QA:中文有哪些优点和缺点？

Xianpeng Li
Chinese is a perfect language for the periodic table, because all the elements are composed of only one character and therefore one syllable. In China, the periodic table is not provided in chemistry exams, therefore students need to memorize at least the basic frxwork of the table. Most Chinese students can at least recite the first 20 elements without any difficulty, for science students they might memorize over 40.
The minimal memorization for a Chinese science student in high school:

Horizontal: 氫氦鋰鈹硼(1-5) 碳氮氧氟氖(5-10) 鈉鎂鋁硅磷(11-15) 硫氯氬鉀鈣(15-20)
Vertical: IA: 氫鋰鈉鉀銣銫鈁 IIA: 鈹鎂鈣鍶鋇鐳 IIIA: 硼鋁鎵銦鉈 IVA: 碳硅鍺錫鉛 VA: 氮磷砷銻鉍 VIA: 氧硫硒碲釙 VIIA: 氟氯溴碘砹 VIIIA:氦氖氬氪氙氡
Because all characters are monosyllabic, students can memorize these elements like a poem. It is fairly easy to distinguish metallic elements from non-metallic elements, because all the metallic elements have the radical of "釒or 钅" (gold), as well as gas elements, as all of them have "气” (air/gas) above.
In fact, Chinese can be very convenient in the entire chemistry nomenclature. In organic chemistry, for instance, there is a ordinal sequence "甲乙丙丁戊己庚辛壬癸" that is used in the nomenclature, indicating the number of carbon atoms from one to ten in a molecule. Those with more than ten carbon atoms would take the number directly.
甲烷(methane) CH4 literal: one + alkane
乙烯(ethene) C2H4 two + alkene
丙炔(propyne) C3H4 three + alkyne
丁醛(butyraldehyde) C4H8O four + aldehyde
戊酸(valeric acid) C5H10O2 five + acid
己酮(hexanone) C6H12O six + alkone
乙酸乙酯 (ethyl acetate) CH3CH2COOCH3 two acid two ester
十二烷 (dihexyl) C12H26 twelve + alkane

Also, in inorganic chemistry, names are much more straightforward. For instance:

氢氧化钠 sodium hydroxide NaOH Oxygen Hydrogen combined with Sodium
氢溴酸 hydrobromic acid HBr Hydrogen bromine acid
高锰酸钾 potassium permanganate KMnO4 High manganese acid (refers to MnO4-) potassium
双氧水 Oxydol H2O2 Two oxygen water

etc.
There are many other examples. In Chinese, medical terminologies are usually compounds. In English they are also compounds, but in many cases they are borrowed from Latin or Ancient Greek. In Chinese, however, because the characters and words already indicate the meanings, people who have never received professional medical education would at least be able to guess something out from it.
I''ve noticed that there are remarks about Chinese being not accurate enough. It''s partially true. However, Chinese can be pretty accurate just like any other language when you are very good at it. It takes more effort to reach the same level of accuracy in Chinese writing than in that of English, but that doesn''t make Chinese a less accurate language.
Xianpeng Li

中文是元素周期表下的完美语言，因为所有的元素都是由一个字符组成，因此只有一个音节。在中国，化学考试不提供元素周期表，所以学生至少需要记住元素周期表的轮廓。大多数中国学生至少能毫无困难地背诵前20个元素，而对于理科生来说，他们可能会记住40多个。
中国理科学生的最低记忆水平:
横向—— 氢氦锂铍硼(1-5) 碳氮氧氟氖(5-10) 钠镁铝硅磷(11-15) 硫氯氩钾钙(15-20)
竖向—— IA: 氢锂钠钾铷铯钫 IIA: 铍镁钙锶钡镭 IIIA: 硼铝镓铟铊 IVA: 碳硅锗锡铅 VA: 氮磷砷锑铋 VIA: 氧硫硒碲钋 VIIA: 氟氯溴碘砹 VIIIA:氦氖氩氪氙氡
因为所有的汉字都是单音节的，学生可以像记诗一样记住这些元素。它是相当容易区分金属元素和非金属元素的,因为所有的金属元素都有部件“釒或钅”(金),以及气体元素都有“气”(空气/气体)。
事实上，中文在整个化学命名中是很方便的。在有机化学，人们会用“甲乙丙丁戊己庚辛壬癸”来分别命名1个碳原子到10个碳原子。而超过十个的直接上数字。
例如：
甲烷(methane) CH4字面意义:单个烷烃
乙烯(ethene) C2H4 ：两个烯烃
丙炔(propyne) C3H4 ：三个炔烃
丁醛(butyraldehyde) C4H8O ：四个醛
戊酸(valeric acid) C5H10O2 ：五个酸
己酮(hexanone) C6H12O ：六个酮
乙酸乙酯 (ethyl acetate) CH3CH2COOCH3 ：两个酸两个酯
十二烷 (dihexyl) C12H26 ：十二个烷烃
而在无机化学中，名字则简单得多。
例如：
氢氧化钠 sodium hydroxide/NaOH/Oxygen Hydrogen combined with Sodium
氢溴酸 hydrobromic acid/HBr/Hydrogen bromine acid
高锰酸钾 potassium permanganate/KMnO4/High manganese acid (refers to MnO4-) potassium
双氧水 Oxydol/H2O2/Two oxygen water
还有许多其他的例子。在汉语中，医学术语通常是复合词。在英语中，它们也是复合词，但在许多情况下，它们是从拉丁语或古希腊借来的。然而，在中文里，因为字和词已经指明了意思，那些从未接受过专业医学教育的人至少能够从中猜出一些东西。
我注意到有些人说中文不够准确，这部分正确。然而，当你非常擅长汉语时，它可以像任何其他语言一样非常准确。与英语写作相比，汉语写作要达到同样的准确性水平需要付出更多的努力，但这并不会使汉语成为一种不那么准确的语言。

Gwydion Madawc Williams
Were new characters invented for newly discovered elements?

这些新的汉字是为新发现的元素而发明的吗?

Xianpeng Li
ncluding Gwydion Madawc Williams
I believe so. I don''t think most of these characters existed in Classical Chinese, and most of them are pretty phonetic.

我相信是这样的。
我不认为这些汉字大部分存在于文言文中，而且大部分都是音标。

Michael Jarosz
This touches on an interesting topic. How does Chinese create neologisms? I once was talking with a Chinese women who said the Chinese for polyester was very interesting. We were interrupted and I never got the answer. "woman subject doctor" actually looks like the way German does it with compound words like "Frauenartzt"

这涉及到一个有趣的话题。
汉语如何创造新词?我曾经和一个中国女性聊过，她说中国人对涤纶很感兴趣。后来我们的谈话被打断了，我至今一直没有找到这句话的答案。
"女学科博士（woman subject doctor）"看起来就像德语中的"Frauenartzt"。

Ryan Chew
It does. Most Modern Chinese terms are compound words akin to the German system, but without having to change the words to glue them together.
Actual coinage of new characters is rare.

确实如此。大多数现代汉语词汇都是类似于德语系的复合词，但不需要改变这些词来把它们粘在一起。
汉字新造字其实是很罕见的。
鼎
汉字就像二维码,拼音文字就像条形码.Chinese characters are like two-dimensional codes, and alphabetic writing is like a bar code.(Google Translation)
提到中国汉字的优势,中国版的化学元素周期表绝对体现的淋漓尽致.When it comes to the advantages of Chinese characters, the Chinese version of the periodic table of chemical elements is absolutely true.(Google Translation)

Krist Pan
including Gwydion Madawc Williams

I will give you a example. The element Hydrogen（氢） has three isotopes, protium(1H), deuterium(2H) and tritium(H3). Chinese scientists invented three new characters for them, protium is 氕, deuterium is 氘, tritium is 氚。They all share the same part 气，which indicates that they are kinds of "gas" elements, the number of bars inside the 气 shows the mass of their nucleuses.
这里我要举个例子。
氢元素拥有3个同位素，中国科学家发明了三个新的字符,氕、氘、氚。它们都共享相同的部件“气”,这表明他们的气体。
其中“气”里的每条竖线代表了原子的质量。

Anonymous
Information theory shows that the more symbols you have in your alphabet, the less symbol you need to encode a vocabulary. Chinese languages have thousands of commonly used symbols, while English only have 26 of them, which makes Chinese a much more compact language than English. This means Chinese people can write less, speak less and read less to communicate the same mount of information. They can also memorize more information with the same level of memory of an English speaker. The common example is that Chinese people often can do simple arithmetic without papers or calculator such as this one "12 times 13".
The disadvantage is that the language is too compact and heavily relying on Chinese cultural back ground. This is not necessarily a disadvantage. If China is the most advanced country in the world, this would in fact to be a disadvantage for all other languages in the world. However, China is still not the leading country where people seeking ideas. Therefore, when importing western words, Chinese often have to create lots of words that are meaningless and ugly in terms of traditional Chinese literature standard. As a native Chinese speaker who know English as second language, I often find the Chinese translation of English text is much harder to understand than the original English text.

信息论表明，你的字母表中符号越多，你需要对词汇进行编码的符号就越少。汉语有数千个常用符号，而英语只有26个，这使得汉语比英语更紧凑。这意味着中国人在交通相同数量的信息时可以写得少，说得少，读得少。他们也可以用和英语母语者相同的记忆水平来记忆更多的信息。常见的例子是，中国人经常可以在没有纸和计算器的情况下做简单的算术，如“12乘以13”。
缺点是语言过于紧凑，严重依赖中国文化背景。但这未必是一个缺点。如果中国是世界上最先进的国家，这实际上对世界上所有其他语言都是不利的。然而，中国仍不是人们寻求创意的领先国家。因此，中国在引进西方词语时，往往要创造出大量在中国传统文学标准下毫无意义、丑陋不堪的词语。作为一个以英语为第二语言的中国人，我经常发现英语文本的中文翻译比原文更难理解。

James Ford, lives in Rizhao, Shandong, China
While others have done a pretty good job of answering with the most important issues concerning Chinese, I wanted to rebut one common point I have read about the general simplicity of numbers in Chinese.
While the numbers from 1 to 99 follow a simple pattern in Chinese there are a number of nuances that make Chinese numbering a little more difficult for westerners.
First, once you get above 99 things may still be simpler than in English, but not without some explanation.

First, the character for hundred is 百 (bǎi) so one hundred is 一百 (yī bǎi). So far, so good. 145 is 一百四十五 (yī bǎi sì shí wǔ) which literally translates as "one hundred four ten five". Easy peasy!
So now that you have the pattern what is 一百五 (one hundred five)? 105, right? Wrong! In Chinese "一百五" is 150. In order to say 105 you must say 一百零五 (yī bǎi líng wǔ) which literally translates as "one hundred zero five".
Next, above 10,000 things get much more difficult. The Chinese have a word and primary counting unit 万 (wàn) for the number ten thousand. Therefore, rather than saying "one hundred thousand" they will say 十万 (shí wàn) meaning "ten ten thousands". The 万 unit is used until you reach 100,000,000 (one hundred million) at which point you get to 亿 (yì). (And to add confusion yì is the same sound, but different tone from 一 (yī) which means "one".) So if you want to translate one billion into Chinese you would say 十亿 (ten one hundred millions).

One way to conceptualize this is that westerners divide large numbers every three decimal positions: Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, etc. (100,000,000) while Chinese divide large numbers every four decimal places, (1000,0000,0000).
My Chinese language skills are OK, and I often speak with people whose English is excellent, but when we discuss large numbers we often have to stop and make sure that we have translated correctly since not only language but math is required. Lately, I have just asked people to say large numbers in Chinese because I can translate it easier than they can.
Someone already mentioned this, but when counting obxts in Chinese there is a collective noun that''s associated with every obxt. Just as in English we may talk about a "pair of scissors", "blade of grass", "bottle of beer", or "school of fish", but in Chinese it''s the rule. Every countable noun has an associated collective noun:

One fish: 一条鱼 (yī tiáo yú)
Three horses: 三匹马 (sān pǐ mǎ)
Five cars: 五辆车 (wǔ liàng chē)
There is one helpful point in all of this and that''s the universal collective noun 个 (gè). 个 is the correct collective noun for most obxts, and as I understand it, it is not incorrect to use it with all nouns, but native speakers always know which collective noun to use. 个 is the same character used with 这个 (zhège) which means "this" and 那个 (nàgè) which means "that".
One final note on this: If you want to count an additional ½ of something add 半 (bàn) just after the counting word to indicate that. Therefore 1½ fish would be 一条半鱼 (yī tiáo bàn yú). However, to indicate just half a fish put 半 before the collective noun, so that would be 半条鱼 (bàn tiáo yú).
James Ford,住在中国山东日照
其他人已经很好地回答了关于中文的最重要的问题，但我想反驳我读到的关于中文中数字要普遍更简便这个观点。虽然1到99的数字在汉语中遵循一种简单的模式，但是有一些细微的差别使得西方人用汉语来编号时有点困难。
当汉语达到99以上，数数可能仍然比英语简单，但不是没有一些解释的。首先，当数字上到100后用“百“。到145的时候是“一百四十五”，太简单了！依据这个方式，“一百五”是105，对吧？错！汉语里“一百五”是150。要表达105，你必须说“一百零五”。
接下来，当数数数到10000的时候，就更难了。汉语里有一个词——“万”来计数10000（ ten thousand）。因此，汉语里不说“一百千”而是说“十万”。当你数数到100，000，000时，你会用上“亿”。所以如果你想用汉语翻译one billion，汉语会说十亿。
理解这种数数的方法是，西方人会将很大的数字除以三位数:百，千，百万，十亿(100,000,000)，而中国人会将很大的数字除以四位数(100,0000,0000)。
我的中文能力还行，我经常和英语很好的人交谈，但当我们讨论大量的数字时，我们经常不得不停下来，以确保我们的翻译是正确的，因为这不仅要求语言，而且要求数学。最近，我让人们用中文说大数，因为我比他们更容易翻译成英语。
有人已经提到过了，但是在汉语中数物体的时候，每个物体都有一个集合名词。就像在英语中我们会说“剪刀”、“草叶”、“啤酒”或“鱼群”，但在汉语中这是规则。每个可数名词都有一个相关的集合名词（量词）:
One fish: 一条鱼 (yī tiáo yú)
Three horses: 三匹马 (sān pǐ mǎ)
Five cars: 五辆车 (wǔ liàng chē)
在这里有一个万金油式的量词那就是“个”。“个”对绝大多数集合名字来说都是正确的用法，在我的理解里，所有名字都用这个词也是没有错的，但当地人都知道哪个名词用哪个量词。这里的“个”跟“这个”是同一个字，后者的意思是“this”，“那个”的意思是“that”。

…………

所以，正如你所看到的，中国的数字比其他答案中描述的简化版本要更复杂。