Hello everyone,
In today's post, we will examine the character formation of the school's subjects in detail.
You can find the school subjects table at the following link.
I will divide it into a couple of posts because it is quite lengthy.
At first, It doesn't look that fascinating. However, one of the interesting things about the Chinese language is that most of the characters can be explained and understood. Therefore, you can fully understand a word only by examining its characters (Even the pronunciation you can get).
So, let's see!
1) 化学 (Chemistry)
化 (Huà) meaning is:
- to make into / to change into
You can see this word in 变化 (biànhuà), to change (v.) or change(n.).
Besides, you can find it in 花 (Huā), a flower.
(艹 (cao) and 化 for pronunciation).
化 is formed by two people followed by two people up-side down, meaning death. So, we have life and death in the same character, meaning change.
And what is chemistry if not the science of transforming/transmuting things to another (In ancient times related to alchemy).
"...Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed"
(Lavoiser).
So, that's a reasonable explanation for 化学.
2) 物理 (Physics)
The first character is 物 (wù) means:
- Thing, matter
- Content, substance
It is formed by 牛 (niú), cow (To give a meaning of something physical, like a cow pulling a plow), and 勿 (wù, for pronunciation).
You can find 物 in words like
动物 - Animal - Thing that moves
植物 - Plant - Thing that is a plant/grows
理 (Lǐ), reason and logic. You can find this character in the word 理解 (Lǐjiě), to understand, understanding.
So, since 物 has this deep meaning of substance of things and 理 as reason, you can understand 物理 as logic/reason behind the substances that form this universe.
3) 科学 (Science)
科 (Kē), means branch (Part of, in the sense of division).
So, without much mystery, science is a generic term for a group of studies.