Talk:白金
@Shinji -- do you have a source for the Dutch origin? I've poked around the Dutch WP and WT articles (nl:platina, w:nl:Platina, w:nl:Witgoud; there is currently no entry at nl:witgoud), and those don't mention anything about witgoud being a synonym for platina. I do see mention of platinum described as “white gold” by a Swedish scientist in the 1700s (Platinum#European_discovery), but nothing definite pointing to Dutch. I also noticed that apparently platina and witgoud are synonyms in Afrikaans -- perhaps that's the clue pointing to older Dutch usage?
Also, do you have any information on when this Japanese compound was repurposed to mean platinum? I'd guess during the Meiji (and I started to add that into the etym -- now commented out in the wikicode), but I'm hesitant to add that without finding anything in my references that clearly indicates the timing.
Curious, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 20:58, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
- It was coined by Udagawa Yōan in his translation of a Dutch book of chemistry. I cannot find the original Dutch book and therefore the original Dutch word, but it is likely to be witgoud as it was common until the 19th century: [1]. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 22:45, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
- Brilliant, thank you! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 22:53, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
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The etymology section in Chinese claims that Japanese 白金 is "semantically readapted from Chinese", yet the etymology section in Japanese claims that Japanese 白金 is "calque of Dutch wit goud". There must be one who is wrong, and this page currently is confusing. Dokurrat (talk) 16:38, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
- @Dokurrat -- I've had a go at the Japanese entry. The Japanese term has an older sense of silver, in keeping with the older Chinese. The current Chinese etym is incorrect and misleading, as Chinese had this term long before platinum was known to the Dutch, and the current etym erroneously suggests that Dutch for platinum somehow relates to the archaic Chinese sense of silver.
- I've pinged Shinji on the Talk:白金 page to get his input, as he was apparently the one to add the Dutch derivation.
- I'm also tempted to remove the
=====Descendants=====section from the Japanese entry, as that indicates that the term was wholly a Japanese coinage. I think we should at least remove the line for Chinese, and the lines for the other languages too if there's any evidence of earlier borrowing of 白金 (báijīn) prior to the emergence of the Japanese term's platinum sense. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 21:06, 7 November 2017 (UTC)- If 白金 existed in the meaning "silver" first and then later came to mean "platinum" under the influence of Dutch wit goud, then I'd say this is a
{{semantic loan}}, not a{{calque}}. In which language did it first refer to platinum, Japanese or Chinese? —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 23:23, 7 November 2017 (UTC)- @Aɴɢʀ -- Re: original meanings, Chinese philosophy (or would "astrology" be the better term?) included the idea of the five cardinal colors: blue, red, yellow, white, and black. There were also five metals, each associated with a color: tin? (blue), copper (red), gold (yellow), silver (white), iron (black).
- Re: repurposing, Shinji's research points to Japanese as the first language to repurpose this spelling to mean platinum, and Udagawa Yōan as the first author to use this term with the sense platinum (probably in his 1837 work, Introduction to Chemistry), based on now-obsolete European usage of various languages' equivalent of white gold to refer to this same metal. Udagawa's source material was primarily Dutch, and Dutch too formerly treated witgoud and platina as synonyms.
- HTH, ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:12, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
- It is not a semantic loan but a calque. The character 金 means “metal” in the Classical Chinese word 白金, while it means “gold” in the newly coined Japanese word 白金. They are different words that happen to have the same characters. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:28, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
- @TAKASUGI Shinji: I wouldn't go so far to say they're different words; it's just polysemy (metal > gold). — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 01:34, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
- It is not a semantic loan but a calque. The character 金 means “metal” in the Classical Chinese word 白金, while it means “gold” in the newly coined Japanese word 白金. They are different words that happen to have the same characters. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 00:28, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
- If 白金 existed in the meaning "silver" first and then later came to mean "platinum" under the influence of Dutch wit goud, then I'd say this is a
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Chinese. Rfv-sense: "handcuffs". Tagged by @Tooironic but not listed here. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 01:11, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- It seems to be taken from CC-CEDICT. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 01:12, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- RFV failed. — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 19:12, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
Basis for the 1855 Chinese Serial quotation edit
Reid, D. B. (1838). Text-book for Students of Chemistry: Containing a Condensed View of the Facts and Principles of the Science. 3rd ed. Maclachlan, Stewart, & Co.