A sign for a porridge shop in Wenzhou which puns Wenzhounese people 溫州人/Wēnzhōurén, altering the second character 州/zhōu to an exact homophone 粥/zhōu meaning porridge, giving 溫粥人 (lit. warm-porridge-people)
Standard Chinese, like many Sinitic varieties, has a significant number of homophonous syllables and words due to its limited phonetic inventory. The Cihai dictionary lists 149 characters representing the syllable "yì".[1] (However, modern Chinese words average about two syllables, so the high rate of syllable homophony does not cause a problem for communication.[2]) Many Chinese take great delight in using the large amount of homophones in the language to form puns, and they have become an important component of Chinese culture.[3] In Chinese, homophones are used for a variety of purposes from rhetoric and poetry to advertisement and humor, and are also common in Chinese loans, for example phono-semantic matching of brand names, computer jargon, technological terms and toponyms.[4]
This article lists common homophonous puns in Mandarin Chinese, though many of the examples given are homophones in other varieties as well. Asterisks before the entry denote near-homophones.
^Insup Taylor; M. Martin Taylor; Maurice Martin Taylor (1995). Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. John Benjamins Publishing Company. p. 36.
^Mair, Victor (November 29, 2014). "[reply to comment in] Punning banned in China". Language Log. Retrieved 30 November 2014. At the monosyllabic level, there are a lot of homophones, but the average length of a word is approximately two syllables. So, at the level of the word, there's no problem with homophony.
^Cite error: The named reference Pollack(2011) was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Zuckermann, G. (2003). Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-4039-3869-5.
and 23 Related for: Homophonic puns in Standard Chinese information
literature. Homophonicpunsin particular are called 音义双关; 音義雙關; yīn yì shuāng guān or more simply 谐音; 諧音; xiéyīn; 'homophones' while homophonic characters...
dialects like Paulistano considering it non-homophonic, while dialects like Caipira consider it only homophonic, noting that these are two Brazilian dialects...
phonetic inventory, homophonicpunsin Mandarin Chinese are very common and important inChinese culture.) For a list of all StandardChinese syllables (excluding...
hearing, contrary to homophonicpuns. They are also known as heteronymic puns. Examples in which the punned words typically exist in two different parts...
Chinese mathematics Chinese number gestures Chinese numerals Color inChinese culture Culture of China King Wen sequence Numerology Homophonicpuns in...
jokes on Chinese people with these characteristics, and thus "appear like" Japanese soldiers. zì wèi duì (Chinese: 自慰隊) — A pun on the homophone "自衛隊" (zì...
Chinese riddles stand in a tradition traceable to around the second century CE. They are partly noted for their use of elaborate visual puns on Chinese...
Chinese Internet slang (Chinese: 中国网络用语; pinyin: zhōngguó wǎngluò yòngyǔ) refers to various kinds of Internet slang used by people on the Chinese Internet...
an important motif inChinese mythology. There are various myths involving fish. Chinese mythology refers to those myths found in the historical geographic...
surveillance in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the network of monitoring systems used by the Chinese central government to monitor Chinese citizens...
mā (肏你妈), which literally means "fuck your mother". Homophonicpuns are commonly used inChinese language as silly humor to amuse people, and have become...
the Minnan region, in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is also referred to as Quanzhang (Chinese: 泉漳; pinyin: Quánzhāng)...
Zemin Chinese internet memes Bushism Pepe the Frog See: Homophonicpunsin Mandarin Chinese. "Jiang of Jiang Hall". The Economist. July 30, 2016. Retrieved...
in chữ Nôm, are now written in the Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet. Idiom Chinese characters Xiehouyu, typically longer Chinese proverbs Homophonic puns...
of Chinese cash coins (雙錢 / 双钱, Shuāngqián) is one of the "Eight Treasures", also known as the Eight Precious Things. 3. Money is a homophonicpun for...
traces of Old Chinese or Middle Chinese. From the Ming dynasty onward, Beijing has been the capital of China and the dialect spoken in Beijing has had...
religious orders over the centuries. Chinese numismatic charms typically contain hidden symbolism and visual puns. Unlike cash coins which usually only...
Stone is an 18th-century Chinese novel authored by Cao Xueqin, considered to be one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. It is known...
based on the Chinese name, probably 日本國; 'sun source country' (compare modern Min Nan pronunciation ji̍t pún kok). In the 16th century in Malacca, Portuguese...
Anapodoton Chengyu: Chinese "set phrases" reflecting conventional wisdom Homophonicpunsin Mandarin Chinese Proverbs commonly said to be Chinese Rohsenow, John...
American and Chinese American English speakers can be found in the timing of spoken syllables, or rhythm. Chinese American speakers (in particular, males)...
and puns; poetry is difficult to translate because of its reliance on the sounds (for example, rhymes) and rhythms of the source language; puns, and...
Global Information