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There is this ad, that looks a little something like this:

enter image description here

The full text says

致忙碌的你
在工作中总是对客户和声细雨
却忘记了对父母说声
谢 / 谢 / 你

和声细雨 seems totally wrong to me & I'm guessing it should probably be 和声细语. 和声细语 can be found in《现代汉语规范词典》&《多功能成语词典》- while 和声细雨 is not listed anywhere I know. It seems like quite a rookie mistake, though, for an advertisement agency to make. Is "和声细雨" ever an acceptable variant of "和声细语"?

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  • 2
    Well, that's the dangers of a phonetic input method, I suppose..
    – dROOOze
    Oct 19, 2018 at 9:05
  • Yes the Pinyin input method would type wrong characters if the user does not take a good look at the choices. Such "idiom" makes no sense.
    – xbh
    Oct 19, 2018 at 13:18
  • Either 和风细雨 or 和声细语, but these two phrases can easily be messed up anyway.
    – dan
    Oct 19, 2018 at 13:45
  • That's just a typo Oct 19, 2018 at 13:59
  • there are forgivable typos and there are unforgivable typos. I can over look typo like 'pose office' (post) but I can't give 'anal report' (annual) a pass
    – Tang Ho
    Oct 20, 2018 at 3:40

2 Answers 2

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The copy writer using "和声细雨" instead of "和声细语" is an unforgivable mistake

The correct idiom with 细雨 at the end is 微風細雨

The correct idiom with 和風 at the beginning is '和風麗日' ( variant of '風和日麗')

Many common idioms can be rephrase for artistic reason, but the characters in them cannot be changed

Example:

Standard: 風和日麗 (wind is gentle, sunshine is pleasant)-- variant: 和風麗日 (gentle wind, pleasant sunshine)

Standard: 窮山惡水 (hostile mountains, vicious water -- variant: 山窮水惡 (mountains is hostile; waters is vicious)

Standard: 鴻圖大志 (grand ambition, high goal)-- variant: 志大圖鴻 (goal is high, ambition is grand)

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But if this shows up in a school text written by some famous poet / writer / litterateur in history, my teacher would have told me this is "Tongjia" (通假, interchangeable) and is not only correct but also clever.

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