Character of the day – 基
A sound basis.
I've been going through one of those phases when I keep seeing the same unknown character several times over. Today's character is 基 (jī) "base; basic". I first saw this in a shot of a Japanese book for learning English, but since then I've seen it here in China a couple of times as well. It's found in words such as
although I don't know whether there's a clear distinction to be made between the two words or they're synonyms. The latter looks like it might be used typically of the foundations of a building (础 means "plinth"), whereas the former seems, if the quantity of citations in the dictionary is a rough quantitative measure of its functions, mainly adjectival (e.g. 基本法 (jīběnfǎ) "basic law"). On the other hand, there's also 基础课 (jīchǔkè) "basic (college) course".
基 is also used in the word 基因 (jīyīn) "gene" which is a direct rendering of the English word in Chinese.
Here's a question: is there a word in English for the process of rendering words into a language that uses a syllabary or characters? It's not transliteration, which you might do with, say, Greek or Cyrillic (although I'd hope not). Trans-characterisation? Meta-characterisation? (Optional hyphen in both cases.) Perhaps I can only use a phrase to describe the process. Perhaps Chinese has a specific word. The Chinese for transliteration is 译音 (yìyīn) (literally "translate sound") Perhaps we could use "yiyinisation" and "yiyinise" as in "Oh, yeah, 'gene' got totally yiyinised." 译音 isn't really transliteration, though, but it fits the process.
I've been going through one of those phases when I keep seeing the same unknown character several times over. Today's character is 基 (jī) "base; basic". I first saw this in a shot of a Japanese book for learning English, but since then I've seen it here in China a couple of times as well. It's found in words such as
基本 (jīběn) "base; basic"
基础 (jīchǔ) "base; foundation"
although I don't know whether there's a clear distinction to be made between the two words or they're synonyms. The latter looks like it might be used typically of the foundations of a building (础 means "plinth"), whereas the former seems, if the quantity of citations in the dictionary is a rough quantitative measure of its functions, mainly adjectival (e.g. 基本法 (jīběnfǎ) "basic law"). On the other hand, there's also 基础课 (jīchǔkè) "basic (college) course".
基 is also used in the word 基因 (jīyīn) "gene" which is a direct rendering of the English word in Chinese.
Here's a question: is there a word in English for the process of rendering words into a language that uses a syllabary or characters? It's not transliteration, which you might do with, say, Greek or Cyrillic (although I'd hope not). Trans-characterisation? Meta-characterisation? (Optional hyphen in both cases.) Perhaps I can only use a phrase to describe the process. Perhaps Chinese has a specific word. The Chinese for transliteration is 译音 (yìyīn) (literally "translate sound") Perhaps we could use "yiyinisation" and "yiyinise" as in "Oh, yeah, 'gene' got totally yiyinised." 译音 isn't really transliteration, though, but it fits the process.
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