包含 vs 包涵

[skylee]

Inspired by this blog.

I was sure that 包含 was not used to mean forgiveness. That should be 包涵. I have checked my Longman Chinese Dictionary and my Xiandai Hanyu Cidian and both of them have confirmed that my understanding is correct. I have also found this webpage (which claims to be hosted by the PRC State Council). Actually the two terms are pronounced differently in Cantonese, so there should be no confusion.

HOWEVER, the Taiwan MOE on-line dictionary says that 「包涵」亦作「包含」 , and vice versa.

Now I am confused.

Could anyone (studied/studying) in Taiwan confirm that they are interchangeable in Taiwan? Do people in other areas use them interchangeably for the meaning of forgiveness?

Similarly I am also confused by the use of 滿 in Taiwan to mean “to a great extent”. What I have all along been using is 蠻. Again, my paper dictionaries support 蠻 but the MOE on-line dictionary supports 滿 .

[Daan]

I'm not sure about 包含 vs 包涵 in Taiwan, but I've never seen 滿 used in lieu of 蠻.

[semantic nuance]

Personally, I use 包涵. I've never heard that 包含 can be interchanged with 包含 until you list the example. Also, I use 蠻 instead of 滿, though a lot of people use 滿 to mean 蠻. There are many pronunciation changes of a few words, take one for example, we used to say 仔 as ㄗㄞˇ(zai3) in 牛仔褲, but now it is changed into ㄗˇ(zi3). However, I still say 牛仔褲 (zai3) instead of 牛仔褲 (zi3). Like 得的地, I think a lot of people have mixed 蠻 and 滿, but that does not mean they're the same. Just my 2 cents.

[creamyhorror]

I used the wrong characters in that thread (包含), but it does seem 包含 is accepted by zdic in place of 包涵, with backing quotes including one from Sima Guang:

包含

(2).犹包涵。宽容，原谅。 宋 司马光 《论张方平第二状》：“今 方平 举措轻脱，震骇一方，传笑天下。不才之跡，章灼如此，而朝廷犹掩覆包含，一无所问。” 元 无名氏 《醉花阴·怨恨》曲：“衔冤去投 谢氏 ，无计去问 巫咸 。自嘆息，自包含。”《老残游记》第十七回：“小县分没有好菜，送了一桌粗饭，请大老爷包含点。”

Still, better to stick to 包涵 and preserve a distinction between the two words, I guess.

[Yichao]

包含usually is used as the normal meaning of the word contain. However, 包涵is totally different, used for being polite. Like you have made a mistake, then say: 请多包涵.

But recently on the Internet, these two words are used as the same meaning though.

I'm a Chinese, that's what my teacher taught me in class.

[chevil]

Not exactly sure about 包含 and 包涵, but 含 and 涵 seem to be easily confused because they have similar meanings in such compounds as 含義/涵義 (e.g. google [含義 涵義] and see what you come up with). It would appear - although I'm not positive and haven't specifically asked about this - that in these cases the actual semantic distinction tends to be dropped in lieu of using 涵 as a more 'learned' variant of 含.

As for 蠻/滿, in Taiwan it seems that the distinction is that the former is used for casual writing and the latter is more 'formal'. I had a Taiwanese friend who said that he used to be confused about which one to write -- eventually he settled on using the former when chatting with friends and the latter for communication with teachers and such. At any rate, as far as I know, they are just written variants and *have the same pronunciation and meaning* (pronounced man2 - although, indeed, I know of at least one variant pronunciation, man1, although this would appear to be an idiosyncrasy of my mother's speech).