Characters with more than one tone option, how do you know which one is correct (e.g. 差, chā, chà)?

[Jan Finster]

My concrete example is the word "间 叶", which is a medical term meaning "mesenchyme", which is a type of tissue.

 

Is it   jiānyè or jiànyè? Where can I find this out? Pleco only provides the individual words.

Google translator provides Jiānyè, but Google Translator has been wrong so many times before.

 

 

间    間    jiān    between; among; within a definite time or space; room; section of a room or lateral space between two pairs of pillars; classifier for rooms
间    間    jiàn    gap; to separate; to thin out (seedlings); to sow discontent

 

 

 

[EnergyReaper]

百度百科 told me "mesenchyme" was called 间叶组织, and I found two videos that they use different pronunciation, so maybe you could choose one you like.

间叶组织：动物胚胎期的结缔组织

人体探秘：肿瘤-3.3 常见间叶组织来源的肿瘤

[Jan Finster]

On 3/4/2022 at 10:10 AM, EnergyReaper said:

人体探秘：肿瘤-3.3 常见间叶组织来源的肿瘤

 

Thanks. The first one appears to be TTS, so I guess this is like Google Translator.

The second one speaks super fast. I think I heard two 4th tones. Is this correct?

 

I still wonder if there is a dictionary or so. After all, how does the speaker in video 2 know? She must have looked it up somewhere.

[Lu]

On 3/4/2022 at 10:28 AM, Jan Finster said:

After all, how does the speaker in video 2 know?

She possibly learned it from teachers or doctors when discussing the subject in person, or saw it on tv or videos. And the word + pronunciation is probably included in specialised dictionaries, such as medical dictionaries. Pleco is immensely useful, but still of limited size.

[roddy]

In this case, compare 间充, which cedict has as first tone. This makes sense to me - the sense isn’t the gap, but the between/link.

 

Often there are differences in meaning that can help. Verb vs noun is a common one. But this is likely something even native speakers might be unsure of.

[EnergyReaper]

On 3/4/2022 at 5:28 PM, Jan Finster said:

I still wonder if there is a dictionary or so

I doubt if there is a standard Chinese pronunciation of Western medicine terminology. Usually medical dictionaries don't write pinyin, e.g.

医学英语常用词辞典（第3版）

英汉医学大词典

 

In this video 间叶组织是什么？, the doctor pronounced the word as Jiānyè, so I think it's OK no matter how you pronounce it.

[anonymoose]

I guess there is an officially correct pronunciation, but I think lots of technical terms have various pronunciations (possibly incorrect, but nevertheless, commonly used). Another one that comes to mind is 纤维. In my experience, probably at least half of the native speakers I've heard pronounce it as qiànwéi.

 

Having said that, I don't think this is unique to Chinese. I work in the medical field, and there are many English words which are pronounced differently by various people to the extent that I don't even know which is the "correct" version, if indeed an officially correct version exists.

[Jan Finster]

On 3/5/2022 at 1:14 AM, anonymoose said:

I guess there is an officially correct pronunciation, but I think lots of technical terms have various pronunciations (possibly incorrect, but nevertheless, commonly used). Another one that comes to mind is 纤维. In my experience, probably at least half of the native speakers I've heard pronounce it as qiànwéi.

 

Having said that, I don't think this is unique to Chinese. I work in the medical field, and there are many English words which are pronounced differently by various people to the extent that I don't even know which is the "correct" version, if indeed an officially correct version exists.

 

In English there are regional variations, e.g. esophagus (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/esophagus). The link provides BE and AE pronunciations. Apart from that, there are some medics, who use strange pronunciations, and even though they are not correct, they are obviously not sanctioned. Also, there are lots of pronunciations that are simply wrong and tell you the person is not from the medical field. For most words, at least in English or German, there are standards. Here is an example of the word "amnion" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amnion). The dictionary does not only provide a clue how to pronounce it (\ ˈam-nē-ˌän  , -ən \), but also a TTS. The German Wiki provides an IPA: [ˈamniɔn].

 

But in Chinese, where can students look up a word's pronunciation? In fact, how does it work at all if there is no pinyin?

 

 

 

[becky82]

On 3/5/2022 at 3:32 PM, Jan Finster said:

But in Chinese, where can students look up a word's pronunciation? In fact, how does it work at all if there is no pinyin?

 

 

Many frequently occurring characters have multiple pronunciations: 好 大 了 的 为 中 和 地 要 得 会 着 行 发 都 当 看 种 将 还 只 没.  Most of the time, however, there's one "main" pronunciation and other "exceptional" pronunciations, so you just remember the exceptions.

 

A different pronunciation almost always implies a different meaning (谁 and 血 are exceptions here).  If someone asked you how to pronounce e.g. 发 without any context, you'd have to say there are multiple possibilities.  However, if someone asked you how to pronounce 头发, the 发 is 4-th tone (not 1-st tone), and similarly if they asked you how to pronounce 发表, the 发 is 1-st tone (not 4-th tone).  You deduce the pronunciation from the word it belongs to, and its role in that word.  For 发, it's mostly pronounced 1-st tone (发 is 1-st tone in 发展, 发现, 发生, 开发, etc.), and when 发 pertains to hair, it's 4-th tone (so 发 is 4-th tone in 理发, 长发, 白发, 发型, 发带 too).

 

You can look up characters in dictionaries to find their pronunciations: Pleco is indispensable, as are browser popup dictionaries (in a browser, you can just hover over the word to get its pronunciation); I use Zhongwen Chinese Popup Dictionary in Firefox.  There's a whole bunch of methods for identifying characters which you might not have in digital form.  Domain-specific terms might require a specialized dictionary.

[anonymoose]

On 3/5/2022 at 7:32 AM, Jan Finster said:

But in Chinese, where can students look up a word's pronunciation?

 

You can get Chinese medical dictionaries. No different to English in that respect.

[Jan Finster]

On 3/5/2022 at 1:17 PM, anonymoose said:

You can get Chinese medical dictionaries. No different to English in that respect.

I checked Chinese dictionaries. No pinyin. In English or German medical dictionaries, pronunciation guides are commonly provided.

[anonymoose]

On 3/5/2022 at 7:40 PM, Jan Finster said:

I checked Chinese dictionaries. No pinyin.

 

Try 汉英医学词典. There is one published by 外语教学与研究出版社. The entries are arranged in alphabetical order in pinyin with pinyin pronunciation. I don't have a copy, so I don't know whether 间叶 is included or not, though.

[EnergyReaper]

What @anonymoose recommended was probably this dictionary：英汉汉英医学词典（出 版 社:外语教学与研究出版社）

@Jan Finster I just found MDBG Chinese-English dictionary provided pinyin, and 间 is jiān. As same as how CNTERM（official organization, China National Committee for Terminology in Science and Technology, 全国科学技术名词审定委员会）does, it translates "mesenchyme" as 间充质 or 间质. But unfortunately, CNTERM's website 术语在线 don't give pinyin.

 

On 3/5/2022 at 8:14 AM, anonymoose said:

In my experience, probably at least half of the native speakers I've heard pronounce it as qiànwéi.

Interesting. I did hear some people pronounced 纤维 as qiānwéi or qiānwēi, but never heard qiànwéi. 纤 in qiàn means a rope for towing a boat. When I heard qiàn, a popular song in the 1990s, 纤夫的爱, would immediately come into my mind ?.  三峡景区的纤夫文化

some native speakers also like to pronounce 纤维 as xiānwēi, like these two videos 竹纤维并不天然，它其实是化学纤维, 膳食纤维-人类不可或缺的营养素.

 

Another interesting character is 质. In dictionaries, 质 has only one pronunciation zhì. But some native speakers like to pronounce zhǐ, like how the man did in this video 什么是质量？. And the teacher randomly used both two pronunciations in this video 我们经常说到质量，那么到底什么是质量？ ?

[fenggz]

洗手间(jian1) 卫生间(jian1) 两者之间(jian1) 两人之间(jian1) 两**之间(jian1)  间（jian1)不容发  瞬间(jian1)

 

间(jian4):

间隙、亲密无间、间隔、间谍、间接、间日

[Jan Finster]

The following caught me off guard:

太阳    tài yang    sun

太阳能  tài yáng néng    solar energy

 

I instinctively thought it would be  "tài yang néng"   

 

Is there a pattern here (regarding neutral tone with 2 characters and the original tone with 3 characters)? 

[Insectosaurus]

On 4/3/2022 at 10:04 AM, Jan Finster said:

太阳    tài yang    sun

 

Are you still only using CCDIC? That's the only dictionary in my collection that gives a neutral tone for 太阳.

[Jan Finster]

On 4/3/2022 at 10:30 AM, Insectosaurus said:

Are you still only using CCDIC? That's the only dictionary in my collection that gives a neutral tone for 太阳.

I am using a pop-up dictionary (I think it is LiuChan Chinese Popup Dictionary). On Pleco there is a "TL" dictionary that also has it with a neutral tone. I wished I could use Pleco more, but since I read 100% on my laptop, so far, Pleco is virtually useless to me. I pray Mike Love is working on the Chrome pop up extension.

[Insectosaurus]

On 4/3/2022 at 1:02 PM, Jan Finster said:

I am using a pop-up dictionary (I think it is LiuChan Chinese Popup Dictionary).

 

Almost every service you're going to encounter via extensions and similar are going to use the same dictionary, the user edited CCDIC (I think it's called that). I have about ten dictionaries on Pleco (professionally edited) and none of them has a neutral tone for 太阳. People with more knowledge should be able to answer this, but I tend not to think too much about the neutral tone apart from cases where it's offered in almost all dictionaries (like family members and words where the neutral tone changes the meaning of the word). From my own experience, some insects have had different readings in different dictionaries (that could not be explained by Taiwan-Mainland differences). Chinese is such a huge language and the neutral tone is going to differ for a lot of words depending on where you are, not only between Taiwan and China. My reasoning is this: when listening ability is fluent, such things are going to correct themselves.

 

If you're studying for an exam, I guess it's much more important.

 

  

On 4/3/2022 at 1:02 PM, Jan Finster said:

but since I read 100% on my laptop, so far, Pleco is virtually useless to me.

 

Why? Don't you have a smart phone? Use it like you would a paper dictionary. I never read on screens and use Pleco daily.

[Jan Finster]

On 4/3/2022 at 1:24 PM, Insectosaurus said:

Why? Don't you have a smart phone? Use it like you would a paper dictionary. I never read on screens and use Pleco daily.

 

This is a pain. Super inconvenient, when you could just hover the mouse over it instead (if there was a Pleco Chrome extension).

[Insectosaurus]

On 4/3/2022 at 2:32 PM, Jan Finster said:

Super inconvenient

 

To each his own. I think such a way is better and quicker in the long run.