word choice - Which of these two should be preferred: "sinification" or "sinicization"?


Which of these two options would be considered most elegant / correct? Personally I think Sinicization (or Sinicisation) has a more natural ring to it, but I have seen Sinification used also.


Also, can anyone give an answer as to when either of these neologisms came into usage?



Answer



This seems to point directly to Google Ngrams on those words to see what the rest of the (English speaking) world actually does:


Google Ngram comparison of sinifi-, sinici-


I added in the British English spelling, too.


Note that 'sinification' has the longer history, but recently 'sinici[z/s]ation' has become more popular.


To extract a data of word creation from these graphs is a bit iffy; you'd really need to check all the occurrences in the links from that site.


The veribifiers '-ize/-ise' and '-ify' are both productive. I can't seem to tell a pattern in the contexts where one is favored over the other, except that if you're starting with an adjective ending in '-ic', the '-ize/-ise' sounds way better.


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