Homonyms

[cfernandomaciel]

Hello everybody,

I'm a newbie into Chinese learning, currently I'm self teaching as it's just impossible to find a Chinese course in south-eastern Brazil. I have already gotten many tips from the forum on self studying, bought the integrated chinese books, a dictionary, some index cards for training the Hanzi, and downloaded some very elementary podcasts so I can get used with the sounds.

I've been studying for 2 months already, I'm down to a point where Chinese is not a language from another planet anymore, for I'm getting accustomed with the sounds already. As far as speaking and understanding, of course, I still haven't got enough time to see any progress on that, although when I'm scanning through some musics' lyrics, some 'words' already pop-out in from of my eyes and I get to grasp a bit of what the music's talking about, which makes me very proud of myself and helps a lot to boost my confidence and keep learning.

Well, straight to the point...

I just bought a dictionary, not a very good one, nor it's too bad ( Tuttle Concise Chinese Dictionary ), as I was proudly examining my newest acquisition, thumbing though it, I came across 'Qi2' and 'Qi3', and much to my dismay I realized that we not only have to worry about the differences of tones - which is already lot's of things to keep on mind - but there are stacks of homonyms in the language!

We've got the Qi1 that means 'seven'; the Qi1 that means 'wife'; the Qi1 that means 'fixed time', and the list goes on. The same goes with Qi2, Qi3, and Qi4!

My question is: how in the world am I going to notice that the person is talking about this Qi1, or that Qi1? Is it entirely done by context? If yes, is that an easy thing to pick up and I'm worrying too much about a thing that has no importance?

If not, do you guys have any advice to give me - besides not to worry about that one - so I can go through that subject as smoothly as possible? Any personal experiences to share on that one?

Just to finish my point, the other day, I was taking a peak at an online dictionary, to find the meaning of the radical 巴 in the word 巴西 ( Brazil ). I'm not certain how I got there, but I got to the point that 巴 is often confused by natives with some other homonyms when it comes down to written Chinese.

So, if it confuses natives, how are we managing to get passed that whole homonym problem?

Thanks in advance for any help extended!

[Silent]

My question is: how in the world am I going to notice that the person is talking about this Qi1, or that Qi1? Is it entirely done by context? If yes, is that an easy thing to pick up and I'm worrying too much about a thing that has no importance?

Pretty much yes. A far from perfect comparison but how do you distinct between the (far fewer) homonymns in your own language? The syllables? I think most languages have words with several meanings. How do you figure out what is meant? In the end it's just context. If you say something short, completely out of context, even if it's not a homonym many will ask you to repeat. Essentially you derive the meaning from context and expectations just as much as from sound. If there are more homonyms it may be a bit harder, but I don't think it's something to really worry about.

BTW the homonyms may sound worse then it really is. In Chinese often two characters with similar meaning are combined to a single word which lessens the number of homonyms considerably.

[cfernandomaciel]

@Silent,

Thanks a lot for the insights! I got it! It's probably just because as I read through a phrase it's packed of words I do not know yet, so, when I came across the homonyms in Chinese that made me feel overwhelmed. So, the more I practice and study, the lesser Chinese phrases will contain words that are alien to me, therefore, homonyms will gradually stop being a concern to me.

P.S.: But I still think one can find waaay more homonyms in Chinese than in English, German, Portuguese for instance. But I could be wrong.

Anyways, thanks again!

[Hofmann]

OK, those are called homophones. Homonyms are written and pronounced the same way like the 足 in 足夠 and the 足 in 足球. But I guess some of your homophones can be homonyms too.

how in the world am I going to notice that the person is talking about this Qi1, or that Qi1?

Context. Don't exaggerate the difficulty. We humans can understand natural languages, which are usually composed of only a few sounds in different combinations, because we can interpret things in context.

巴 is often confused by natives with some other homonyms

...like what? Assuming they're not illiterate.

[cfernandomaciel]

Hi Hofmann,

You are right! Homophones! Sorry about that one!

巴 is often confused by natives with some other homonyms

...like what? Assuming they're not illiterate.

I cannot write it down, for I have no clue how to do it yet ( the source where I got that info from was a printed one ), as it didn't provide me any other information about these other 'ba' words. But the text thereof was a kind of 'warning', so whenever non-native Chinese speakers came across a thing like that, they would promptly know that the native meant 巴.

I'm trying to find that same example somewhere in the internet so I can share with you.

[Demonic_Duck]

Bear in mind most words are multisyllabic, and just because a character is listed as having its own meaning, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is often used on its own. For instance, 妻 may have the meaning of "wife", but you won't hear it used on its own, you're more likely to hear it in words like 妻子, also meaning "wife".

期 might mean "period of time", but as far as I know you don't hear it outside of words like 星期 "week".

[Glenn]

And apparently 期 has a primary reading of qí, at least in Taiwan, I've found out. Although Yip and Rimmington also have that reading for it in Chinese: A Comprehensive Grammar in the chapter Verbs that Take Verbal or Clausal Objects (pg. 270) in the word 期望. That seems to be a misprint (although it is qíwàng in Taiwan). There seem to be a fiar amount of those, actually. Just two pages later they have 討論 as táolùn, and I swear at some point they had 調皮 as tiǎopí.

*ahem* Anyway... I don't want to hijack the thread.

[renzhe]

The key is to understand the difference between words and characters. Most dictionaries -- including most word dictionaries -- will first introduce a character, with definition, and then the words that start with this character.

This does not mean that all of these characters can be used on their own in modern spoken Chinese! You will save yourself a lot of trouble if you avoid the typical newbie pitfall (made worse by poor teaching material written by people who don't really understand the language) of assuming each character is a word of its own and can be used as such.

If you take words and tones into account, Chinese (I'm referring to Mandarin here, but the same holds for most spoken dialects) actually has fewer homophones than you think -- more than some European languages but not incredibly so. It is still more context sensitive because of other factors (tones are difficult for Indo-European native speakers, relative lack of stress, etc.) but there are not that many TRUE homophones.

In your example, only 七 (seven) is typically used on its own in speech. The character 妻 (wife) would be used as a part of the word 妻子 (the actual word for "wife"), or used in other compound words like 夫妻 (husband and wife). The character 期 (time period) is also usually used as a part of compounds, like 星期 (week), 期限 (deadline), 日期 (date), etc.

In writing, you are more likely to encounter single-character words, especially in more formal books, but in that case, there is no confusion.

[Guest realmayo]

Yes, and I think one reason beginners often make that mistake is because a lot of those minority of words which do stand on their own as just one character are extremely common words, so you encounter lots of single-character words in the first few chapters.

[chestnut818]

In Chinese, we have pinyin system and also Chinese characters, pinyin is to show the pronunciation of a character, but there are many characters having same pronunciation, so it's very important to learn characters if u have a long-term plan to learn Chinese. To distinguish what the meaning of a character, you have to put it into sentence. such as: "zhè shì wǒ de qī zǐ。"here "qī zǐ" is one world, so we can know it means wife, not "seven"...

Beginning is a little bit difficult, but later u will find it's so interesting to learn Chinese.

Hope it's helpful.

[cfernandomaciel]

Bear in mind most words are multisyllabic, and just because a character is listed as having its own meaning, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is often used on its own. For instance, 妻 may have the meaning of "wife", but you won't hear it used on its own, you're more likely to hear it in words like 妻子, also meaning "wife".

期 might mean "period of time", but as far as I know you don't hear it outside of words like 星期 "week".

@Demonic_Duck,

You have no idea how comforting it was to read your explanation! It completely makes sense! While the 'characters' have a meaning, they rarely appear on their own!

Thanks a lot!

[cfernandomaciel]

@renzhe

That completely makes the difference! While it would be terribly scarry having to go through a whole bunch of equally sounding words, and having to differentiate them, now it's another perspective!

Thanks a lot!

[cfernandomaciel]

@realmayo,

Got it! So, nothing to fear about!

[cfernandomaciel]

Thanks a lot everybody!

You all had very valuable insights. The whole difference between the meaning of a single character ( which might not necessarily mean an entire word ) and how real words are put together is something that I overlooked at the dictionary ( @renzhe provided that info ), yet it was clear as water!

I hope one day become as good as you guys with Chinese!

Thanks again!

[Markko]

I'm pretty much a newbie myself, but found out, maybe erroneously (correct me if i'm wrong), that sometimes there's more than one way to say a word, for example "country" can go by 国 and 国家, "cat" can go by 猫 and 花猫, "to wait" is either 等 or 等待 etc. I guess that's the way Chinese use to get themselves out of trouble when there is a chance of misunderstanding in vocal communication.

[Hofmann]

Never heard of 花貓. 貓 is the only character that sounds like mao1.

[陳德聰]

花貓 is the same thing as 三色貓 but it's not synonymous with just 貓...

[skylee]

I think 花貓 includes any cats that have patterns on their fur (ie not purely black or white or grey etc), which means that besides 三色貓, 虎紋貓 is also 花貓.

[herradw]

Hi,

If you have any recommendations for dealing with the problem of homonyms please share with me.

Every idea is appreciated ...

[skylee]

Could you elaborate the problem?