the spoken parts of words

[d_92_b]

i have come across this kind of "problem", more like something im wondering

this question came to my mind when i first saw 好 and only recently 话 and 语

that i got round to thinking about it again

we have 好 we can see that 好 is made of 女and子, so vocally we have hao = nu + zi

then we have 讠, 千 and 口 and they make up 话 ， so we have hua = yan + qian + kou

similarly, yu = yan + wu + kou

the question is, why?

why as in, why do we call these combinations this way?

im thinking like in all western languages and in korean, we have the alphabet to tell us which sounds each letter makes and how they fit together etc.

its obvious that here the "alphabet" is a lot different (im thinking radicals here atm)

but the point is that like, hao = nu + zi just makes no sense, they dont even fit together and do not resemble anything that could just "insinuate" that you are gonna have to say something like hao. no guesswork at all, it is just that way for no apparent reason

im sure there is a logic behind it else it wouldnt be that way. my chinese friend tells me just memorize them thats what we also do, but it cant be, theres gotta be something that subconsciously works behind the scenes and tells them how it works.

of course this may have been already answered somewhere else by someone dunno :///

anyone to shed some light? ;p

[anonymoose]

Chinese characters can be divided into several types, the most numerous being 形声字, which constitute about 90% of all characters. These characters are basically made of two parts, one providing a clue to the meaning - the 形旁, and the other representing the sound - the 声旁. For example, all the characters 獐、彰、嫜、璋、樟、蟑 are pronounced zhāng after the component 章.

However, Chinese is an old language which has evolved over the course of history, with pronunciations and meanings changed, and split into several dialects. As a result, there are many 形声字 where the 声旁 no longer accurately represents the sound of its component in Mandarin (though it may still do in certain dialects). Take your example, 话, or better still, let's consider the traditional version 話. Here the 形旁 is 言 which means words, whilst the 声旁 is 舌. In modern Mandarin 舌 is pronounced shé, and is clearly unrelated to the pronunciation huà of 話. However, according to zhongwen.com, the original 声旁 is an "ancient character resembling 舌", the pronunciation of which was probably much more in line with the pronunciation of 話 in ancient times. (Maybe someone else could check up on this.)

Your other example 好 however belongs to a different category of characters. The components 女 and 子 meaning girl and son (in modern mandarin) respectively come together to give the character its meaning - in ancient times, it was thought that 女 and 子 were good - 好. There is no phonetic component in this character, so in this case, yes, you simply have to just remember the pronunciation.

[Qifeng.Xing]

The ancient Chinese can be considered as pictographs. Now, we can see it as the combination of "pictographic, associative and phonogram"

Pictographs is the earliest way people used for expressing. However, the pictographic characters have changed day by day in real use.

associative, since pictograph can't express abstract meanings, so people use some symbols and "pictographic characters plus symbols" to express the abstract meanings.

From pictograph and associative characters, we can know the meaning of the characters, however, we can't pronounce it. So, people use phonogram to create characters.

Use the part which indicates the pronouciation plus the part which can indicate the meaning to create much more characters.

Now, there's about 90% of the character are phonograms since the development of Chinese.

[HashiriKata]

the pronunciation of which was probably much more in line with the pronunciation of 話 in ancient times. (Maybe someone else could check up on this.)

I haven't checked this out yet but from the look of if, it seems likely that 話 is made up of two semantic components: you use your tongue 舌 to speak 言 (or something along that line), so I doubt that 舌 was originally intended as a phonetic component for 話. (Just as you can see, there's no phonetic component in 好).

[leeyah]

the pronunciation of which was probably much more in line with the pronunciation of 話 in ancient times

My 古代汉语词典 says 话 is indeed 形声 :言 为 形， 舌 为声, with 舌 being the phonetic component (from old Chinese huà/wa, 言 + 氏 + 口gua) & Zdic, a good online source says the same, see also 详细字义 & 说文解字 tab on 话

[HashiriKata]

Thanks leeyah, it's an interesting case. Still, it confirms that 舌 itself has never had a pronunciation that is approximate to 话 (The pronunciation intended is not of 舌, but of the defunct character, as referred to in leeyah's, made of 氐 over 口).

[leeyah]

Compare the original shapes (形) of 声旁 of 话 & 舌 vs. 氏+口 and they are exactly the same, which may indicate to a common origin, even if 氏 + 口 is now defunct in the meaning of 'tongue':

[leeyah]

Etymology of Chinese characters is essential for a deeper understanding of the characters used today. Luckily, even advanced class for foreign learners has 汉字 class as compulsory

Here's a simple clarification on 舌

[d_92_b]

i actually perceived 话 more like the speech of a thousand mouths, dunno it could be somewhat an amateurish idea because i dont know much yet ;////

[Hofmann]

It would be understandable if you didn't recognize 舌. If you did, you would probably guess that it's an ideogrammic compound without knowing about the gua1 pronunciation of 舌.

語 is a phono-semantic compound, but I wouldn't expect you to get that if you didn't recognize 吾 (but you did get 五, which is the phonetic compound of 吾.)