How many hànzì are used as syllabaries ?

[boctulus]

Hi!

 

     OneEye told me about lean words as 加拿大 for Canada and I know there are characters used as phonetic components but... how many of them are used for phonetic purposes ?

 

In japanese about (two sets of) 50 characters are used for syllabaries but in chinese ? how many hànzìs ?

 

I hope my question be understood (I know it can sound stupid but my research throw zero results)

[laurenth]

Here's an interesting list in Wikipedia, see under "Transcription table".

 

The difference with Japanase is that most characters in that list are actually used in other, non-loan words. However, as far as I can tell, some of the hanzi in that list are used mostly for such loan words and are or have become quite rare in non-borrowed words. I'm no expert though, so someone else may want to provide a more accurate answer.

 

Hope this helps.

[Shelley]

As far as I know such a thing doesn't exists in chinese.

 

a set of written characters representing syllables and (in some languages or stages of writing) serving the purpose of an alphabet.

 

 

Words like Canada 加拿大 use characters that sound the same. Other loan words sometimes use characters that mean the same or similar to the English as well as the sounds, but not often.

 

Usually its only the sound, coffee is 咖啡 which starts with a c like Canada but a different character is used.

 

You will just have learn them as you encounter them, there is no set list of characters to sound.

[pross]

There is most certainly a system, however loose, for transliteration of place names. Patterns quickly become evident if you peruse the official lists of foreign place names. See 外国地名译名手册 or 外國地名譯名 http://data.gov.tw/node/gov/resource/9441

[Shelley]

There might be loose system but I don't think there is a set of characters that always directly maps to a sound as per the OP's original question.

[lips]

I agree with Shelley.

[boctulus]

I mean if there is about 1600 different pinyin syllables (including tones),  so... 1600 characters for phonetic components (chinese words) and loan words ? or even more ?

 

If japanese can use 50 sounds... and koreans 30 sounds, why chinese need more than 1600 ? even for a 4 tones language is BIG number.

[Shelley]

I think you should thoroughly read the Wikipedia article laurenth linked to in his post. 

 

I had a quick look and I think it will start to answer some of your questions. This is not a question with one simple answer and you will have to accept that some things just are and have no explanation.

[iand]

If japanese can use 50 sounds... and koreans 30 sounds, why chinese need more than 1500

Japanese only has characters for "open syllables," ones that end in a vowel. For every open syllable there's also a possible closed syllable (ending in ん, n), so "zen" represented in kana would be ぜん. If syllabaries had single characters for each open and closed syllable, there would be twice as many characters in the syllabary. Also, some syllables are marked by putting a little circle or two strokes next to a kana, or adding a small "ya," "yu," or "yo" after it, which represents a separate syllable. To calculate the number of syllables in Japanese, add up the gojuon (except ん, 45), daukuon (20), handakuon (5), yoon (36) = 106, and multiply by 2 (1 for open syllables, 1 for closed syllables), and you get 212. This isn't including long vowels or geminated consonants, which would probably double the number.

 

As for Korean, the number 30 you mention refers to the number of letters, not the number of syllables. I don't know much about Korean, but it is formed by writing several letters in one block to represent a syllable. Each syllable can start with an optional initial consonant, then it has a vowel, then an optional final consonant. Using this system to construct a syllable, there are over 11,000 possible syllables, with over 2,000 actually used in Korean. Clearly an alphabet was the only way to represent the sounds of Korean phonetically, and a syllabary would have been impractical.

 

Pinyin is composed of consonant initials and finals that combine a vowel or several vowels and an optional terminal consonant. The number of pinyin syllables, not counting tones, is about 400. With tones, it's around 1200 (not all possibilities are used in all tones). This no longer seems unusual, right?

[boctulus]

Yes, Shelley you are right about laurenth link is big aid (thank you laurent!!!)

 

After look the laurenth link, I see a 26*16 table showing "only" 26*16 or 416 sounds in pinyin, which is a big number yet........ but not the huge number someone in StackExchange said (416*4) but the number iand approach.

 

iand : you give a great explanation but I understand from the table and also your comment the 416 hanzi are used instead of 1664 (416*4) to simplify the number and the tone is lost...... ,isn't ?

[iand]

I wouldn't say the tone is "lost" since it's used to transcribe from languages that don't have tones. If you're transcribing a foreign word into Mandarin, the foreign word is atonal, so you can pick whatever tones you like.

[boctulus]

Thanks again iand 

 

But, if you are transliterating from vietnamite or sweedish,...

[iand]

Alright, that's beyond my knowledge :-)

 

Google seems to think Swedish uses pitch-accent, which I don't think can be represented equivalently with the Mandarin tone system. AFAIK, in a pitch-accent language, the same syllable can have a different pitch-accent depending on the sentence it's used in. But if someone knows Swedish or another pitch-accent language (like Japanese) I'd like to hear their input.

 

For Vietnamese, they might not use a transcription table such as Xinhua's included in the Wikipedia article, or they might have a separate one for Vietnamese. Or, as you suggest, they might ignore the tone.

[imron]

Pinyin doesn't have ~400 sounds.

You can't exclude the tone from the sound. Mā and má are different sounds, likewise for all other combinations of initial final and tone.

[iand]

imron, for the purpose of transcribing foreign words, tone isn't important. Since that was boctulus's topic, it seems sensible to exclude tones from the calculation.

[imron]

Yes, I was referring to the above posts and links saying pinyin had 416 sounds, not about transcribing.

[li3wei1]

Imron, is there an English term for the elements that mā, má, etc. have in common that you would be happy with? I find it convenient to talk about 'sounds and tones', to differentiate the tones from 'everything else'.

[imron]

Not really, and in fact I'd probably even use those words if I wanted to make a distinction between those two things, but in the context of how many syllables there are in Chinese, it's a mistake (and one that is commonly seen) to just say there are only ~400.  The number quoted by iand, 1200 seems about right.

[anonymoose]

Clearly an alphabet was the only way to represent the sounds of Korean phonetically, and a syllabary would have been impractical.

 

Impractical maybe, but not impossible. Yi uses a syllabary composed of about a thousand characters.

[boctulus]

 

Not really, and in fact I'd probably even use those words if I wanted to make a distinction between those two things, but in the context of how many syllables there are in Chinese, it's a mistake (and one that is commonly seen) to just say there are only ~400.  The number quoted by iand, 1200 seems about right.

 

Yes, it's a big number...... incredible big..... maybe not 1600 because maybe most of time a subset is used but it's big... and not so big as cantonese with 6 tones should probably express.