2 questions about characters, words.

[sangajtam]

1.How this is possible that 紐約 means New York?

either 紐 or 約 has completely different meaning,

is it only to make it most similar in hearing?

Or 豆腐 how it is possible that rotten bean is tofu?

 

2.Why some words are not only one character but have to be with another?

For example:

White

白 means white

but it is with 色

is it to make it more concrete, specific?

 

[skylee]

Re New York, it is transliteration. Nothing special. Beijing is called 北京 and not really Beijing but it is Beijing to the rest of the world. Same reason why New York is 紐約 in Chinese.

Re 白, compare the number of homophones of bai with that of baise.

[Demonic_Duck]

Question 1: it's a transliteration.

 

Question 2: 豆 bean 腐 fermented. How do you make 豆腐? You ferment beans.

 

Question 3: 白 white 色 colour. 白色 white-coloured. Seems simple enough to me.

 

Characters are not the same as words, even though some words are only one character long. Often, words are more than the sum of their parts (i.e. you can't easily deduce the meaning from the combined meanings of the constituent characters). The examples you gave, however, are all fairly straightforward.

[sangajtam]

Thansk, but i still dont understand why when 2 characters have similar meaning, they are connected and not used as one character word?

Like

告訴

why they dont use only 告?

[Demonic_Duck]

Several things to note:

1) There is a lot of homonymity in modern Chinese, as Skylee says, and if more words were monosyllabic this would only increase the problem. Once you've been learning for a while, you'll be very glad there aren't more monosyllabic words.

2) You'll notice that in certain set expressions, 告 is used on its own to express the meaning "tell". This is generally a relic from ancient Chinese, which had many more monosyllabic words. Cf. set expressions in English which use archaic forms of words never used outside of said expressions (ne'er, 'twixt, 'neath etc.) although I think in Chinese this is much more common.

3) Because 告诉 is the Chinese word for "to tell". Just like the English word is "tell", not "splitch". At the most basic level, language is (almost) entirely arbitrary.

[sangajtam]

Ok, thanks.

since i am asking about characters, let me ask something more,

why if 中 is in pinyin Zhōng

in 中風 it changes to tone 4 ? (Zhòngfēng)

[skylee]

Because there are many characters with multiple pronunciations and 中 is one of them. You just have to learn them. They are just like the different pronunciations of "refuse" or "subject" or "object".

 

Take a look at this, which might help -> http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=1&wdqb=%E4%B8%AD

[renzhe]

中 has different pronunciations.

zhōng means "middle"

zhòng means "to hit a target"

告訴

why they dont use only 告?

Because 告 has several meanings. For example, if used alone it could mean "to sue". When you say 告訴, you are being more clear.

Characters represent morphemes, building blocks of a language. You can't think of them as words. They are the building blocks which make up words.

[Demonic_Duck]

Some characters have multiple pronunciations (known as 多音字 duōyīnzì, multiple-reading-characters). Generally, each of the readings signifies something subtly (sometimes not-so-subtly) different. I'm not familiar with 中风, but with 中 in the sense of 中圈套, 中彩票, 中奖 etc. all of which are zhòng, the meaning is something like "hit" as in "hit the mark". However, in 中央, 中间, 中部, 中国 etc. with the pronunciation zhōng, the meaning is "middle".

 

Edit: beaten to it by Skylee and renzhe. Ah well.

[sangajtam]

Thanks.

[lingo-ling]

As for New York, the Hokkien pronunciation is "niu iok".