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Learning Chinese is fun but man is it confusing sometimes (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So i recently started to learn Chinese, and i have to say it's been a very positive experience so far. I found the grammar refreshingly simple and the writing system not as intimidating as it first appeared. I still struggle with hearing tones but that will hopefully come with time.

But one thing that still gets me really frustrated is homophones. There are so many of them. And sometimes not even the tone is different. I know plenty of other languages have homophones, English has a bunch of them too, and most of the time you can infer through context which word is meant, but it's still tough for a beginner.

The advantage in Chinese is that the written form is usually very clearly distinguished even if the spoken word sounds the same. But there is one case i've come across where it really seems like the same word, written and sounds exactly the same, seems to be used for two completely different meanings and can't for the life of me figure out why: 只

Can someone please explain to me why this word is used to express both the idea of "only" and also at the same time is a counting word like 个 but for animals (and body parts?):

我只有一只狗

This sentence is so confusing to me. Why, Chinese, why?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

re: 我只有一只狗；firstly I want to point out that the first 只 would be pronounced with 3rd tone while the 2nd instance (量词 count-word) would be pronounced 1st tone

I don't have official etymology on this but as a native speaker for both mandarin and english I suspect this case is somewhat similar to what's going on with the English "the more the merrier". So, articles (part of speech) like "the" ”a" "an” or the more general/wider classification of determiners (part of speech) like "both" "this" "that", aren't exactly the same as 量词 count words in Chinese but I'd say their functions are very similar. However, what's happening in "the more the merrier" (or other "the x the y", "the less [they know] the better“ or whatever), "the" isn't acting like an article at all, where you expect it to modify or accompany a noun, but it descends from "tha" from middle english rather than from the/article and somewhere along the way "tha" lost other places where it would be used, only retaining the "the x the y" umm linear graph relationship(?if that's the best way to describe what's happening between linking conditions together?), and converged/merged with "the" whose main use is as an article (part of speech). Although, for 只 I don't think it's quite recessed/withered on the "only"(3rd tone) side as much as english "the(tha)", because it's still widely used as "只是" (only/but/however) and is just as common to see it there as seeing it as a 量词 count word.

There are a bunch of other cases of single characters having multiple meanings/pronunciations, plenty of them being "less used case" and others being "specific case/always pronounced one way when used in specific 词"

-- example A, 乐 usually pronounced le4 on its own, means "joy", more fleshed out would be like 欢乐 huan1 le4 ; but if you see it written out in 音乐 "music" it's always pronounced yin1 yue4;; (eg 乐器, musical instrument, yue4qi4) [this is the most drastic example I can come up with off the top of my head, most other alterations in pronunciation/meaning overloaded onto single character are tone diff)

-- example B, 好 usually just means "good" (depending on context might also mean "oh those two are going out", still this pronunciation) most often seen this way and pronounced hao3, but when used in 爱好[ai4hao4] "hobby" or 好奇[hao4qi3] "curiosity" it's always fourth tone hao4

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

This is very interesting, thank you!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Normally I'd say languages aren't really planned and just happen, but 只 looks like a product of simplification so someone actually made that decision.

That said, at least in the written form the context makes it quite clear, I think, as the counting form is going to follow numerals. What it pairs to, this is its own headache.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Yeah, it's understandable through context what is meant, but still, it's an extra thing you have to learn. Measure words are one of the more intimidating parts of the language for me so far. There's just so many of them. Some of them are great and make a lot of sense like 杯 or 份, but others just seem to be used for the sake of having something other than 个.

But i think they are still better than all the bullshit group words for animals in English. I mean look at how random this shit is, nobody ever uses 95% of these. English really is the worst.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

Most of the English ones were written to fill books I think. I want to blame the Victorians because it sounds like the kind of cataloguing bollocks they got up to but I don't know for sure. Most native speakers don't use them naturally or would recognise them. Except for a few which is probably even worse. Like you would never say "a herd of sparrows" but you might say "a herd of geese" and "a flock of sheep". Though you could "a kanooze of sheep" and a native speaker would probably understand you because we've all given up. English really is the worst.

I'd not be surprised if measure words came about in much the same manner. China has certainly had it's share of bored scholars who want to show off just how educated and refined they are.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Something I remember being told early on in the app I was using at the time was that 个 is fine for measure words a lot of the time (probably more so in spoken use?). So yes, I can see it being intimidating if you're looking at it like you need to be adept in all of them, but I don't think you need to for basic comprehension in practice. Just keep an eye out for number + measure word + noun sequence. Like in the example sentence you gave:

我只有一只狗

To understand it, you don't need to remember that 只 is a measure word for "boats, birds, certain animals, certain containers, and one of a pair" (definition pulled from Pleco dictionary). Instead, I suggest focusing on the segments of the sentence. Segment one being something like "I only have" and segment two being "one measure word dog." Or if you get tripped up on the second 只 looking like "only" and forget that it's a measure word, you could think of it as "one something dog" and then remember that the standard sequence there is going to have a measure word between.

Disclaimer: I am not fluent yet, nor a native, so take what I say on it with a grain of salt. Just passing along based on what I can remember and have experienced with it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

That's more or less how i would generally approach this too. It works well when reading, but it's a little more tricky when listening to spoken sentences because for a beginner it can be hard to tell whether a given syllable is a word in itself or if it's part of a multi-syllable word.

In this example it's not a huge issue because the "一" sound is pretty unmistakable as the number "one", but let's say it was five instead.

Assume you're hearing: 我只有五只狗 but you don't see it written out. If you don't know 只 is a measure word you might not immediately conclude that 五 refers to the number "five" because you don't hear a measure word you're familiar with, and so (五)(只狗) with 只狗 being one word makes no sense because then the measure word would be missing, so then you think, ok, maybe it could be a homophone that just happens to sound like five, like for instance 午. So then the way you would parse the sentence in your head could be: "I only have (午只狗)"... And then you're super confused and you ask yourself:

WTF is a "午只狗"? Is is some compound word i don't know? What is a "noon-only-dog"? I must have misheard something!

Whereas if it was 个 instead of 只 you would much more easily recognize it as number + measure word + thing.

Anyway, I'm sure all this is just a matter of experience, once you get more practice listening and as you expand your vocabulary these issues probably go away. It's just beginner issues...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Yeah, experience should make a lot of difference. I know there are certain things that looked, well... foreign in the beginning. And now I can just scan them and kinda just know. Auditory can be a struggle for me more so than reading, maybe because most of my learning is through apps. But also, I think it's a language with a lot of context-based things in general. Like with your example, you'd probably get used to certain words being in the same context and that would help with a lot of parsing. Even so, there can be regional differences with how it sounds, so it's not like natives never have any trouble either (which can also happen with English and dialects, depending on how extreme the dialect difference is).