China Facts Tag: Chinese Language Culture,

There are totally 1 topics with "Chinese Language Culture," included.

Homophones
Homophones
Created by samshen at 2011-10-19 4:23:00; Last updated by samshen at 2013-4-23 0:04:00
There are some 1700 syllable-characters in Mandarin (and thus in baihua), while the English language, in contrast, has over 8000 possible unique syllables. How is it then that a language with only 1700 syllable-characters can express the same range of nuances as, say, the English language? The answer lies in the homophone, or the syllable-character that sounds the same but signifies very different things. This is most easily demonstrated in Pinyin (the transcription of the phonemes"... »View details

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