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3 votes

How did Chinese develop so many different classifiers?

The emergence of classifiers in the history of Chinese is very well-documented. From Wang (1998), Historical and Dialectal Variants of Chinese General Classifiers: According to Wang (1994), 个 was a ...
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0 votes

Why does Mandarin Chinese have a smaller inventory of unique syllables?

Why does Mandarin Chinese have a smaller inventory of unique syllables? What are the possible historical/linguistic reasons behind this? Is there some relationship with the writing system, as Mandarin ...
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1 vote

How did Chinese develop so many different classifiers?

Almost all languages have classifiers, including english. The only difference is that in english they are often just an optional clarification, while in chinese they are usually the natural sounding ...
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1 vote

How did Chinese develop so many different classifiers?

The question is "how and why did the Chinese develop so many different classifiers?" I cannot exactly tell "how", "why", "who", and "when" this ...
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0 votes

How did Chinese develop so many different classifiers?

A classifier roughly coordinates with an object's shape, size, volume, or a specific feature. To know which is the appropriate classifier for an object, you need to have a mental image of the object ...
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1 vote

Where to find official documents that introduce the four-corner input method?

I tracked down a book written by Wang Yun-wu himself in 1967 and published by the Taiwan Commercial Press called 四角号码检字法 on Google Books, which even has a preview. Unfortunately, the preview, at least ...
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1 vote

The Chinese readings of 朴 (Korean surname)

朴 as a surname in China somehow has three different pronunciations: piáo, pǔ, fú, at least according to this website. However, the 朴 surname in Korea is completely unrelated. The first person the 朴 ...
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0 votes

The Chinese readings of 朴 (Korean surname)

In Taiwan, according to the entry in Republic of China MoE dictionary, when it comes to the surname, both ㄆㄨˊ and ㄆㄧㄠˊ are acceptable. Based on a post by Taiwanese representative in Korea, the ㄆㄧㄠˊ ...
4 votes

What’s the deal with the xing-type readings for 行?

TL;DR: vowel shift + possible colloquial-literary split. 行 has the reading 戸庚切 relevant to this meaning of "to walk", reconstructed as /ɦaɨjŋ/ by Pulleybank and /ɦˠæŋ/ by Zhengzhang. The ...
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1 vote

Trying to translate signature and stamp for Chinese print (Characters identified: 戊午九月石年)

This is the work of 宋石年 (1850-1914). 宋 is his family name. So, the year 戊午 can only be 1858. BTW, judging by the signature, this artwork was finished when he was 8. To be honest, I can't believe this ...
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4 votes

What’s the deal with the xing-type readings for 行?

to start-- there is no official answer, because we don't actually know how middle chinese sounded. we have educated guesses, but its always good to keep in mind that at least some of the world's ...
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