  the names for chemical elements in east asian languages, along with those for some chemical compounds (mostly organic), are among the newest words to enter the local vocabularies. except for those metals well-known since antiquity, most elements had their names created after modern chemistry was introduced to east asia in the 18th and 19th century, with more translations being coined for those elements discovered later. while most east asian languages useâor had usedâthe chinese script, only the chinese use the characters as the predominant way of naming elements. on the other hand, the japanese, koreans and vietnamese primarily employ native alphabets for the names of the elements (katakana, hangul and quá»c ngá»¯, respectively). == chinese == in chinese, characters for the elements are the last officially created and recognized characters in the chinese writing system. unlike characters for unofficial varieties of chinese (e.g., written cantonese) or other now-defunct ad hoc characters (e.g., those by the empress wu), the names for the elements are official, consistent, and taught (with mandarin pronunciation) to every chinese and taiwanese student who has attended public schools (usually by the first year of middle school). === native characters === some metallic elements were already familiar to the chinese, as their ores were already excavated and used extensively in china for construction, alchemy, and medicine. these include the traditional "five metals" (äºé) â gold (é), silver (é), copper (é), iron (éµ), and tin (é«) â as well as lead (é) and mercury (æ±). some non-metals were already named in chinese as well, because their minerals were in widespread use. for example, * carbon (ç¢³) in the form of charcoal * boron (ç¡¼) as part of borax * sulfur (ç¡«) had been used to make gunpowder since at least the 10th century in china. === characters based on european pronunciations === however, the chinese did not know about most of the elements until they were isolated during the industrial age. these new elements therefore required new characters, which were invented using the phono-semantic principle. each character consists of two parts, one to signify the meaning and the other to hint at the sound: #the semantic (meaning) part is also the radical of the character. it refers to the element's usual state at room temperature and standard pressure. there are only four radicals used for elements: / (jÄ«n "gold") for solid metals, {{lang|
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