-ar verbs into nouns: -ento or -iento?

Question

In a previous thread, I misspelled "alimento" as "alimiento" (though, to my credit, consistently). So I went through a dictionary and saw that though the noun form of "alimentar" is "alimento", the noun form of "pensar" is "pensamiento" and of "aislar" is "aislamiento." I see that the "-ent" in "alimentar" is part of the root, and not the suffix, but there are both "apartamento" and "apartamiento" with different meanings, as is the case with "pegamento" and "pegamiento." I think this is a mess. Are there rules for this, or do I have to just memorize? And for that matter, how do I know whether the proper suffix for nounifying (a word I just made up by verbifying a noun--oops! Did it again!) a verb is -iento, -ación, -ura, etc.'

Answer 1

I, myself, I'm learning the traditional system, it's much more aesthetically pleasing than the simplified, even though it's losing popularity in mainland China.
It's, precisely, the aesthetic considerations, that mitigate against the adoption of "simplified" characters (and, a fortiori, any form of Romanization). For the Chinese/Japanese there are emotional nuances associated with specific characters (probably for historic reasons [i.e. it was used in such-and-such a way in such-and-such a poem]). One can, of course, debate whether the added complexity is justified by the added expressiveness.

Answer 2

I know this is getting off topic, but it's kind of interesting. I used to know a Chinese-born man who translated from Japanese to English. We once offered him a job translating a chemistry patent from Chinese into English, but he refused, saying he couldn't read the Chinese. This surprised me, but I later learned why he said what he did.

Chemistry in most languages is pretty universal. For example:

polytetrafluoroethylene EN
politetrafluoroetileno SP
poritetorafuruoroechiren JP (''''''''''''')

The Japanese is written phonetically, using the Greek roots that are used in most countries, so anyone who knows chemistry and can read katakana can easily read almost any chemical compound in Japanese. However, in Chinese it is written ''''', and unless you happen to know that those characters are used for such compounds, you don't know what it means. And many of the characters used for chemistry are not used in any other words in ordinary Chinese. That's why my friend refused to translate from or into his own language!

Answer 3

Your point is valid, but your number is exaggerated. This is from Wikipedia:

The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large number of these are rarely used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of only between three and four thousand characters.

We use about the same number (3000-4000) for normal Japanese.

I know...but when you think about the additional 50 000 simplified characters the Chinese Government imposed on their people, then it starts to get reeeeealy messy. They should have left the traditional system as the standard form of writing and tried to popularize the pinyin system...at least this way they would have had an alphabet. I, myself, I'm learning the traditional system, it's much more aesthetically pleasing than the simplified, even though it's losing popularity in mainland China.

Answer 4

Some words, like "alimento" and "ligamento" remains like in Latin ("alimentum", "ligamentum"), which happens to just a small portion (8%) of the words with this ending. The rest (92%), and especially newer creations like "pensamiento" or "pegamento", follow the expected phonetic change e-ie.

So, if you hesitate, -miento is statistically the safest bet.

Try remembering 80 000 Chinese characters without any correlation to the spoken language...then you'll think this is easy.

In Chinese 2000 characters are enough to read over ninety-something percent of the stuff you come across. A person with over 5000 can read practically everything, and after 6000-7000 can start to command respect. A good thick dictionary (thick enough to be published sometimes in two volumes) barely reaches 10,000 characters.

Answer 5

Try remembering 80 000 Chinese characters without any correlation to the spoken language...then you'll think this is easy.

Your point is valid, but your number is exaggerated. This is from Wikipedia:

The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large number of these are rarely used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of only between three and four thousand characters.

We use about the same number (3000-4000) for normal Japanese.

Answer 6

Try remembering 80 000 Chinese characters without any correlation to the spoken language...then you'll think this is easy.

Answer 7

I can't really offer any easy-to-remember rules, but if you think Spanish is a mess, consider English. We have -ness, -ity, -tion, -sion, -ment, -ance, -ence, -ship, and -hood, among others. And our rules are much less consistent than those in Spanish.

So, I think the answer is that we just have to memorize these noun forms.