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> 14,872 Chinese characters. aren't those words from an English point of view?

bradrn 6y ago
Not necessarily! One Chinese character = one English syllable, but just like in English, many (most?) Chinese¹ words have more than one syllable. The article itself mentions that most names are two syllables, for instance. Or here’s another example with six characters/syllables but four words: 你叫什么名字？ Nǐ jiào shénme míngzi? _____________ ¹ I really shouldn’t be talking about ‘Chinese’ like this in a unified way, as the differences between Chinese languages are comparable to those between, say, English and German; however in this particular case, it’s fine to do so, since my specific comments here are applicable to all Chinese languages I’m aware of.
seanmcdirmid 6y ago
Sort of. A lot of Chinese words involve multiple Chinese characters (2 or 3 is common), and they aren’t completely semantic in their use.
canjobear 6y ago
Technically each character is a morpheme, not just a syllable—-a syllable is a unit of sound but a morpheme carries some meaning along with the sound. And in Mandarin, many words consist of two or more morphemes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme
- bradrn 6y ago
  Syllables and morphemes are not the same! In Chinese languages, all (or nearly all) morphemes are syllables, but not all syllables are morphemes. From Li and Thompson’s Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar: > The relatedness between the meaning of a compound [i.e. bisyllabic word] and those of its components can vary from close to nonexistent … For example, qūzú ‘to chase’ is composed of two morphemes from Classical Chinese … neither of which exists any longer as a morpheme in modern Mandarin. That is, in many cases, the syllables of disyllabic Mandarin words are no longer synchronically analysable as morphemes, though at one point in the past it was possible to analyse them in this way. In this particular case, neither the character for qū nor the character for zú represents a morpheme, at least when used in this context.
  - canjobear 6y ago
    That's right, more properly stated, each character represents a morpheme in Classical Chinese, with a few exceptions for bimorphemic words like 蝴蝶 which are probably of foreign origin. There are also a few modern characters in informal use which indicate multiple syllables/morphemes like 圕 for "túshūguǎn".
tablespoon 6y ago
> aren't those words from an English point of view? No, many words are multiple characters. I think this is a pretty good explanation of the structure for English speakers: https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm
SeanLuke 6y ago
The closest thing they'd be in English would be a Latin root. Some Chinese words are a single character, but most are multi-character, and like Latin roots, characters have a "meaning" associated with the set of words in which they appear. For example, the character anciently used for lightning now appears in many words associated with electricity, such as phones, TVs, electric subway trains, computers, and so on, as well as seemingly unrelated words (like "movie") which actually have a historical etymological relationship to electricity (the projectors).

Not necessarily! One Chinese character = one English syllable, but just like in English, many (most?) Chinese¹ words have more than one syllable. The article itself mentions that most names are two syllables, for instance. Or here’s another example with six characters/syllables but four words: 你叫什么名字？ Nǐ jiào shénme míngzi? _____________ ¹ I really shouldn’t be talking about ‘Chinese’ like this in a unified way, as the differences between Chinese languages are comparable to those between, say, English and German; however in this particular case, it’s fine to do so, since my specific comments here are applicable to all Chinese languages I’m aware of.

seanmcdirmid 6y ago

Sort of. A lot of Chinese words involve multiple Chinese characters (2 or 3 is common), and they aren’t completely semantic in their use.

canjobear 6y ago

Technically each character is a morpheme, not just a syllable—-a syllable is a unit of sound but a morpheme carries some meaning along with the sound. And in Mandarin, many words consist of two or more morphemes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme

bradrn 6y ago
Syllables and morphemes are not the same! In Chinese languages, all (or nearly all) morphemes are syllables, but not all syllables are morphemes. From Li and Thompson’s Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar: > The relatedness between the meaning of a compound [i.e. bisyllabic word] and those of its components can vary from close to nonexistent … For example, qūzú ‘to chase’ is composed of two morphemes from Classical Chinese … neither of which exists any longer as a morpheme in modern Mandarin. That is, in many cases, the syllables of disyllabic Mandarin words are no longer synchronically analysable as morphemes, though at one point in the past it was possible to analyse them in this way. In this particular case, neither the character for qū nor the character for zú represents a morpheme, at least when used in this context.
- canjobear 6y ago
  That's right, more properly stated, each character represents a morpheme in Classical Chinese, with a few exceptions for bimorphemic words like 蝴蝶 which are probably of foreign origin. There are also a few modern characters in informal use which indicate multiple syllables/morphemes like 圕 for "túshūguǎn".

tablespoon 6y ago

> aren't those words from an English point of view? No, many words are multiple characters. I think this is a pretty good explanation of the structure for English speakers: https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm https://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm

SeanLuke 6y ago

The closest thing they'd be in English would be a Latin root. Some Chinese words are a single character, but most are multi-character, and like Latin roots, characters have a "meaning" associated with the set of words in which they appear. For example, the character anciently used for lightning now appears in many words associated with electricity, such as phones, TVs, electric subway trains, computers, and so on, as well as seemingly unrelated words (like "movie") which actually have a historical etymological relationship to electricity (the projectors).