels of the internet, right up there with Archive and Wikipedia. Support them!)

This was lovely.

(1989)

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