Single vs Double-Syllable word usage

[Ferno]

[you can skip everything between the bolded black lines if you wish, I know I write too much ]

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This is what I understand (it was brought up in a thread a few weeks ago):

Words have a "bound form" and an "unbound form". If you put a Chinese syllable into a dictionary, even one with a specific tone like "shi4" you will many results, in this case several dozen And the specific words themselves are not clear-cut either, so it would appear very confusing.

From what I understand, very few of these types of syllables are used by themselves. They are just all the characters/syllables that But most are bound to words, and Chinese people bind them with a second character/syllable to make a meaningful two syllable word, with both character/syllables contributing to the meaning.

ie, from what I understand, to say "soldier" you would not just say "shi4". You would use 士兵 "shi4 bing1" --> 士 shi4 [scholar, gentleman, soldier] + 兵 bing1 [soldier, troops] = "soldier".....

"zhan4 shi4" --> "war, fighting battle" + "scholar, gentleman, soldier" = warrior

etc...

For the simpler, common "to be" 是 meaning of "shi4", it is just one syllable.

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But I am seeing more and more meaningful words (nouns, etc...) that use one syllable even when there are unambiguous double-syllable forms available.

ie "yao4" already has so many meanings, yet when Pimsleur introduces the word "medicine", they use "yao4". "yao4" seems like a "bound" or "component" word (ie yao4 fang1 - pharmacy)... and the narrator actually makes a special explanation (which they don't do for most homophones) to say something like ~ "this sounds exactly alike to the word meaning 'to go' but the contexts are so different that you can tell them apart" (they ignore their two additional meanings of "yao4" however, "to want" and "to order something”)

but why would they use this single-syllable words if there are several double-syllable words with the meaning of “medicine”? :

药品(yao4 pin3) 药物 (yao4 wu4) 药剂 (yao4 ji4) 医药 (yi1 yao4)

Similarly, when they say “wo3 du4 zi teng2” (my stomach hurts) they use the two-syllable “du4 zi” for “stomach”, but when they say “my head hurts” they use they single-syllable “tou2” for head, not the double-syllable “tou2 bu4” that I found in the dictionary.

Is there any pattern or usage rule for this stuff?

I have the suspicion that if I said "wo yao4 mai yao4" to a Chinese person, they would not understand what I said.

[Quest]

I have the suspicion that if I said "wo yao4 mai yao4" to a Chinese person, they would not understand what I said.

They would if you get the tones right. What other yao4 can you buy? only medicine yao4

[Desmond]

Whenever we start to learn languages, we find it really convenient when we discover a new rule (like how you discovered a lot of words are double syllable words) and then get confused when the rule has exceptions. That's the thing with a language... no matter how much something seems like it should fit into a rule, when it all comes down to it, there just is a correct way to say it, and incorrect ways not to.

So for your examples of body parts, I've heard 肚子 and I've heard 头 used commonly. According to the rules, maybe you should be able to say 头子. Maybe you can! But instead of worrying too much about the rules, just learn what is actually said in the real world and stick with it!

My real-life suggestion is, practice and exposure! And just taking risks. Maybe you'll be saying the less common word, but then someone will correct you. Or you'll see one of the variants over and over on TV. Or search on Google.ca for the different variations and see which gets the most hits

With more exposure, you'll see which variations are used when, and slowly sort them out naturally.

[vengaya]

I agree with Desmond. Would not torture myself trying to memmorize a million grammar rules, especially when it comes to vocabulary usage, where grammar is absolutely pointless.

I mean, since you introduced the "medicine" example... what's wrong in saying:

"I'm going to ingurgitate some healing pharmaceutical liniment"

Yet you'd probably say:

"I'm going to take some medicine"

Right?

Better to learn what people actually use, by listening or reading.

[笨笨德]

spoken mandarin is very contextualised, so maybe if you walk into a bicycle repair shop that sells superman outfits on the side and say wo3 yao4 mai3 yao4, then you are correct, you might be misunderstood. but if you are standing in a chemist, holding your stomach, chatting to the salesperson about your 拉肚子 then say wo3 yao4 mai3 yao4, you will of course be understood.

so basically spoken mandarin, in general must be placed in context to make sense. if you are using a single character word, get the tone right and make your meaning obvious through context. for those 2 character words you learn that also have single character forms, you will find out which is more appropriate as you are learning the language, its just something that comes with time and experience. i dont think there is any rule, so just ask someone...

one good tip someone gave me a while ago when referring to conversational chinese was, try not to say anything you have never heard any local say before, i think this applies here too.

[Ferno]

They would if you get the tones right. What other yao4 can you buy? only medicine yao4

You mean "wo" and "mei"? I purposely didn't put the 3 there because in casual speech the full dipping tone is never pronounced like an obvious third tone (in the middle of a quick phrase), it is just a steady sound but it is in contrast to the abrubt, falling 4th tone on both yao4s.

As per the other replies, so basically "head" is just said in single-syllable form, "stomach" with two syllables, etc... and that's just how it is? What about words jumping from single to double syllable forms in different types of sentances (ie if there was ambiguity), does that ever happen? Would du4 zi ever be just said du4?

Desmond: the searching google thing doesn't always work since even characters often have homonyms ie, 头 doesn't just mean "head".

[Desmond]

Yeah, I've seen things shorten ( like 或者 shortening to 或) where faster speech and context seem to take out the need for the longer form. Those are what confuse me; they're not taught in class and I'm left to finding them out by watching media and other, more colloquial sources of Chinese.

[trevelyan]

What confuses me more than anything else is when four character combinations of two words (国家贸易) get shortened into abbreviations with either the first or last two characters of their two components (国贸).

Unless the meaning/location of the word is clear contextually or I've heard the term before -- I'll often get confused by this sort of shorthand, or at least have to think about it a while before being quite sure what was actually said.

[nipponman]

trevelyan:

Both chinese and Japanese have this feature of shortening words. I believe(in Japanese anyway) the rule is, you take the first word, and every second word after it. That may help you.

[beirne]

Is there any pattern or usage rule for this stuff?

Not really. Words are what they are and as suggested elsewhere in the thread you just need to learn them as they are. I'll add a couple of pieces of advice, though.

Be careful about learning Chinese vocabulary from a Chinese-English dictionary. You may stumble across an obscure Chinese word and not know that it isn't commonly used. A C-E dictionary is of course good to look up Chinese words that you encounter, but if you want to know how to say something use an English-Chinese dictionary.

If you still want to know what characters are bound forms, get John DeFrancis' ABC Chinese-English dictionary, which is available in book form as well as in both Wenlin and Plecodict. Characters that need to be bound are labeled with a b.f. DeFrancis wants to make the point that the language isn't monosyllabic at the word level so the dictionary includes this feature to help with character usage.

[Quest]

What about words jumping from single to double syllable forms

Ferno, I think you need to stop thinking of Chinese words as syllables. Chinese words don't jump from single to double syllable forms. Words are words. It is li ke in ter pre ting Eng lish sy lla ble by sy lla ble. How do you know where to string them together? You just do.

You mean "wo" and "mei"? I purposely didn't put the 3 there because in casual speech the full dipping tone is never pronounced like an obvious third tone (in the middle of a quick phrase), it is just a steady sound but it is in contrast to the abrubt, falling 4th tone on both yao4s.

The 3rd tones in "Wo3 yao4 mai3 yao4" are obvious and pronounced. I think I understand what you mean, in fast speech a 3rd tone doesn't take its full form, but it's still a 3rd tone, different from the neutral tone.

[Ferno]

Ferno' date=' I think you need to stop thinking of Chinese words as syllables. Chinese words don't jump from single to double syllable forms. Words are words. It is li ke in ter pre ting Eng lish sy lla ble by sy lla ble. How do you know where to string them together? You just do.

[/quote']

Huh? Maybe I confused things with my last reply. To use your example, it would be like taking "It is like in ter pre ting Eng lish sy lla ble by sy lla ble." and changing it to "It-it is like ter pre ting Eng lish lla ble by lla ble."

Sure, it could make sense if thats how the language was spoken, but if I was learning this kind of English I would hope there was some kind of pattern to this.

The 3rd tones in "Wo3 yao4 mai3 yao4" are obvious and pronounced. I think I understand what you mean' date=' in fast speech a 3rd tone doesn't take its full form, but it's still a 3rd tone, different from the neutral tone.

[/quote']

yes, it seems kind of more "drawn out".

but if 3rd tone is drawn out, that leaves 2nd tone and neutral as the same length and makes them sound similar... "was that a slight rising tone or a neutral tone?"

and there's the 3rd-->2nd tone shifts, which I can't explain the natural reasoning behind for the life of me.

[Lu]

Ferno, you can't expect reason in a language. The 3-3 => 2-3 is just a rule, learn it by heart & use it, the good thing about this rule is that it's very, very consistent. And be happy that you're leaning Mandarin and not Taiwanese, which has tone changes in every syllable in a sentence except the last, and regional differences in what tone they change to.

[starvken]

我要买药should be pronounced as wo3 yao4 mai3 yao4， every syllable must be pronounced fully。

我肚子痛is commonly used，but if you say 我肚痛，you can be understood either，chinese sometimes say that way。

[Ferno]

我要买药should be pronounced as wo3 yao4 mai3 yao4， every syllable must be pronounced fully。

third tones seem to rarely pronounced fully in fast speech. Think about it: you have to DROP the tone' date=' then RAISE it. ie for 我 You have to give the tone an initial burst of air for the falling "wo" part, then an extra bit of air for the rising part "oh" so it's like "wo-oh" as if there are two parts to the word.

[url']http://www.chinawestexchange.com/sounds/Pinyin/South_f/wo3.mp3[/url]

No one pronounces 我 like that in conversation.

[quote=starvken

我肚子痛is commonly used，but if you say 我肚痛，you can be understood either，chinese sometimes say that way。

oh

any reason you are using 痛 tong4 instead of 疼 teng2 (like in my first post?)

[Desmond]

I think you're confusing the more commonly cut-off third tone with being neutral.

First I'll explain the pitch contour in brief (you probably already know it). 5 is the highest tone, and 1 is the lowest. So first tone is 5-5, second is 3-5, etc.

In normal speech, the third tone (which in full usually goes 2-1-4 with a dip and a rise like you've explained) is hardly ever used, a different, modified tone happens with 2-1-1 as its value.

This isn't to be confused with the neutral tone. Some examples:

清楚 is qing1chu. Although 楚 is naturally chu3, it loses its tone and becomes neutral. So it ends up having the same tonal sounds as 休息 (xiu1xi) even though 息 is orignally a different tone (xi1) when said with its tone intact.

Whereas in a word like 标准, biao1zhun3, 准 keeps its tone (of 2-1-1). To a non native speaker's ears they sound similar, but eventually you can tell them apart (took me a while but it will come).

What confuses you is that you see zhun3 and think that it has to be said with a tone of (2-1-4). That's true, if you're really pronouncing the word (like a teacher would do). But nobody says it like that, they just say it like (2-1-1), sounding kinda like a neutral tone.

Same goes for a word like 以后, it is yi3hou4. The yi3 keeps its tone (2-1-1). If said really slowly it can be (2-1-4) but nobody ever does. But it's not a neutral tone! Neutral tones can't happen at the start of a word. Just saying it to myself right now would sound rediculous.

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If you wanna know more about 痛 and 疼 then you should check out the recent thread I started at http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=53287#post53287

Then you'll figure out the diff! (there really isn't much of one)

Hope this helps!

[Desmond]

Another little thing I'd like to add about the subject in general:

You were wondering about why some words seem to have one syllable, and some have two. Why 药 can stand by itself, or sometimes is 药品, etc.

In my dictionary, 标准 (the example I gave, meaning standard) I also got the translation of "norm" and "criterion". So if a Chinese person learning English came across this, what would they think? Which should they use? Which is better?

I've heard this word in "你中文说得很标准" (you speak a very standard mandarin dialect, to loosely translate). So the translation of standard works. But to say "you speak a criterion of mandarin" really makes no sense. However, norm does work.

Perhaps in other sentences, 标准 is actually better translated as criterion. And some, norm works best.

My point being is that the words you see for "medicine" in the dictionary are all valid in some way or another, but some are more common, some aren't. Some so uncommon that even native speakers may not recall ever seeing it. So which is more right? None really.... but there is gonna be a more common spoken word of the bunch, and sometimes it's a guessing game to figure it out!

Also, check out the ABC dictionary by John DeFrancis (that's a name you're gonna hear a lot). He puts stars beside really popular words, it rocks! I just got it in a program called Plecodict that I read about on this website (www.pleco.com) for a PDA I bought ( just for plecodict) and it rocks! I've got 7 simultaneous dictionaries on here and I find it MUCH easier to find words I'm looking for.

Cheers!

[LiYuanXi]

be happy that you're leaning Mandarin and not Taiwanese, which has tone changes in every syllable in a sentence except the last, and regional differences in what tone they change to.

Lu: Can you give an example of that? I have been speaking something like the taiwanese accent mandarin but i don't understand what you mean here.

[Desmond]

What I'm assuming Lu meant is: be glad you're speaking Mandarin and not Taiwan's local language (he wasn't talking about Taiwanese mandarin).

That's something funny I've noticed, in some threads people seem to be arguing about accents/dialects and I notice some people say Taiwanese (meaning Taiwanese Mandarin) and other say it, but I can tell they are talking about the local language.

[LiYuanXi]

hahah... ok, thanks alot for the explanation. I am learning taiwanese opera and i didn't realised that the tones change often.