Spanish chemistry terms

In what will be a new series on Spanish technical vocabulary, a new section has been added to the Spanish vocabulary section of the site giving various instances of Spanish chemistry terminology.

The page starts with Spanish terms for various basic concepts such as atom, molecule, ion, bond. Then the names of different types of chemical and functional groups is given (the Spanish terms for aldehyde, ketone, ester etc).

The section on the Spanish names of chemical elements gives a list of common elements, some of which have traditional names which have undergone sound changes and are thus more difficult to predict (e.g. iron, derived from the Latin ferrum, is nowadays hierro in Spanish; sulphur is azufre). However, the names of many other elements can actually be dervied from a few simple rules, such as the fact that the ending -ium is practically always -io in Spanish.

A final section looks at how to describe chemical reactions in Spanish, including terms for different types of reaction and a few useful terms for describing chemical formulae.