Abstract
<p style="text-align:justify; text-indent:24.0pt"><span style="font-size:12pt"><span style="text-justify:inter-ideograph"><span style="line-height:22.0pt"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The origin and semantic evolution of Chinese disyllabic compound words have been an important research topic in linguistics. Over time, as society has evolved, there has been a need for new and more precise terminology, resulting in the emergence of bisyllabic words. The majority of these compound words are derived from syntactic phrases in ancient Chinese; however, the word <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">簡單</span> <i>jiandan</i> did not evolve in this way. Instead, it is a new word that originates from the translation of Western concepts during the late Qing Dynasty through Japan’s <i>wasei-kango</i> (Japanese-made Chinese word). This paper discusses the origin of the word <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">簡單</span> <i>jiandan</i>, which was coined during this period to “express new meanings”. Clarifying whether <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">簡單</span> <i>jiandan</i> is a newly coined word from Chinese or a <i>wasei-kango</i> borrowed from Japanese can help to observe the reasons for the formation of bisyllabic compound words in modern times, as well as the exchange of vocabulary between Chinese and Japanese. By examining the translations of Western languages and Western studies in Japanese-English and Chinese-English dictionaries, the authors find that <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">簡單</span> <i>jiandan</i> was originally used to translate the Dutch word “eenvoudige”. Later, in order to highlight the sense of “only” in the English word “simply”, the word <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">簡單</span> <i>jiandan</i> was constructed using the character <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">簡</span> <i>jian </i>to express “simple” and the character <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">單</span> <i>dan</i> to express “only”. Finally, the paper explores why <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">簡單</span> <i>jiandan</i> is synonymous with <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">簡短</span> <i>jianduan</i> in Japanese and analyzes the word formation of the reverse compound words <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">簡單</span> <i>jiandan</i> and <span style="font-family:"新細明體",serif">單簡</span> <i>danjian</i>, hoping to help scholars better understand the interaction between Japanese and Chinese vocabulary. </span></span></span></span></p>