''Youbian dubian'' (), or ''dubanbian'' (), is a
rule of thumb people use to pronounce a
Chinese character
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanj ...
when they do not know its exact pronunciation. A longer version is '' (''yǒu biān dú biān, méi biān dú zhōngjiān''; lit. "read the side if any; read the middle part if there is no side").
Around 90% of Chinese characters are
phono-semantic compounds that consist of two parts: a semantic part (often the
radical) that suggests a general meaning (e.g. the part
hellusually indicates that a character concerns commerce, as people used shells as currency in ancient times), and a phonetic part which shows how the character is or was pronounced (e.g. the part (
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally writte ...
: ''huáng'') usually indicates that a character is pronounced ''huáng'' in
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...
).
The phonetic part represents the exact or almost-exact pronunciation of the character when the character was first created; characters sharing the same phonetic part had identical or similar readings. Linguists rely heavily on this fact to
reconstruct the sounds of ancient Chinese. However, over time, the reading of a character may be no longer the one indicated by the phonetic part due to
sound change and general vagueness.
When one encounters such a two-part character and does not know its exact pronunciation, one may take one of the parts as the phonetic indicator. For example, reading (pinyin: yì) as ''zhǐ'' because its "side" is pronounced as such. Some of this kind of "folk reading" have become acceptable over time - listed in
dictionaries as alternative pronunciations, or simply become the common reading. For example, people read the character ''ting'' in (
Ximending
Ximending (sometimes Hsimenting, ; Tâi-lô: Se-mn̂g-ting; Japanese Romaji: ) is a neighborhood and shopping district in the Wanhua District of Taipei, Taiwan, along with its main rival, the Eastern District of Taipei.
Overview
Ximending ha ...
) as if it were ''ding''. It has been called a "phenomenon of
analogy", and is observed in as early as the
Song Dynasty
The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest ...
.
[Zhu Jianing 竺家寧, "Songdai yuyin de leihua xianxiang" 宋代語音的類化現象, in ''Jindai yin lunji'' 近代音論集, Taipei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 1994, pp. 159-172.]
See also
*
Spelling pronunciation
A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounc ...
* ''
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''
Notes
External links
*{{in lang, zh Feng, Shouzhong (S: 冯寿忠, T: 馮壽忠, P: ''Féng Shòuzhōng'')
《与读半边有关的常用字》
, 语言文字网 ''Yǔyán Wénzì Wǎng''。
Chinese characters