Yes, that something is homophony. Mandarin has 1522 syllables when you include tone (413 syllables without). [0] English has 15,831. [1] [0] https://chinese.st

Yes, that something is homophony. Mandarin has 1522 syllables when you include tone (413 syllables without). [0] English has 15,831. [1] [0] https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/14596/how-many-syllables-does-chinese-have https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/14596/how-many-s... [1] http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Syllables/index.txt http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Syllables/inde... [via wayback: https://web.archive.org/web/20091115065840/http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Syllables/index.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20091115065840/http://semarch.li...]