Illiterate Chinese and homophones

[davoosh]

I was recently rereading a thread about the greater need for context in Chinese and associated difficulties: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/30686-short-words-and-lack-of-context/page-3

 

It was mentioned that illiterate Chinese are able to understand spoken language just as well as everyone else (provided it's not a topic which typically requires a lot of vocab acquired from reading such as philosophy, history, etc.).

 

Now, one of the examples given was that if someone says they are going to tian1hong2 supermarket, would you mentally process it as 天紅 or 天虹 or maybe something else?

 

The question now is that since an illiterate speaker wouldn't have recourse to characters to dis-ambiguate homophones, would tian1hong2 just be some vague name to them? I suppose they would probably guess tian1 as 天 and hong2 could remain ambiguous. The same goes for personal names which often use specific (rare) characters denoting a meaning. (Please forgive my example of tian1hong2, I'm sure somebody can think of a better more amibuguous type of thing - I know there are plenty!)

 

Obviously most spoken language can be clarified through context, but Chinese in particular seems to require more than usual. How would illiterate speakers perceive the many chengyu which derive from Classical Chinese? If you have a decent enough knowledge of characters and a bit of Classical Chinese, you can usually 'decompose' chengyu to get their meaning, but otherwise it might just sound like a nonsense string of syllables, especially the lesser used ones?

 

Any thoughts and ideas welcome.

[edelweis]

There are stories taught in primary school (kindergarten too maybe) about chengyus and other words and expressions.

Maybe also folk tales told by parents or grandparents.

And there are television and radio shows where people explain such things including Classical Chinese.

I don't think not being able to read hanzis necessarily means not being able to understand/distinguish any homophones or Chengyus.

[Silent]

 

I suppose they would probably guess tian1 as 天 and hong2 could remain ambiguous.

If they are really illiterate why would they associate spoken text with hanzi? If they did I would say they're not really (completely) illiterate. The same way that I, and I suppose most native speakers of western languages, don't associate a western word with a string of scribbles when thinking about it but with the concept the word represents.

[Shelley]

Agree with what silent said.

[edelweis]

Well it depends on your definition of "illiterate" but it could mean "knowing very few characters" or "having attended school without succeeding in memorizing enough characters to read easily".

 

Isn't there an official definition by the Chinese government, with differing amounts of characters depending on whether you're in the countryside or in a city?

[davoosh]

@Silent, sorry, I did not mean they would associate it with the character 天, but the concept, in this case they could guess that it is probably the tian1 that means 'sky' and not tian1 that means 'to add' (添).

[Shelley]

Surely tone and context would clear up 99% of ambiguities and homophone confusion?

[davoosh]

@Shelley, tone is an inherent part of the language, so I'm referring to syllables which are homophonous even with the same tone i.e. 天/添. Context does resolve most of the ambiguities, but there are certain examples like the one I gave and that's what I'm interested in hearing about. I am talking about truly illiterate people here, who have not learnt to read or people who can't read because of a disability or impairment.

 

I'm interested in knowing how people would conceptualise things such as tian1hong2 (or would it just be taken as a 'standalone unit'?), or chengyu which do not make sense word-by-word in modern Chinese, or certain place/personal names.

[stapler]

I assume it works the same way it does with people's names. Chinese people often don't know how to spell other people's names. They just take a guess using a common character. Most of the time people don't even really care what characters peoples name use, or what the meaning of their name is.

If you told someone who was illiterate that a place is called "tian1hong2" I'd say they wouldn't even care if its rainbow or red. They'd just think of it as "tian1hong2" and leave it at that. Because it's only a proper noun the precise meaning is irrelevant to them.

[Demonic_Duck]

My guess is that they would most easily conceptualise [Tiānhóng] as a brand name as "sky"/"rainbow", or "tiānkōng de tiān, cǎihóng de hóng" (though they, as with literate Chinese speakers, could turn out to be mistaken about this). Meanwhile, they would just as easily conceptualise [tiān hóng le] as a statement of fact to mean "the sky turned red".

[Silent]

 

I did not mean they would associate it with the character 天, but the concept, in this case they could guess that it is probably the tian1 that means 'sky' and not tian1 that means 'to add' (添).

 

 

It would depend on the context. Homophones and near homophones are not unique to Chinese. There have been experiments with dictating (near) homophones in English. They dictated single words and generally the meaning fitting best with the previous conversation and/or previously dictated words was written down.

 

It pretty much works the same way as when missing words (partially) due to noise or whatever, the sentence is reconstructed in a way that makes sense to the listener. The more you miss and the lesser context you have the harder it becomes to reconstruct the sentences.

[CathaySpecific]

stapler, you're right, names of people we don't know yet are a perfect example, clearly they lack context.  As for your observations ...

Most of the time people don't even really care what characters peoples name use, or what the meaning of their name is.

 

 

I agree that meanings of names are less important, but I do think that Chinese care quite a bit about what characters are used in a name.  It's a cliché but hanzi are a big part of Chinese culture, they connect the various regions & dialects, and I've observed that Chinese often devote a good chunk of introductions to disambiguate each other's names.

Take my Chinese name 法瑞帝, I rarely use it but the few times I had to "spell" it out, to a school administrator or travel agent, etc. I've had to say 法 as in 法國 (France),瑞 as in 瑞典 (Sweden),帝 as in 皇帝 (emperor).  It's an established song & dance, part of the social contract for Chinese speakers, a fun way to break the ice.  Not much different from what's done in Western cultures, when people engage in small talk like "That's an interesting last name, Mr. Favre, what is that French?  How you spell it?"  yaddy yaddah ...

 

Now back to the original question - would illiterate Chinese go thru the same thought process?  I don't have experience with illiterate Chinese, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.  After all it would help them better remember someone's name if they associated it with words they already know (France, Sweden, emperor) ... even if they don't know how to write these terms.

[Michaelyus]

Yes, homophones certainly are "confused" by illiterate Chinese-speakers. It is true that illiteracy, associated with poor education and also potentially with smaller social circles, means that enquiring about the particular character in names is not as necessary nor as expected as a more literate person. Hence, that particular social contract you mention probably does not apply to as much of an extent (and almost certainly the use of those examples would be difficult). It'd be conceivable to just call you Ruìdì and leave it at that.

 

But it is also possible that a (curious!) illiterate Chinese speaker would do the whole name explaining thing, either getting you to rephrase it and to continue questioning it (imagining my childish pre-literate self, something like 性Fa3的? 这个姓也有的吗？是魔法的法吗？; 瑞 I would have actually confused with "ruìzhì de ruì", i.e. 睿; while 帝 I would have thought your explanation sufficient).

 

Whilst learning to read, I would come across lots of characters which I had come across from different words, having always had them separate in my head (e.g. 哦，乱七八糟的糟是糟糕的糟哟？！再三的三也是一二三的三吗？！). My general tendency was to assume that new items would have their own character, even if they were pronounced exactly the same as a character I knew. I don't know how widely this assumption is held by most illiterate Chinese or by children learning to read Chinese.

[wulfgar]

PROOF

Consider this english example:

I ate a navel orange.

The naval officer was discharged.

 

How does an illiterate person differentiate between these? Context. He doesn't break them down into latin/greek roots, think his orange has a girl in every port, or that admirals are in charge of a bunch of belly-buttons. On the other hand:

 

I like to eat carrots and peas.

She wore a 24-carot gold ring.

 

I definitely thought of bugs bunny when people were weighing gold when I was younger, but I never thought of chewing on metal when I ate a carrot. That would be absurd. 

 

Therefore, 75% of the time they are distinguished by context, and 25% of the time they think it's the same word.

QED

[Hofmann]

I know a guy named John. When he introduces himself, nobody asks if the Jo part is the same Jo as in Josh (it is) or Joseph (it isn't). His name is just John, and few people know that it means something, and fewer care.

[CathaySpecific]

 wulfgar, you had me a navel

[davoosh]

@Hofmann, while I see your point, I don't think the two languages are exactly comparable when it comes to names. Although the meaning/etymology probably isn't important to most people, they can be more readily broken down in Chinese, and it's not a rare occurrence to ask for clarification on a character in a name. The same does not happen in English (both due to naming conventions and the way the language works).

[Silent]

 

and it's not a rare occurrence to ask for clarification on a character in a name.

That is because the writing in Chinese is more ambiguous. For most names many different characters can be used to obtain the sound, it's likely that a couple of those are quite common. In English their is generally little ambiguity on how to write a name, so there is little point in asking how John or Amy is written as over 99% of the people will know how to write it on hearing the name

[陳德聰]

As for chengyu... Most of them are memorized as a string of sounds even by native speakers. It is not something outlandish to forget which character is correct in a chengyu that is used often enough that certain parts are already identifiable. For example I actually got into an argument with someone over whether 渺無人煙/杳無人煙 was actually 鳥無人煙... Hint, it's not the latter. But it doesn't actually really matter what you put at the front because the other parts seem to be more important or solidified. I am having trouble with coming up with another example but I have to correct my boyfriend (well... "have to" is a bit strong) often with characters that are part of words where they don't really add much to the meaning anyway.

[li3wei1]

In English, people who have learned the expression 'toe the line' orally will sometimes spell it 'tow the line'. So they associate the sound with the meaning, but don't connect the individual parts of the sound to the correct words.