Characters 字 vs. words 辭

[Mark Yong]

There have been many postings in this Forum that have discussed the issue that "when learning to read and write the Chinese language, learning just characters 字 without learning words 辭 is useless". In this thread, I would like to challenge that idea.

For instance, when I once asked a friend what the word 略 meant, he said it was impossible to provide a definition, unless I gave him the other character that was bound to it. In this case, it was either 戰略 (warfare strategy) or 策略 (policy).

Now, I fully agree that with the evolution of the Chinese language over the centuries, it would have been impossible to capture all ideas and concepts using only single characters 字, and compounding them would have been inevitable. However, what I disagree with is the notion that the individual characters themselves do not have any defined meanings. In the case of 略, the character itself means "outline". So, the more complex idea of "warfare strategy" is defined by the compounding of the individual characters for "war" 戰 and "outline" 略. But that does not mean that the character 略 by itself is totally meaningless.

I am convinced that the idea of individual characters being undefinable is relatively new, due in most part to the advent of modern Mandarin as the spoken and written standard. Particularly in the case of spoken Mandarin, the relatively large number of homonyms 異義同音字 (compared to the Southern dialects) has resulted in a larger proportion of character compounds. Over time, these commonly-accepted character compounds have superseded their individual character equivalents.

Some other examples:

1. 習 - It can be compounded to form, e.g. 練習 "train", 學習 "learn", but the individual character itself means "to practise" (孔子曰: 學而時習之, 不亦樂乎).
   
2. 民 - It can be compounded to form 國民 and 人民 "citizens", but the individual character itself already clearly means "people of the land".
   

Of course, I am aware that there are exceptions, e.g. bound forms such as 螳螂, 蜘蛛, 麒麟, 駱駝. However, I am also given to understand that in these rare instances, the words themselves are loan words from foreign languages - hence the bi-syllabic words (Chinese is essentially monosyllabic).

[md1101]

i think itd be very hard to disagree with you.

just recently our class learnt a couple of poems (poems that the chinese probably learn in kindy).

one line from guanquelou is

欲穷千里目

欲 above, first zi on the second line. it means 希望 baisically. and 穷 can mean limit/end/extremity. i reckon knowing that is pretty essential to knowing the meaning of that line. its a pretty famous poem though so that line in itself is probably defined in a lot of dictionaries.

actually come to think of it a lot of the chinese sayings rely on invidual characters with there own meaning behind them.

[wushijiao]

Personally, I think learning the rough ideas of characters, and the many words that use the characters are important.

There is a myth that if you learn 2,500 characters you will be fluent because that is all it takes to "read a newspaper". Then there is the myth that learning the meaning of individual characters is not important. Both are wrong in their own ways.

The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy by John Defrancis explains the situation well, regarding syllables. As far as syllables being free (not needing additional syllables), semi-bound (sometimes needing other syllables, sometimes not), or completely bound, Defrancis cites one study of 200 characters in which: 44% where free, 45% were semibound, and 11% were completely bound.

Another study by Zhou Youguang was cited to argue that the number of "free" words is about 30%. Personally, I think that in modern Putonghua, it must be much, much lower than that.

Defrancis argues that Chinese is not monosyllabic in speech. I don't know for sure, but I would guess that that is true of all spoken Chinese dialects.

I am convinced that the idea of individual characters being undefinable is relatively new, due in most part to the advent of modern Mandarin as the spoken and written standard. Particularly in the case of spoken Mandarin, the relatively large number of homonyms 異義同音字 (compared to the Southern dialects) has resulted in a larger proportion of character compounds.

Do you think that the number of bound or semi-bound is really that much different in any other dialect? I don't know any other Chinese dialects, but it seems to me (from what I have seen of Cantonese at least) that it has roughly the same percentage of free/semibound/ and bound that Putonghua has. In other words, I just think it would be inaccurate to say that Putonghua speakers have to speak with more bisyllabic words because they have less tones and fewer pronunciations possibilities than other dialects, while on the other hand, Southern dialect speakers speak in only pure one syllable words that correspond to ancient, literary Chinese.

But then again, I have a limited understanding of linguistics, Chinese linguistics, and literary Chinese and its relation (or lack of relation) to the development of the various dialects. So I am probably wrong.

[Mark Yong]

wushijiao wrote:

Do you think that the number of bound or semi-bound is really that much different in any other dialect? I don't know any other Chinese dialects, but it seems to me (from what I have seen of Cantonese at least) that it has roughly the same percentage of free/semibound/ and bound that Putonghua has. In other words, I just think it would be inaccurate to say that Putonghua speakers have to speak with more bisyllabic words because they have less tones and fewer pronunciations possibilities than other dialects, while on the other hand, Southern dialect speakers speak in only pure one syllable words that correspond to ancient, literary Chinese.

You are partly right, wushijiao. The Southern dialects, e.g. 粵語 Cantonese, 閩南語 Minnan do employ a sizeable proportion of bi-syllabic (or even multi-syllabic) words. Perhaps what you have observed in Cantonese speech has by-and-large been in a formal or semi-formal context, where the full bi-syllabic words (which, more often than not, are 100% congruent with Putonghua character-for-character) are employed. However, in less formal and more colloquial settings, quite a number of words which are bi-syllabic in Putonghua have their mono-syllabic equivalents used in Cantonese.

A few simple examples that come to mind are:

1. 飯 in Cantonese, 米飯 in Putonghua
   
2. 蟹 in Cantonese, 螃蟹 in Putonghua
   
3. 時 in Cantonese, 時候 in Putonghua
   
4. 答 in Cantonese, 回答/答覆 in Putonghua
   

(I realise they are not the best examples, just something off the top of my head!)

Perhaps one of the reasons is the relative conservatism of the Southern dialects in preserving the endings, e.g. -b/-p, -d/-t, -g/-k, -m, and also in the larger number of tones.