Homophones

[beirne]

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/

I've been roughly where you are in trying to figure out Chinese. I used to quiz my Chinese friends trying to figure out how a billion people can use a language where all the words sound the same. They chuckled and tried to explain it to me, but I didn't really understand how Chinese worked until until I started studying it. Here are a few points, some of which were already made here:

Don't rely too much on dictionaries for usage. They usually list every word that somehow fits the definition but most don't help much in explaining which one is most common. I have had a number of cases where I learned a word out of the dictionary and my teacher explained that no one uses it.

Try John DeFrancis' ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary, available on its own or in Wenlin and Plecodict programs. He takes the controversial view that the Chinese language is its sounds, not the characters, and this comes through in some helpful ways in the dictionary. First, the entries are alphabetized by pinyin, not characters. The second feature that will be especially helpful here is that syllables that cannot stand alone are marked as "b.f.", or bound form. For example, the syllable hai2 can mean child, and that is how most dictionaries translate it, leading one to think that hai2 is a word for child. The ABC dictionary points out that it means "child", but by adding the b.f. indicator we discover that it is a component, just like "ped-" in English. Hai2 only shows up in words like nan2hai2, xiao3hai2, hai2zi, etc. BTW, xiao4 and zong1 are also marked as bound forms in the ABC dictionary.

In spite of what I'm saying, homophones will be a nuisance but they won't keep you from learning the language. Most of the trouble I have with homophones comes when someone uses a word that I don't know but that sounds like a word that I do know. For example, early on I was going to a restaurant for dimsum with my teacher. She said that the restaurant serves hai3zhe2 (jellyfish). Not knowing the word it sounded like hai2zi (child) to me, especially since I didn't pay attention to the tones and my teacher speaks southern Mandarin so the zh sounds like a z. I asked her if we are really eating children and she laughed and explained it to me. Now that I know the word hai3zhe2, though, I don't have that problem at all.

If you are interested in learning Chinese you should go ahead and don't let the homophones deter you. Use a book, though, that starts with the spoken language rather than the characters. Think of Chinese as you would any other language rather than a collection of characters and you will see that it works better than it may appear. And yes, you will have to deal with tones and even some homophones, but you will get used to them. You will also find that Chinese gets a lot of mileage out of combinations of syllables making for a very rich language.

[in_lab]

One time that I do have a problem with homophones is the chemical elements. You have to word your sentence carefully to make sure people understand that when you say xin1, you mean zinc, and when you say jia3, you mean potassium. It would be less confusing if each element had a 2-syllable long form. But, as far as I know, most of them don't.

[MXQBLGH]

this is one thing that I don't understand.

I realize that a lot of words are made up for 2 word compounds which help narrow down the meaning, but what about the chemical elements example? They are all single characters?

油 you2 = oil

鈾 you2 = uranium

???

you2 is so common I can't imagine how someone automatically know you're talking about uranium and not oil?

油礦 you2kuang4

鈾礦 you2kuang4

again, identical pronunciation?

what about other elements like

氨 an1 = ammonia

鋅 xin1 = zinc

I also know that words like hydrogen, helium can usually be said with the word 氣 to make the distinction. ie. 氦氣 hai4 qi4 for helium

but still. Do the above examples I've given not cause confusion when using them in everyday conversations?

I'm amazed ppl can understand each other lol

[skylee]

The context helps.

[Daan]

And, as previously noted, you can always add something to the effect of "jin1bu4 de you2", literally "the you2 with the component 金". You'll quite often hear native speakers use this same pattern to distinguish between 得, 的 and 地 when explaining grammar, for example.

[stoney]

I'm a beginner / intermediate and at this stage in my learning I am not bothered by similar sounding words.

Now it's too many synonyms. It's frustrating to finally learn a new word, then another one pops up that means nearly the same thing. I suppose this is common as one delves into the subtleties of any new language. But sometimes I feel like I'm wasting to much time learning obscure words.

I'm wondering how Chinese compares with English for # of synonyms??

Also, I've seen lists of most common characters. Are there any lists of most common words?

[renzhe]

If you're learning from decent source materials, you shouldn't worry about learning obscure stuff.

There are lists of the most common words around, but perhaps the most useful such list is the HSK vocabulary list, which can be found here. That's plenty of useful, important vocabulary.

I don't know if anyone can definitively answer the question of how Chinese compares to English, but Chinese (like English) is a very rich language, with many words and many synonyms. Some of this is due to the writing system, which provided continuity over at least 2000 years. So you're looking at a very large written corpus spanning a very long time, and many of the words have survived until today (in certain contexts).

Generally speaking, the stuff you need for everyday life is limited, as it is in most languages. If you want to explore the world of classical literature, you'll run into all the vocabulary you can handle, and then some.

In the meantime, the best way to deal with synonyms is to understand their meaning, or in which context they can be used. Usually, this helps. You can start a thread with some confusing synonyms, and people could look at it and try to explain the difference.

[Hofmann]

A poem 施氏食獅史 by 趙元任

石室詩士施氏，嗜獅，誓食十獅。

氏時時適市視獅。

十時，適十獅適市。

是時，適施氏適市。

氏視是十獅，恃矢勢，使是十獅逝世。

氏拾是十獅屍，適石室。

石室濕，氏使侍拭石室。

石室拭，氏始試食是十獅。

食時，始識是十獅，實十石獅屍。

試釋是事。

[MXQBLGH]

I understand that you can explain what characters you're referring to. But just wondering, does this make the language inefficient if you have to do this often? Again, I'm no native so perhaps it's not as bad as it seems to me...

but it's weird to me if one has to say "the chemical element uranium" (in chinese) instead of simply "uranium" in case the other person won't understand them.

I mean in english I can say something random like "grab some uranium and dump it in your yard" whereas (to me) in chinese I would have to explain that it's "the chemical element uranium" in case the listener thinks I'm talking about oil.

Again, I'm not saying my thoughts about 'inefficieny' is correct. Clearly, even if you need to add a couple of words (like "the chemical element" + uranium) to clarify meaning, overall, Chinese doesnt require as many syllables as English to get across the same meaning.

Like some elements like potassium jia3 (TO ME) seem less likely to cause confusion simply because there arent too many words pronounced the same that may cause confusion based on the context. ie. if you say "bananas have a lot of potassium", to me it's easier to understand because what else could jia3 mean?

some words like the uranium/oil you2 can be easily confused (at least to me it seems like it could easily be, iono how native speakers find it) because oil is a common word and many situations where you use 'uranium' you2, you could replace it with 'oil' and the sentence still makes sense.

[MXQBLGH]

on another note

without reading the chinese characters on the screen (both the youtube page, as well as the words within the video, is it possible to understand precisely what the news anchor is talking about? Im referring to the word 'uranium' in there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp7CoO0fs5Y

again, I don't meant to disbelieve. Just as someone learning mandarin, it is actually incredible to me lol

[xiaocai]

Note the word "铀浓缩" here, which will not make much sense if you replace 铀 with 油 (you do not normally "concentrate" petroleum right?). And as you mentioned above, it is not that uncommon that one uses words like 元素铀 or 铀元素 to avoid any ambiguity.

Talking about homophones, Japanese has much more of them compared to Chinese, and still they've found various ways to overcome the problems as well as taking advantages of them (especially when it comes to puns). So for me, whether it is a drawback to have so many words with the same pronunciations or not really depends on how you look at it.

[Aloysius]

Somebody once gave me this list of often encountered homophones - that is bi-syllabic words that have identical shengdiao. I also used to have a list of words consisting of similar syllables but with different tones - which was gigantic (> 1000 doh) - but I can't find it right now. Perhaps if people find it useful I can have another look.

See attachment...

homophones.txt

[Aloysius]

For the sake of completeness these pdf's:

HP.pdf - A list of homophones (HP)

bisyllabic words with identical pronunciations that differ in meaning and hence characters.

i.e.: bǐjì 笔记 - 笔迹 OR yǒuyì 友谊 - 有意 - 有益.

HN_HP.pdf - HN stands for homonym (which they really aren't...)

which here refers two multisyllabic words with different tones but similar pronunciation and - of course - different meanings.

i.e.: fùyu 富余 - fùyù 富裕 - fùyǔ 赋予 - fǔyù 抚育 OR jìnglǐ 敬礼 - jīnglì 经历 - jīnglǐ 经理.

I assume everybody understands that because of the nature of HP's they also are HN's

HPx.pdf

HP_HNx.pdf

Edited January 15, 2009 at 05:35 AM by Aloysius