Why Chinese Needs Two Syllable Words

Рет қаралды 58,446

Күн бұрын

Have you ever noticed that many Chinese words have flexible lengths? That means that they can sometimes be one-syllable words and at other times be two-syllable words. In this video, we'll explore the reasons behind this phenomenon and how native Chinese speakers decide between using one-syllable or two-syllable words.
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⚡️ Time code:
00:00 Intro
00:50 70% of Chinese Words have fixable lengths
01:40 Why Chinese Needs Two-Syllable Words
04:35 Difference Between One and Two-Syllable Words
10:35 Thank you for watching to the end!
References:
黃麗君、端木三（2013）。現代漢語詞長彈性的量化研究。語言科學 12(1): 8-16。
竺家寧（2017）。《古音之旅》修訂再版。台北市：萬卷樓。
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Пікірлер: 213

@Shih-HsiangCheng Жыл бұрын

As a native Chinese speaker, I still learn a lot from Grace's channel. I never noticed such differences exist between one and two syllable versions of a word. Very interesting and informative video!

@Yokhut Жыл бұрын

But i don't learn anything

@rodgerspenda3207 Жыл бұрын

Native speaker in America?

@myat214 5 ай бұрын

@@Yokhutthen?

@mucanan Жыл бұрын

As someone who started studying mandarin two years ago, this particular question is one I had for very long and couldn't get an answer to. Eventually I sort of figured it out by myself, so it's nice to know that I was mostly right. I will share this video with anyone who's starting to learn this language.

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

Yes, many Chinese learners have this question, but it's hard to get a precise answer because choosing between one and two-syllable words involves a lot of different factors. I'm impressed you figured it out yourself! That's awesome!

@magdolnavida2717 Жыл бұрын

The same here! But I have been learning Mandarin for just a year!

@popcorncentral8457 Жыл бұрын

I figured this out too, even though I wasn't intentionally learning Chinese. I just kind of picked it up by watching many Chinese dramas. I kind of noticed it in most of their dialogues. 😂

@georgeherzog5929 5 ай бұрын

Oh my, I've been waiting 30 years to clarify this. 😂❤

@maximilianisaaclee2936 Жыл бұрын

Wow, this is an amazing lesson. As a half native speaker, I've sometimes struggled to understand or even explain to people about when and why to use single-syllabled and double-syllabled words, because sometimes I do use the single syllable words when I'm writing poems, and I never understood this flexibility which doesn't seem to be the case for most other languages. I love your lessons as a traditional Chinese writing user, always learning something new even when I'm already a Mandarin speaker. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. 😊

@cannncannn Жыл бұрын

I’m sorry but it’s not just poems, you guys native speakers use one syllable words in daily life too 😭

@DadInTaiwan Жыл бұрын

我已經住在台灣十五年了，但是關於這個主題，這是我第一次聽到那麼清除的解釋，謝謝老師

@benzvd Жыл бұрын

In Japanese and Korean, they also use many Chinese two-syllable words and pronounce these in Sino-Japanese / Sino-Korean reading. When using as monosyllabic words, the words aren't usually not pronounced the Sino way but native words are used instead of Chinese loan pronunciation.

@_caniche_2405 Жыл бұрын

"She wants what?! " I chuckled at the dramatisation. 😅 Thank you for the great explanation, as always

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

😂 haha I'm glad you found it entertaining! You're welcome!

@bruh666 Жыл бұрын

I'm learning mandarin but I'm also really interested in the language linguistically so your channel is perfect, I really like that you go into detail about the linguistics behind the language and not just give "practical" language information

@2022minangaymoi Жыл бұрын

This is one of the smart video I have ever seen. You cannot image how much we love you and how deep we respect you Grace. You make Chinese language become more interesting and adorable.❤❤❤❤❤

@valovanonym Жыл бұрын

I think that's one of the key factors that make me like chinese a lot: even if your vocabulary is not fully developed, you can speak and be understood, you will just be less precise

@JacobYuanHang Жыл бұрын

I feel that rhythm part is pretty important, for just a common example it’s common to hear 别忘了 or 不要忘记了，but not as common to hear 别忘记 and especially not common to hear 不要忘

@ch3rub1m 11 ай бұрын

不要忘听起来好凶…

@serveyourname5565 16 күн бұрын

Oh my Grace, how talented you are for teaching Chinese in such an efficient fashion! Your content is the best ever so far, I reckon. So logical and informative 👍

@rineatorise Жыл бұрын

The "rhythm of chinese" part is an eye opener! Many things make much more sense now lol. Thank you so much for the video!

@benzvd Жыл бұрын

This concept also applies to Thai language Afraid กลัว = หวาดกลัว, เกรงกลัว Forget ลืม = หลงลืม Learn เรียน = เรียนรู้

@IceCenders Жыл бұрын

Is it for the same historical reasons? Are there too many homonyms in Thai as well?

@benzvd Жыл бұрын

@@IceCenders I think not the same historical reasons but rather it's the nature of the language itself. Yes, there are many homonyms in Thai as well, but they occur due to borrowings from Pali, Sanskrit and Khmer, etc, of which these words are supposed to sound different but end up having same pronunciation because of lack of some sounds in the Thai sound system.

@IceCenders Жыл бұрын

@@benzvd Thank you, that's super interesting! Thai is on my bucket list of languages I want to learn before I die ^^

@benzvd Жыл бұрын

@@IceCenders thank you Many foreigners here don't want to learn it even if they live here all their life

@IceCenders Жыл бұрын

@@benzvd It's a shame, it's such a beautiful language! I feel like if one goes to live in a foreign country it's only fair to try to learn at least the basics. Personally, as I'm learning Mandarin right now, later I want to learn another tonal language. :) Is it "easy" for foreigners (from Western Europe in my case) to go live in Thailand? I never entertained the notion, and I don't know how hard it is.

@janereggievia Жыл бұрын

It's amazing how you use interesting way to teach this! As a Chinese tutor and also speaker (Mandarin is my second language), I realised there are so many things in Chinese language that tricky to teach. For example like word "就“, many of my students ask for the meaning in our first language (Indonesian), I went straightly to your channel to explain in a fun way. 多谢你啦, Grace! 🙏🏻💛

@Tsunami- Жыл бұрын

I’ve recently found your channel in my adventures learning Chinese and I’ve found your content extensively helpful! Thanks so much for all your hard work putting these together ❤

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

📝 For those of you who are learning Chinese with Zhuyin (bopomofo) system: gracemandarinchinese.com/why-chinese-needs-two-syllable-words/

@maximilianisaaclee2936 Жыл бұрын

Thanks for providing the Zhuyin, really appreciate the effort 讚！

@ThreeKingdoms- Жыл бұрын

xie xie

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

@@ThreeKingdoms- bú kè qì :)

@youtubeuser206 Жыл бұрын

@@GraceMandarinChinesewhat happened to xiaolu?

@trevor246 Жыл бұрын

ahhh Grace! i have been wondering this for a long time! thanks for making this video!

@jansonleung3393 Жыл бұрын

Only in mandarin, as the tones in Mandarin is limited, resulting in many homophones. Cantonese still have mainly one character word. Which is why we have a special word for 2 characters word "词语".

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

Cool! It's interesting to learn that Cantonese still has mostly one-character words. Thank you for sharing this with us!

@tanshlai1339 Жыл бұрын

You’re right!For example,no matter is 怕 or 害怕,we only use 驚 this character in Hokkien,Hakka and Cantonese.美 and美麗,using 靚 in Hakka and Cantonese,using媠 in hokkien.石,食,十,時 four characters all have different pronunciation.

@fungwingchung3029 Жыл бұрын

Mandarin has no 入聲 huge different from Classical Chinese They use two character word instead of one characters word to avoid confusion E.g. use 漂亮 instead of 靚；use 桌子instead of 枱 And as they claim they are official language, they will say the above usage is wrong.

@simmiee Жыл бұрын

Mandarin is heavily influenced by Machurian and Mongolian languages hence the loss of ending sound inventory and tones. Not only Cantonese preserves the classical pronunciation so not all the words sound like ‘shiˊ’, the same goes for Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other Chinese languages.

@lanxuan7892 Жыл бұрын

Grace, please make more video like this, it is informative and helpful. Thank you so much for what you have been doing for us, Chinese learners.

@clarao3 Жыл бұрын

Thank you so much, I was wondering about this lately and now you explained it :)

@nickvarricchio Жыл бұрын

Thanks, as always, Grace for another great vid! See you next time!

@jgtbym601 Жыл бұрын

I’ve been following your channels (YT & IG) for the past 3 years, and the content and style keeps getting more awesome. 很厉害啊👍🏼❤

@galelichter2619 Жыл бұрын

Grace, thank you for posting this informative video. Your explanations and examples are extremely clear. Well done!

@TheInterloafer 11 ай бұрын

這個影片真的很厲害。謝謝郭老師！

@mercury15316 Жыл бұрын

Before this video as an elementary level student I have really been struggling with this topic of sometimes encountering the same words in one or two syllable form and wondering why that is. Thank you so much Grace for this explanation!

@jukibu7 Жыл бұрын

That was extremely insightful! Thanks a lot!

@Jhearding Жыл бұрын

Great explanation, thank you!

@rsainz1296 Жыл бұрын

Wow. This makes so much sense because you explained this so clearly! Thank you 😊

@BusasGaming Жыл бұрын

Super useful video. This is something I notice all the time while studying, but never knew the reason why 1 or 2 syllable words were used. I just thought it was to be faster, more casual, or more natural sounding.

@TulekBehar Жыл бұрын

I have been waiting for this topic for 6 years now. Thank you teacher Grace

@afpazin Жыл бұрын

Great explanation! Thanks for breaking the "mandarin code" to us

@ultrapunch 10 ай бұрын

Your skits are fantastic

@tbserrano2 Жыл бұрын

Thank you! I learned a lot and it makes a lot of sense now!

@pierrevoue5170 Жыл бұрын

Extremely interesting, thanks a lot ! I especially liked the insight about rythm :)

@execgroupceo Жыл бұрын

Keep going Grace! You are amazing!

@adrielalves531 Жыл бұрын

best explanation for this question i've ever seen!!

@mvdmusicvideostorefreshthe3224 Жыл бұрын

Thank you very much Grace, it had puzzled me but you made it much clearer.

@maxspin74 Жыл бұрын

beautiful and very clear explanation, I was able to guess some things but I needed more clarity, thanks!

@erikaalexandresousa5673 Жыл бұрын

Thanks, Grace!!! You are a lifesaver... I'm a translator, and learning Chinese to add it to my portfolio. I'm focusing a lot on the grammatical issues and needed some clarification on this matter.

@johncox1023 Жыл бұрын

Thank you. This is very helpful for a confused American 老外 that visits Taiwan regularly with my Taiwanese wife. I practice every day and try to get better but sometimes the struggle is too real haha 😓. I appreciate videos like these that help explain the little things.

@davyant6777 5 ай бұрын

Thank you so much! Grace is the best chinese teacher in youtube all of time!

@dlinnoedlinnoe Жыл бұрын

Thank you! That's one of the biggest questions that bothered me when I started to learn Chinese. Although I'm starting to build my own vague understanding how words are formed, your video is excellent and explains many things very well.

@flaviospadavecchia5126 Жыл бұрын

Fascinating!

@genace Жыл бұрын

Thanks as always! Yeah, I’ve definitely wondered about the exact differences between the one and two syllable versions of word. It’s tricky but fascinating too, especially the part about rhythm. I haven’t heard of any other languages that use rhythm this way except in poetry or lyrics🤔 Very interesting and informative!

@Baranausko Жыл бұрын

You can’t use rhytm this way if you don’t have one and two syllable versions of almost every word.

@DienLeChannel Жыл бұрын

Thanks Grace! It's a an interesting and useful video for me

@__jake.m Жыл бұрын

Thank you for the video! You make Chinese less intimidating (and more fun!)

@qq5369 Жыл бұрын

Great. I understand the reason for Two Syllable Words now. I can talk about this and share this video with my the friends who ask why.

@onlignebridge4224 4 ай бұрын

That has been the question I have always wondered about.

@Thedennati Жыл бұрын

谢谢您，老师。很有意思。我觉得汉语是世界上最好听的语言之一，我非常喜欢。

@francesca7014 Жыл бұрын

Super useful and interesting video, thank you!! :)

@magdolnavida2717 Жыл бұрын

Great video, thanks! The fourth was my nightmare question for some time when I began to learn Chinese, but I also quite figured it out... I used to use the 1+2 or 2+1 combo, but I watched tons of c dramas and I (my ears), let's say, began to sense or feel how it really works... Finally I got a clear answer, thank you, was really great to hear those infos... Will share them!🤗

@lzh4950 Жыл бұрын

I've heard people say 赏/賞风景 (9:51) before, which is a 1+2 combo. Probably in more colloquial settings

@polylangh2635 Жыл бұрын

Very useful and interesting video! 感谢 Grace! ^^

@street55789 11 ай бұрын

Clever presentation! Made me smile.

@TinTeddyVideos Жыл бұрын

谢谢 I am still very much a beginner, and I found this fascinating. I had indeed wondered why sometimes a word was shorter or longer in different texts. I suspected some of the reasons you have explained here, but definitely not all of them!

@Thedennati Жыл бұрын

学习中文很有趣，请享用 :)

@erinrogers5116 Жыл бұрын

😂 Thank you! I was just wondering this. Here is your video. Perfect!

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

Great timing! 🥳

@acquiremandarin Жыл бұрын

Thank you for sharing this, as a Mandarin teacher I have also learn a lot from you channel:) 谢谢

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

不客氣～我們一起加油💪

@phil10p_ Жыл бұрын

I rarely take the time to comment on videos but this is truly an amazing lesson, thank you so much :)

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

🥰🥰

@breadman5048 Жыл бұрын

damn, great video grace -- thank you

@BloxyMelonio Жыл бұрын

thank you for the great explanation, as always! ♥︎ as someone who needs things to be very clear and specific, i love chinese! it’s one of the bigger reasons i’m learning. also, as an artist i’m quite particular to writing and script; so the chinese characters are fun 😁 i’m interested in chinese culture, and i have a couple of chinese friends with whom i’d love to be able to communicate with in their native language. just a few among the many reasons i love east asian languages in general.

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

You're welcome! ✨ I'm glad you're enjoying learning Chinese!

@linhvan4205 Жыл бұрын

I love Taiwan, I love traditional Chinese ❤❤ Thanks a lot for your lessons, Grace! ❤

@littlecrabeducationalpress2332 Жыл бұрын

Excellent video. Thanks so much. Super helpful.

@walkingair97 Жыл бұрын

非常好！😭😭😭❣️🤜🤛

@VicAndRoll Жыл бұрын

謝謝郭老師那麼仔細地解釋, two syllable nouns for animals are most interesting, like 火雞，河馬，熊貓，etc. German does this too, combining two words to make a new meaning.

@stuartmclaren2402 Жыл бұрын

I was puzzled as to why there were 1 and 2 syllable words and this explanation is excellent.

@rogerhaun9340 11 ай бұрын

When I was in the Southern US, I found a similar tendency to use two-part words in English. Southern US English makes many of their vowels sound almost identical. So in the North, we may say "pan", "pen", or "pin" and be clear. In the South, they all seem to be pronounced as "pee-uhn". So they needed to say "frahn pee-uhn" (frying pan), "eenk pee-uhn" (ink pen) or "steek pee-uhn" (stick pin) to differentiate. The added word clarified things for a dialect that had lost a lot of vowel differentiation. Ditto with Mandarin: its entire set of possible syllables will fit on one page!!! so one needs help to clarify -- especially for those non-natives who still don't hear tones very well! ;-)

@jeffreysommer3292 Жыл бұрын

It was nice to see you quoting from the Classic of Poetry. I would have enjoyed hearing you read that couplet aloud.

@jiqbalvlogs2874 Жыл бұрын

Very nice Sharing Good work God bless you 😊💕

@kori228 Жыл бұрын

basically, homophony makes things confusing so compound similar meaning words to reinforce them

@dietrichdietrich7763 Жыл бұрын

I loved this video.

@seenonyt2210 Жыл бұрын

Very informative and well presented video! Thank you! Concerning the rhythm, Duanmu is a researcher that has published about this (if I remember his name correctly).

@tedcrowley6080 Жыл бұрын

Extraordinary! So much information, and so well-explained! Little skits, diagrams, examples -- everything works very well. 我的母语不是中文但我在学习。我还是翻译。我还不能用中文思考。

@rikki_hwang Жыл бұрын

谢谢！

@suras8849 Жыл бұрын

That video touched an interesting topic. I always thought chinese only relys on tones to distinguish homophones. 謝謝你！我喜歡這個視頻 :)

@ccaerollj.3993 Жыл бұрын

I love your new background

@raimundoantonio5344 Жыл бұрын

Grace 老师很好

@yanghao8351 Жыл бұрын

Great video explanation. Thanks for your video. Including info on bound form characters might help as well. Maybe even explaining 词根，后缀（房子）, 前缀（阿姨）。Maybe explain an example like 蝴蝶 (butterfly)。

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

I'm glad you liked the video and thank you for the suggestion! :)

@PaulfrmTXtoCO Жыл бұрын

Shi Shi Shi, Ask Andy recently had an episode where he explained the need for Chinese Characters. He brought up a document from when they were looking to get rid of the characters, The whole story is Shi repeated over and over with different intonations. The story of the poet who liked to eat lions.

@brauljo 6 ай бұрын

8:07 that's counterintuitive since writing seems to be less ambiguous because the characters are different

@EssenceOfHope Жыл бұрын

This explanation helps so much! I've been learning Mandarin on Duolingo, but what I learn and sometimes translate on Google isn't what I'm hearing when I watch C-dramas w/subtitles(something I recently got into) which makes it so confusing.

@in_vas_por8810 Жыл бұрын

Duolingo is a good starting point, but you definitely need to mix in real world immersion. Duo can be pretty robotic and outdated if you are aiming for a real-world interaction level of understanding.

@bertram1598 Жыл бұрын

Thank you for the understandable and helpful video. To be honest, I always have problems with this topic. I could get along with it just fine, but at least as far as my textbooks are concerned, I don't think it's given enough importance. I study with the HSK Standard Course textbooks and the vocabulary always lists the 2-syllable vocabulary. I learn them accordingly. That means, for example, I learn 忘记 as a 2-syllable word. In the listening comprehension, however, they often use the 1-syllable form. I am not prepared for this because I have learned 忘记 and not just 忘. In reading exercises, it's less bad, but also often confusing. I would appreciate it very much if both forms were given. Usually my teacher only brings it to my attention when there is a grammatical difference that needs to be noted. Like you said in the video, if a form can only be a noun, for example.

@AkiraUema 11 ай бұрын

This is so interesting. I'm a speaker of Japanese and Japanese language inherited these two character words from Chinese when Chinese characters were adopted. It's what the Japanese call "jukugo" (熟語) The same way in Japanese also has verbs comprised of one single Chinese character (accompanied with the Japanese kana to express grammatical tense) and compound verbs comprised by a two-character word plus the word "suru", which transform the noun into a verb and usually the two-character version tends to be used in more formal situations.

@GuranPurin Жыл бұрын

I feel sites like Duolingo usually teach us two syllables. But when you listen to people speak, they often say only one syllable. It ends up probably making many foreigners sound awkward when we're speaking as we will use the two characters that we learned.

@yazars Жыл бұрын

This was a cool video--thank you for the lesson! I didn't realize the history of these words. I'm still not sure about whether duplicating words might simply come down to what sounds best, versus there being a different meaning, for example: 包 (Bāo) vs. 包包 (Bāo Bāo) or 畫 (Huà) vs. 畫畫 (Huà Huà/Huà Huàr)

@raymil Жыл бұрын

As a native Chinese speaker, the repeated characters are just a way to make it more complete and perfect

@HenOOXX Жыл бұрын

太讚了

@hawaianico Жыл бұрын

Following 2+2 harmony it's time to do it with surnames (+names) 1 surname from father, 1 from mother, instead of 1+2. That can be nice and make a person more unique, because 3 characters for so many people are very few and the amount of people named the same is way more than if we add mothers surname /mother

@mafen7600 Жыл бұрын

Thank you very much for clarifying this topic. For me, 忘记 was an example. I've learned the HSK vocab including 忘记 and then I ran over the single 忘, struggling, before realizing, that 忘 is used alone with the same meaning. Is there somewhere a list of most common one/two character word pairs, so one could learn them together? With luck, one can find the meaning of the parts, but this does not help whether the part is used alone.

@QuizmasterLaw Жыл бұрын

7:45 i Think what's wrong here is that dangling 学 is begging, begging for a compliment, an object "he doesn't like study" would also be incorrect for the same reason! we could say "he doesn't like studying" or "he doesn't like to study law" or even (barely, it still wants some object but is less wrong) "he doesn't like to study" [in general is the impled compliment] GREAT VIDEO AND YOU LOOK WONDERFUL!

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

Thank you for sharing your perspective! I'm glad you liked the video! 🥳

@danhnhan2186 Жыл бұрын

Wow, beautiful girl with amazing lesson. From a native Vietnamese speaker the language have huge impact from Chinese, we have same way to use one syllable and two syllable word. But we have a lot of sound to read 漢字, in example you use, 時 thời, 十 thập, 食 thực, 石 thạch. We completely understand when say those words. Yeah, in fact that today Vietnamese dont use 漢字 to write but we miss deeper meaning in single Chinese character.

@UltimaNovic Жыл бұрын

Hi Grace! It's interesting that you mentioned the four-syllables style from 诗经, but the poems from later dynasties tended to have lines with odd numbers of words (五言·七言诗). Is there a reason the 1-1 or 2-2 pattern was slightly changed during this period, at least in literature?

@lzh4950 Жыл бұрын

I remember Chinese poems often use short forms of words by sticking mostly to 1 syllable words, so that you can squeeze in more information in less words, like in English poems too, which also makes the text more abstract/figurative e.g. ...此事古难全... is short for the sentence "此事情自古代以来难以全好" ("Since ancient times, its been hard for this matter to be perfect") in the famous 水调歌头 poem by _Su Shi_ 苏/蘇轼/ 东/東波 (it was also turned into a song by singer 王菲 Faye Wang)

@taotie86 Жыл бұрын

In more written form authors sometimes like to stylize the language a bit to make it look classical. Another thing is that this 1+1 thing kinda bloats the vocabulary by generating huge number of synonyms for each thing. I keep track of all words I learned (through Anki) and I wrote a script that generates new vocabulary lists for texts based on my Anki deck and they're always filled with entries that are like 天色 which seem new while being easy to figure out. It's nothing big, but it just makes Chinese vocabulary look more intimidating than it is.

@GraceMandarinChinese Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the insight! It's great that you're using tools like Anki to help you learn and track your progress. I'm sure your efforts will pay off in the long run!

@thisismycoolnickname Жыл бұрын

I like to call those additional characters "dummies", for example 子 is a very common dummy as in 鞋子 or 袋子, i.e. it doesn't add any meaning, it's just there to help solve the homophone problem. And what you haven't mentioned is that many of those one-syllable words cannot really be used on their own anymore.

@isaiasabinadisosagarcia936 Жыл бұрын

I wished I knew this when I first started learning, I might never have dropped my studies!

@tomatoxfairy Жыл бұрын

As a native speaker, this blew my mind. Didn't realise I was speaking in a rhythm unconsciously. Once you used 3 syllables in the example, it just sounded so wrong.

@francisconeto2740 Жыл бұрын

Thank you teacher. This was a nagging question to me.

@aonelau5167 Жыл бұрын

2:25 那兩個古人的英文說得不錯欸

@exealo5313 Жыл бұрын

Hello....nice lecture.... Can you translate a convo in working of construction especially in plumbing workings... Thank you....

@StudyCom Жыл бұрын

Useful thanks. Btw "move" means ban jia. "I'm moving next week." There’s no "move place" and furthermore "move home" means you weren’t living at home but now you will be (usually back to your parents' home from living at college). English is also tricky (so is every language).

@TulekBehar Жыл бұрын

70 % of words in Chinese. This is worth a website bringing exhaustive list if such flexible words having one syllable version. Please help me find it

@skepticus123 Жыл бұрын

I thought that the evolution of bigrams was due to the fact that Chinese originated as a picture language, with each picture having a single syllable. You can only have so many pictures before things get unmanageable (e.g. you can have a clear picture for "fish", but how do you have a picture for "salmon" or "trout" that are clearly different from each other?). To solve this, pictures were re-combined as sound components with the meaning component of other pictures. This hugely expanded the range of meanings categorized under a meaning component, but led to very many homophones. Although the meaning was clear in the written language, it was completely unclear in the spoken language, which explains the evolution of bigrams. It also explains the evolution of tones, and of phonetic drift - all 3 are a means of disambuguation.

@TulekBehar Жыл бұрын

Too many homophones. To solve this problem. Use two syllable words. I came to this conclusion all by myself. Believe it or not. I am happy finally explains the exact same logic I figured out.😊