Who are you calling a homophone?

[wulfgar]

I'm just curious about your definition of "homophone" regarding Chinese. Does it include tones or not? I ask because a recent discussion in another forum had a beginner of chinese complain of homophones. A more advanced learner severely criticized the beginner, saying chinese doesn't have many homophones if you exclude words with different tones, and that the new-be didn't know what the term meant. So was he right?

[anonymoose]

homo: same

phone: sound

 

Different tones have different sounds, so they are not homophones, in my opinion.

[ChTTay]

I read this topic title as "Who are you calling a homophobe?" So expected something completely different.

I guess you mean "what are you calling a homophone?"

[Shelley]

I agree with anonymoose but to a learner tones can be hard to distinguish so there appears to many more homophones for a beginner than a native speaker.

I am a great believer in context, it really is going to help eliminate 95% of incorrect meanings especially for learners.

[Johnny20270]

A more advanced learner severely criticized the beginner, saying chinese doesn't have many homophones if you exclude words with different tones, and that the new-be didn't know what the term meant. So was he right?

 

whether it should include tones or not ... yes Chinese does have a considerable amount of homophones (Compared to English say) . Just look at zhì 68 entries!

 

That "more advance learner" doesn't seem that advanced to me. Sounds like he was homophonic anyway  , .... ok I'll  get my coat ....

[imron]

It's like saying 'bat', 'bet', 'bit', 'bot' and 'but' are homophones - I mean it's the same sound except for the vowels right?

 

That is essentially the same argument you are making if you say that you can ignore tones when deciding what is a homophone in Chinese.

 

The number of homophones is reduced even further if you only take in to account whole words rather than just individual characters (which you should be doing, because you don't count homophones based on syllables in English and neither should you in Chinese).

[li3wei1]

whether two things are homophones or not can depend on your skill in listening, the speaker's skill in speaking, and on regional differences. I think of 'Mary', 'merry', and 'marry' as homophones, but my wife insists they should be pronounced differently, and that I'm always saying the wrong one.

 

To use some made-up words, would dong2bu3 and dong3bu3 be homophones?

[somethingfunny]

I'd have to agree that different tones equals different homophones.  It annoys me the way that tones get overlooked, in terms of importance, by English speakers because there is nothing equivalent in their own language.  I think I read on here about how the 'limited' number of Chinese 'sounds' really needs to be multiplied by 4 (or 5) before you get the actual number of distinct sounds.  However much you might dislike it, shi2 and shi4 are entirely different sounds, and not subcategories of the same sound.  But maybe a linguist can give some more insight on this...

 

What I'd interested in is the ability to rhyme different tones.  I recently came across “春有百花，秋有月，夏有凉风， 冬有雪” now, I assume 月 and 雪 are being rhymed here, despite different pronunciations, and different tones.  Is this generally ok?  Or have I made a grave error in assuming modern pronunciation for something written 100's (1000's?) of years ago?  In any case, what are the rules?

[davoosh]

@Somethingfunny, I don't think this needs specialist linguistic insight. Homophones are only relevant in relation to those who perceive them as homophonous (in this case native Chinese speakers) -  so shi2 and shi4 are definitely not homophones in Chinese.

 

On a phonetic level, it depends what the criteria for homophones are. If the only criteria is identical consonants and vowels,  then shi2 and shi4 may be considered homophones, however we all know that there is an extra phonetic level here which is lexical tone, so they are still not homophonous if we include all aspects of the syllable.

 

I also disagree when people say that context clears up any ambiguities regarding tone. I actually find it to be the other way round - Chinese native speakers might speak very sloppily, slurring certain sounds, etc., but the tones remain constant.

 

Non-native speakers may rely on context more to disambiguate words than lexical tone, but this is not how it is perceived by native speakers, and non-native speakers should really try and place equal emphasis on hearing the correct tone.

[somethingfunny]

 

 

On a phonetic level, it depends what the criteria for homophones are. If the only criteria is identical consonants and vowels,  then shi2and shi4 may be considered homophones, however we all know that there is an extra phonetic level here which is lexical tone, so they are still not homophonous if we include all aspects of the syllable.

 

 

For me, this is specialist linguistic insight!

[roddy]

"On a phonetic level, it depends what the criteria for homophones are."

Anonymoose already told us: 

homo: same

phone: sound

There's no point in mucking about with the definition. Except that even Chinese folk might not be that sure...

It came as a bit of a shock, therefore, that when I presented examples of my non-homophones during the seminar, many members of the audience immediately called out that these were actually homophones. For example, they said that '黄', which I had classified as being a non-homophone, was actually pronounced in the same way as '晃 '.

 

There's experimental data later on showing that reaction times are longer and error rates are higher when making homophone / non-homophone judgement which depend on tone rather than vowel. Tones are clearly a part of the sound, but not necessarily on an equal footing?

[OneEye]

What I'd interested in is the ability to rhyme different tones.  I recently came across “春有百花，秋有月，夏有凉风， 冬有雪” now, I assume 月 and 雪 are being rhymed here, despite different pronunciations, and different tones.  Is this generally ok?  Or have I made a grave error in assuming modern pronunciation for something written 100's (1000's?) of years ago?  In any case, what are the rules?

 

That's a Song poem, so you'd have to look at Middle Chinese pronunciation/tones. 月 and 雪 were the same tone (入聲) and rime category (韻母) in Middle Chinese.

[davoosh]

@roddy Interesting that native speakers might regard them as semi-homophones!

 

I don't think what I wrote is 'mucking about' with definitions though, if we consider that homophones in English do not take into account tone, whereas Chinese homophones do, meaning they are held by different criteria. 'Sound' covers such a range of things that some definition is needed. The same way neither language would use 'breathy voice' in the criteria of defining homophones, even though that's a 'sound' used in certain languages.

[陳德聰]

If we treat lexical stress as the English counterpart to Chinese lexical tone... Don't English homophones take into account lexical stress?

 

record vs record

conflict vs conflict

 

etc.?

 

Or are we saying that because of the lexical stress, the unstressed vowel going to schwa confounds the homophony?

[lechuan]

I would only call differently toned syllables homophonic if they are sung. Let's call this a gramo-homo-phone.

[Shelley]

record vs record

conflict vs conflict

 

In isolation I have no clue which pronunciation to apply to which word, but in context it usually becomes clear.

In this example you can loosely compare the stressed syllable with tones.

 

I can record a record. The first is the verb and the second is the noun, it doesn't make sense any other way.

 

There are quite a few of these, the one that makes me think twice is read and read. I have to read the whole sentence to find out which one to apply, but if I choose the wrong one the first time I have read it, it can be a bit confusing.

 

I think with tone and context, homophones shouldn't be a problem.

 

 

[Hofmann]

In any case, what are the rules?

The finals have to be the same phonemes. Phonemes include tones. However, in the case of 月 and 雪, their "tone" is not actually a tone but an ending plosive /t/.

[Guest realmayo]

It's good advice for us students that tone is integral and so shi2 and shi3 are as different as English's bat and boot, although I suspect that for native Chinese speakers this is not actually correct, or at least doesn't 'feel' correct, given that most native speakers of any language rely on intuition rather than study when it comes to their own language. I think the record/record analogy is a good one.

[wulfgar]

I think the advanced learner was a little hard on the beginner. I remember when these Pinyin Practice drills were terribly difficult for me. I could only get about half of them right even after reaching what I thought was B1, and was totally clueless about how to improve. I necessarily decided it wasn't important. Now it's an easy 100%, even though I'm still at B1. My opinion now is that if one is struggling with such drills, they don't have a good level of tone comprehension. So I try to use this example to remind me that our perspectives change drastically over the years, and we shouldn't be too hard on beginners. 

[somethingfunny]

@OneEye Do you know where can I read more (introductory level material) about this kind of thing?  I'm not looking to get into to it too deep, just to be aware of Middle Chinese and rhyming in Chinese poetry.