Homophones

[Harpoon]

Hi everyone Been reading the board for a few days, want to ask some questions...

One of the serious difficulties I see with learning Mandarin is the huge amount of homonyms - words that sound the same but have different meanings. I guess this is the price that must be payed for having absolutely no verb conjugations, subject/object changing and tons of complicated grammar that most every other language is packed full of

I did curious and went through a site and counted that there are only exactly 397 unique Mandarin syllables. Yes I know about tones (most of these have 3-4 tones, many have less) and bi-syllable words and the importance of context, but I still can't help but think that there must be some problems and that these distinctions aren't enough - Chinese has a ALOT of words.

For example, "jiao" means 45 things, "shi" means 63 (and then you have accents that pronounce it the same as "si"!), "jian" means 68 things, "zhi" means 81(!!!) things... all these have even more if you include submeanings.

Even if you throw in tone distinctions.. shi4 still means 34 things, zhi4 still means 38... basically from what I understand, saying just one 1 syllable word means nothing, while in English you can say a single word without having to attach a context sentance to it. If you hear someone say "xiao1" by itself, you don't know if he meant "night" or "elf" or "owl" or "pan pipes" or a bunch of other things...

What about when there aren't tones? What if someone is in distress with a strained voice, or is mumbling or muttering, or is talking over a poor quality phone or radio or somethign? (what's the mandarin equivilant of "Help!", anyone know?)

Or music? I assumed that Mandarin music had tones, but it was just subtle, but my HongKongese friend told me that they use none, since they have to make their singing to the melody or beat. So now even tone distinctions are gone, let alone distinctions between syllables that have the same tone! In the thread about embarassing moments when learning Chinese, pazu recalled an experience where he made a tone mistake with "jian", where he meant to say "wo3 ming2 tian1 jian4 ni3" (I see you tomorrow) but actually said "wo3 ming2 tian1 jian1 ni3" (I rape you tomorrow)... thats crazy! If that was sung in a Mandarin pop song, would people just naturally assume that he meant "see" because its a light hearted pop song? It just seems that there is too much interpretation involved and you have to be constantly running through possible meanings. Maybe thats why Mandarin rap or hip-hop (with the song being sung very quickly) is unpopular?

Sorry for writing a book Obviously I'm not Chinese so I probably have stuff wrong - this is just what I have gathered to understand, please enlighten me

[markalexander100]

A few things to remember:

- tone distinctions are not something you "throw in". They are fundamental. To say that "shi" with each of the four tones has 63 meanings is like saying that there are 63 words beginning with the letter "c" in English. As long as you listen to the rest of the word you won't confuse cat with crisp, and as long as you listen to the tone you won't confuse shi1 with shi3.

- people don't stop using tones when their speech becomes unclear (or only to the same extent as you elide sounds in English).

- most words in modern Chinese are compound words, composed of more than one character. There may be 34 shi4s and 38 zhi4s, but there will be far fewer shi4zhi4 combinations.

- context. "Round", I read somewhere, has something like 60 possible meanings in English. Not so different.

[Harpoon]

but tones can be so easily slurred and distorted...you have to be actively changing your pitch and tightening up your airway, etc... what if you are screaming at someone or talking very fast or something? I dont think it would take much to confuse a tone2 and a tone1, or a neutral tone and a falling tone (both are short and clipped)... again, what about singing and the example I gave?

yeah those compound words do help.. (I wish the dictionaries could note which words are most often said as compound word syllables instead of more easily confused single syllable words)... but the compound words are still composed of those 397 syllables, each which have tons of meanings themselves. In english, syllables by themselves rarely have any meaning alone that isn't somehow related to the whole word (at least much less than chinese)... scree ming, syl ah bul, rel ate ed, neut ral, dis tort ed, lang wudj, etc.. Unlike in Mandarin where "an1 jing4" means "calm" or "peaceful" together, but apart with the same tones it means tons of things from "saddle whale" to "ammonia fear"

speaking of an1 jing4... thats a popular Jay Chou song, and despite being a compound word you will still have to assume he meants "peaceful" and not "An inclined or vertical shaft or passage between levels in a mine."

[markalexander100]

In english, syllables by themselves rarely have any meaning alone that isn't somehow related to the whole word (at least much less than chinese)... scree ming, syl ah bul, rel ate ed, neut ral, dis tort ed, lang wudj, etc..

Scree, ming, sill, a, bull, late, ed, newt, rill, diss, tort- these are all words in English.

[Harpoon]

scree and rill are obscure geography terms (they need to classify so much that field that they have used up every coherant syllable availabe ), ming isn't a word, diss is slang, tort is a specific legal term from French, and you didn't find a problem with the rest of mine. While in Chinese literaly every syllable will mean something (rather, many things) and will be commonly used

[in_lab]

Markalexander's post is a clever and valid explanation of the confusion of listening to Chinese--there isn't much. That the words are obscure, slang, loan words, or proper nouns (Ming) doesn't change the fact that they are words.

In music, one often has to read the lyrics to understand them, but that's nothing new.

That's not to say there's never confusion, but not nearly as much as it may seem.

[markalexander100]

If you really want me to rub it in, rall is also a term used in music, lang is a word in several dialects (as well as a Hollywood actress's name), and widg is a colloquial pronunciation of "which". So every one of the examples you gave has an alternative meaning.

And it gets worse: in English we run words together, so "Mike at" can sound exactly like "my cat". Not a problem in Chinese, where you can always tell where each syllable ends.

[Harpoon]

true... hmm "killable" "Kill a bull" I can see how it can be confusing, point taken somewhat

in_lab... with English music you don't have to really look at lyrics to understand the music... especially not in a slow balad.

but on to what I said about "rape" and "see"... what's a mandarin speaker's thought-process when he or she hears something like that in a largely toneless song? Do they have to pause and think "wait a second... did he just say what I thought he said?"

maybe we can just agree that chinese isn't the ideal language to sing with?

anyone know what I asked about "Help!" ?

[Jim]

I hate homophones - what people decide to do in their personal life is no-one else's business.

Silliness aside, I would say that after about eight years of Mandarin speaking I still have the tendency to hear unfamiliar words as something else as your brain scrabbles to make sense. And you do hear Chinese friends having to reiterate what they were saying to make a distinction clear, especially if they're using a fancy technical term in say philosophy or lit crit. But really not much more of a problem than misunderstandings in English once you get in to it.

[taibeihong]

Harpoon, you might want to read this article: http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/east_asian_languages.html

Extracting the main points regarding homophones in Chinese:

- There are few Chinese mono-syllabic words. Most are bi- or polisyllabic. The fact that morphemes (the parts that constitute words) are monosyllabic and have their own characters give the impression that WORDS consist of only one syllable, which in general is not the case. One example: "shi" could in fact mean any number of things, but "shi" is rarely a word, it is mostly one of several morphemes that make up words: if you say "shítou", "sh-iwàng", or "shízìlùkôu", which are WORDS, then there is no doubt what you mean, if you say "shíshìshang" or "shìbúshì", the meaning is also crystal clear

- Depending on who you ask, Chinese has between 5% and 11.6% of Chinese WORDS have homonyms. English has about 3.1%. So yes, Chinese has more homophonous words than English, for example, but not critically more. And then when you take into account that words are rarely pronounced out of context, the problem is greatly reduced.

Of course, this refers to normal speech. When you read texts, you might find BI- or POLISYLLABIC words that do have homonyms, but in general those are words that are mainly used in written language, words that become clear thanks to the characters that are used and which were concocted to transfer meaning visually, but not necessarily aurally. But then again, they're mainly used in written Chinese, not spoken.

Songs (this is not talked about in the article I mentioned) are another matter. But it seems that it's a mixture of intuition and reading the lyrics or part of them. If the guy sings "and if under the rain, for a brief moment, I "jian" you", you would be hard pressed to think "jian" meant "rape". And for the more obscure parts of the lyrics, you would have friends that might have read the lyrics, or might have understood some words that you didn't, etc.

[Bob Dylan Thomas]

I often equate the use of tones in Chinese with the use of syllabic emphasis in English, which is critical to speaking comprehensible English.

One of the main things which can make it hard to understand non-native English speakers is the common emphasis on the wrong syllable of a poly-syllabic word. As with toneless Chinese, it is still possible to understand, but not necessarily the first time you hear a sentence. Compare "i-MA-gine my di-STRESS" (native British english emphasis) to "ima-GINE my DI-stress". Native speakers don't realise it but these things are crucial to comprehensive English, and they are especially difficult given that emphasis changes on the same word depending on context, tone or mood - eg. I di-GEST my food, but pick up a copy of Readers' DI-gest. I think this phenomenon is even more important in Russian.

I'm trying to make the point that tones in Mandarin do have equivalents in other languages, and don't make Chinese especially challenging in comparison.

[Jim]

Just read this in a reminisence about the Great Helmsman:

吃饭间，毛主席不断给我夹菜，口中还念叨着：“你年轻，农村来的，多吃一点。”可我根本没把吃饭放在心里。毛主席问我：“你哪里人？”我说：“江苏盐城人。”“你是苏北盐城人，你知道盐城有两乔吗？”并向我竖出两个手指。我却直直地盯着毛主席，怔了神。我心里想：“我们那里水乡桥很多，怎么只有两桥呢？”我一时没听清主席话的含意（湖南普通话，讲得很慢），还是盯着主席看。他老人家看我没听懂便提示说：“两乔，他们都很会写文章。”在学校里我也算是个爱好作文的小秀才，所以一下子想起来了，便高兴地回答说：“我知道，他们是胡乔木、乔冠华。”毛主席高兴地笑了起来。

From here

[Harpoon]

taibeihong:

thanks for the info i'll have to make sure to read through that article... long as hell but i bet it will make everything clear

as per what you said: I guess I'm really underestimating how much bisyllabic words are used. Okay, right now I just quickly looked up "school" from an online dictionary, here's some of the results:

校 [xiao4] /school/

学校 [xue2 xiao4] /school/

宗 [zong1] /school/sect/purpose/model/ancestor/family/

both xiao4 and zong1 mean "school"... but are mono-syllabic and thus can get confused more. So would it be safe to assume that xue2 xiao4 is the more commonly used term?

... hmm I kind of thought Chinese could be spoken much faster than English, but if so many words are poly-syballic then I guess that's not the case

As per the song, ideally the listtener shouldn't have to interpret anything at all. Maybe the singer made a crazy song where he wants to burst out and sing about raping people in the middle of a soft melody? It just seems too artificial to classify the song by its genre and assume that only x, y and z types of words will be used.

Bob: I guess you got a point, but for that to make sense, your syllable stress placement would have to determine the meaning of every single word, with several possibilities depending on syllable stress.

Oh and Jim, I guess I didn't make it clear enough that I can't read any Chinese - why would I be asking these questions if I knew the language

[Claw]

校 [xiao4] /school/

学校 [xue2 xiao4] /school/

宗 [zong1] /school/sect/purpose/model/ancestor/family/

both xiao4 and zong1 mean "school"... but are mono-syllabic and thus can get confused more. So would it be safe to assume that xue2 xiao4 is the more commonly used term?

宗 is not really used to mean school. It's usually used in words dealing with religion, for instance, 宗教 (religion), 祖宗 (ancestor), and 宗派 (sect).

校 (when pronounced xiao4) is hardly ever used alone. It's always used within a compound. It is generally considered to mean "school" because many of the compounds in which it appears deal with schools, for instance 學校 (school), 校園 (campus), 夜校 (night school), and 校長 (principal), but that doesn't mean you can use it alone to mean school.

[Jim]

Should have explained why I posted the story.

An old buffer is remembering having dinner with Chairman Mao back in the day. the kindly dictator asks him where's he's from and our hero replies he's from Yancheng. Mao says 'That's famous for it's two Qiaos (乔)" which the author mishears as 'bridges (桥)' in part due to the Chairman's thick Hunanese brogue, and thinks 'we've got loads of bridges back home, how come it's famous for just two?'t . In fact the as a well-known literati Comrade Mao was referring to two famous scholars from Yancheng who had the character 乔 in their names.

Just read it and thought it was an example fo the kind of confusion you were talking about.

[BOoRFGOnZ]

你们的英文 好复杂

俺看不懂哦....

....谁教我...嘿嘿.............

我中文 不错哦 ...哈哈..

[Quest]

What about when there aren't tones?

There are always tones.

What if someone is in distress with a strained voice, or is mumbling or muttering, or is talking over a poor quality phone or radio or somethign?

Tones actually help when a person is mumbling or is talking over a poor quality radio. (if a radio can carry sound, it can carry tones)

(what's the mandarin equivilant of "Help!", anyone know?)

"help!" -- jiu4ming4 (save life!)

Maybe the singer made a crazy song where he wants to burst out and sing about raping people in the middle of a soft melody?

he can use "qiang2jian1" to mean rape, or "kan4jian4" to mean see.

If you hear someone say "xiao1" by itself, you don't know if he meant "night" or "elf" or "owl" or "pan pipes" or a bunch of other things...

The person would say "ye4xiao1 de xiao1", "xiao1shou4 de xiao1" and so on to give a single character a brief context by associating it with a bisyllabic compound. How often does someone say a character by itself?

[taibeihong]

... hmm I kind of thought Chinese could be spoken much faster than English, but if so many words are poly-syballic then I guess that's not the case

I know it's a long text to read (but really interesting). But regarding this comment, I'll save you the work of finding that info (all has been extracted from the text found at http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/east_asian_languages.html):

- between 5% and 12% of words in a modern dictionary are monosyllabic.

- for running text (i.e., all the words used in one specific text, including repeated uses of the same word) 30% to 40% of words are monosyllabic. On the other hand, a comparable English text would be 50% to 60% monosyllabic.

both xiao4 and zong1 mean "school"... but are mono-syllabic and thus can get confused more.

Like Claw explained, you can't normally use these words on their own, usually they're found in compounds. That is, they are more like "morphemes": they carry meaning, but you don't normally use them as words by themselves, much like "pater" carries meaning, but is not a word unless in combination (pater-familias, paternalistic, paternal), or like "plane" (airplane, outer planes). Truely monosyllabic words are few.

BUT, of course, we're always talking about modern Chinese. If you look at WRITTEN Classical Chinese you'll find there is an impressive ammount of monosyllables. But that's WRITTEN CLASSICAL CHINESE.

[Harpoon]

okay I read the article....

He says that Chinese DOES have a homonym problem. He says it is caused by the character system, where morphemes or small words with some meaning can be represented without confusion with characters since each has its own character, but when these are carried over to spoken language it causes ambigiouity problems. A character writing system is the cause of this, not the solution.

He also talks about how written Chinese does not ( i guess i was wrong)unify all the Chinese dialects (meaning languages, since saying Chinese is a language would be saying that European is a language). Many words in various dialects do not have characters in standard Chinese (which is based on Mandarin's needs, not any other languages), especially not simplified Chinese, or have different meanings for many characters, and have different written grammar and word order. They basically have to learn how to read and write Mandarin

[taibeihong]

He says that Chinese DOES have a homonym problem. He says it is caused by the character system, where morphemes or small words with some meaning can be represented without confusion with characters since each has its own character, but when these are carried over to spoken language it causes ambigiouity problems. A character writing system is the cause of this, not the solution.

Well, yes, it says that it has a homonym problem. But it´s important not to forget that the homonym problem, like you say, arises when you pronounce what's been written. The written style includes expressions from classical chinese, abbreviations of words, and very small words that can be recognised mainly because the written form helps differentiate homonyms. But, when you speak, the homonym problem is mostly gone (or not worse than in other languages). But your original post referred to mostly distinguishing spoken homonyms, so that's why I didn't comment on written homonyms.