Can Chinese Characters be Invented Nowadays?

[Richard]

Hi! I just wrote to ask you if there are still new chinese characters being invented. If so,can I invent some ? I just heard that characters are created for names of birds,fishes and chemical elements which were never written before. Do you know any new invented characters?





Thank's a lot!! :=)







Regards,


Richard

[ppk]

unless there is a need.

[James Campbell]

Every element in the table of elements has a single Chinese character to represent it in abbreviated form. So, I know that recently there have been new additions in the last few decades. These would be cases of new characters being invented. Just look at the table in Chinese past the uranium and plutonium and you'll see invented characters.
So here are a few:
鍆
鐒
釟
釚

[Ricky]

General speaking,the Chinese Character cannot be invented by yourself.it is enough for us to use the existed character.If you incente a character by yourself,we call it "Shen Zao Zi" which means the character madeby one self,it is not allowed to use in Chinese.So we cannot invent characters by ourself.

[Daniel Lu]

No. please don't.
There are so many Chinese charactors now. Most of the people think something is as hard as Chinese. Do you want to make it harder to learn?

[LIAO TIAN MING]

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[38]

yes, but it would be hard to enter a new character into a computer. i am a westerner in taiwan. i often "make up" new characters when trying to convey my thoughts through script. such is very easy. let say i am writing without my dictionary close at hand and have forgotten some character. first i must mentally sort which determinative it belongs to. i place that determinative on the right. then i pluck out a "sound sign" and place it on the left. just for the heck of it, i have shown such constructions to my chinese friends. while they have been conditioned not to play with their characters they grudgingly conceed that they understand my scrawl. remember: determinative+ phonetic sign is by far the most common construct of chinese characters. that we still use outdated phonetic signs is but another example of following passe thought. written chinese is wonderfully EASY once you recognize the basic rules of composition. the greatest obstacle to understanding chinese for westerners is chinese teachers who try to teach western students using the methodology of east asian learning environments.

[Willy Wang]

"the greatest obstacle to understanding chinese for westerners is chinese teachers who try to teach western students using the methodology of east asian learning environments."

Exactly what is this methodology you're speaking of? I plan to become a Chinese teacher eventually and would like to avoid any mistakes I might make on my future students. Thank you very much.