Confused about phonetic components

[Jan Finster]

I should not have looked this up, but now it is too late...

I never really looked into character components in any detail, but my vague understanding was that phonetic components of chinese characters give you a clue regarding the pronunciation.

 

E.g. the component 马 is found in 吗,玛,码,蚂,犸 and they all have the same pronunciation "ma3".

 

But, 保 (as in 保护) apparently has the phonetic component of 呆 (dāi — dull, simple, stupid). Why is it pronounced bao3 then?

 

Equally, other characters that contain the 呆 (dāi) component are pronounced bao: 

褒 bāo — to cite; to honor, to praise; to recommend

葆 bǎo — dense foliage; to cover, to conceal; to preserve

煲 bāo — to heat, to boil; saucepan

 

(Source: https://www.tofulearn.com/dictionary/chinese/保)

[alantin]

堡 in 汉堡 and 堡城 is also pronounced "bao3" and at least Purple Culture dictionary gives "保" as one of the components (phonetic component?).

保 [ bǎo ] to safeguard, to protect, to defend, to care for

[alantin]

It seems that the bao3 reading is related to the character's original meaning "an adult carrying a child on their back". With that in mind, the reading makes sense.

[Jan Finster]

On 1/17/2022 at 1:01 PM, alantin said:

It seems that the bao3 reading is related to the character's original meaning "an adult carrying a child on their back". With that in mind, the reading makes sense.

 

Thanks, now this makes sense?, but does not make it any easier unless I want to look them all up in Outlier ?

 

This site does not even mention 呆 (dāo), but just simply lists 保 as phonetic component (https://hanzicraft.com/lists/phonetic-sets)

 

 

 

 

[alantin]

I have the outlier dictionary but I haven't used it a lot. Maybe I'll start collecting characters that I find difficult and look them up sometimes. I don't see use in checking every character, but when something comes up, it is insanely useful. I doubt I'll have trouble with 呆 or 保 after now.