Pinyin: Tree and eye.
We have words eye and tree. Both are spelled in pinyin "mu4"? The only way to distinguish them in spoken Mandarin is from context? It feels weird.
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We have words eye and tree. Both are spelled in pinyin "mu4"? The only way to distinguish them in spoken Mandarin is from context? It feels weird.
Also if I could ask something more. Not exactly reletated to this. We have to words for "to sleep". Combined they create "to go to sleep". But what's the difference between them? 睡 and 觉.
Posted by Cinu 8/9/12 (9 months ago)Yup, the only way to distinguish them in spoken Mandarin is context.
As for your other comment, 睡 is the verb "to sleep," and 觉 is the noun "sleep." 睡觉 is literally, "to sleep a sleep."
Posted by pingKL 8/10/12 (9 months ago)Okay. Thank you. :)
Posted by Cinu 8/10/12 (9 months ago)Homophones are common in English as well: the only way to distinguish 'sight/site/cite' is through context, for example. Unfortunately, even taking into account its use of tones, Chinese has a limited range of sounds, so these kinds of situation are more common.
As for 睡觉, it might help to know that, as with many mandarin 2-character words, one of them is sometimes used as a 'shorthand' for the full word. In this case, it is 睡 shuì: e.g. "让他睡个够吧" ràng tā shuì ge gòu ba. 'Let him have his sleep'. As far as I know, 觉 jiào is not used like this. Perhaps because that character it has so many other pronunciations and meanings, though that's speculation.
Posted by Azimuth 8/10/12 (9 months ago)