German Speakers! A question

[doumeizhen]

I'm working on an English-German translation of a manual involving Chinese, and I just found out that I have no idea how to say "radical", as in, the parts that combine to make characters. Does anyone want to help a damsel in distress and tell me?

Thanks!

[gougou]

You should know that anglophones are not the most innovative of speakers, the word radical is a mean IPR infringement of the German Radikal.

[doumeizhen]

Haha. You're kidding! Perhaps this is ultimate proof that gesandwichtes Deutsch might actually work. Thank you!

[芳芳]

ya das stimmt.....

a radical is "ein Radikal", or more precisly : das Radikal, die Radikale.

Comme quoi...

[mr.stinky]

"das radikal"....wasn't that a book by marx?

[PeterMUC]

Very close. Marx wrote "Das Kapital" (Capital). But I never read it *g*

[doumeizhen]

Thanks guys!

芳芳~ Thanks for pointing that out! I hadn't thought about that, as I was numbering them, but that is good to know. I'm not used to writing in Germany anymore, so I found myself reading these very long sentences backwards just to make sure all of my words were in the right case and gender... 好麻烦！I guess its a fair trade off for being able to use sentences that long, though!

For the rest of you, I remembered this e-mail that was sent to me a while back. Let's make the post a little more fun!

What a Thoughtful Government Will Be Doing

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

here will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new pelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl ordifikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

[horas]

*

IMO the word radical and the German word Radikal both originated from the Latin 'radix' meaning root.

So 'a radical change' sort of means 'a change from the roots' (upwards) - total change.

- Das Radikal (German) only means 'radical' (English) for terms in math and chemistry!

- For the word 'radical' meaning part of a Chinese character, you can use:

Ordnungszeichen (used in West Germany)

Klassenzeichen (used in East Germany)

of course those differences were caused by the separation of both Germanies (1949 -1990) and language terms used were different in both states.

Below some online free dictionaries E-G & G-E:

http://dict.leo.org/

http://www.iee.et.tu-dresden.de/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/wernerr/search.sh

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[芳芳]

Horas, thanks for your corrections on good use of german words

As for simplification of english spelling, zimmt, I wouldn't have thought Pro-SMS-SpellingAssociation was such a powerfull european lobby.

[danqi]

"- Das Radikal (German) only means 'radical' (English) for terms in math and chemistry!

- For the word 'radical' meaning part of a Chinese character, you can use:

Ordnungszeichen (used in West Germany)

Klassenzeichen (used in East Germany)"

I am afraid I've got to disagree. At my University and in all the literature I remember having used, "das Radikal" is the only commonly used word to describe a chinese radical, that I've come across.

[doumeizhen]

Hi Horas- Thank you for the correction. I always use dict.leo.org, but it didn't have the specific reference. I'll make sure to add the other one as well. You can never have enough German dictionaries!

Danqi - Thank you for the correction correction!

My Professor used to joke that all unanswerable questions should become sinological study. Who is up for doing a sinological study on the history of the term and its modern use?

芳芳 - Remember now, no double letters!

[Lugubert]

For a comparison:

Klassenzeichen (Dictionary DDR 1961, Grammar DDR 1961)

Radikal(liste) (Dictionary advertisement 1999)

[atitarev]

Posted by 芳芳:

ya das stimmt...

ja, das stimmt...

[horas]

*

Yeah, the terms which are practically used:

Radikale / Klassenzeichen / Wurzelzeichen

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