Chinese languages

Is it really true that a lot of Chinese terminology used today were coined by Japanese and adopted by Chinese only at the turn of this century, e.g. "開始", "政府", "图书馆", "警察"? If so, I would like to know what their equivalents were in Classical Chinese. Well, perhaps not for "library" and "police", since these are relatively recent concepts - but such fundamental terms as "start" and "government" must have existed in wenyan!

No it is not true. All Chinese words were form all by chinese people. Alot of kanji that Japanese language uses are from Chiense words. Don't you know that chinese words were form from pictures? from what they looked like?

Yes, of course I am aware that all Kanji characters have their origins in the Chinese language, and of their graphical origins (although, ideographs only form about 10% or less of the total canon of Chinese characters, the rest are pseudo-phonetic - coupling between radicals and other words of similar sounds).

No, I am not referring to the individual characters themselves. What I meant was that, I was given to understand that a number of modern (yep, that's the word!) terminologies (e.g. technological terms that did not exist in Chinese) were coined by the Japanese using new combinations of Kanji (Chinese characters). For instance, 電 means "electric" and 話 means speech - both in Chinese and Japanese. But the combination of those two characters to form the term for "telephone" 電話 (denwa in Japanese) was apparently coined by the Japanese and adoped by the Chinese (as dian1hua4 in Mandarin). The same for many other modern terms which share common Hanji/Kanji characters, making them linguistically interchangeable.

You can find start is just 始 ﹐副詞 4th tone mostly,本始--天人之道﹐何所本始﹖
肇始 is also important﹐Library is 藏書閣。There is one word in shanggu period which is for library but I cannot remmeber it.
anyway,chinese invented the word 圖書 as early as 韓非子period.
history is only史but Japanese added 歷to become歷史。
Scholars in china do have words for Japnese invention 化學﹐物理﹐生物,etc
There are even word for 邏輯

http://218.69.114.37/wf/~CDDBN/J000008/PDF/INDEX.HTM
http://218.69.114.37/wf/~CDDBN/Y546678/PDF/INDEX.HTM

Mark,
I just read two articles from china.博物院 is from china not japan.
政府 is from old china text 资治通鉴：唐宣宗大中二年。前凤翔节度使石雄诣政府自陈黑山。。。胡三省注：政府即谓政事堂。
Apparently these words were invented in china but later brought from japan.It is just like 博士 ，经济

I forgot where I read 图书馆 can be found in old chinese text as well