# Chinese Characters I Always Forget How to Pronounce

**URL:** <https://tw.forumosa.com/t/chinese-characters-i-always-forget-how-to-pronounce/237028>\
**Category:** Learning Chinese\
**Tags:** learning-chinese\
**Created:** [January 18, 2024, 9:38am UTC](https://tw.forumosa.com/t/chinese-characters-i-always-forget-how-to-pronounce/237028 "2024-01-18T09:38:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 21

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**Author:** ![hansioux](https://forumosa-12829.kxcdn.com/user_avatar/tw.forumosa.com/hansioux/32/253648_2.png) [@hansioux](https://tw.forumosa.com/u/hansioux)\
**Post date:** [June 16, 2026, 2:47am UTC](https://tw.forumosa.com/t/chinese-characters-i-always-forget-how-to-pronounce/237028/401 "2026-06-16T02:47:13Z")

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Not a character with confusing pronunciation but one with confusing etymology…

眼

It’s not Trans-Himalayan, as that would be 目, OC /\*C.m(r)[u]k/, Tibetan mig, Burmese myak.

No one knows where 眼 /\*[ŋ]ˤə[n]ʔ/ came from…

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**Author:** ![tempogain](https://forumosa-12829.kxcdn.com/user_avatar/tw.forumosa.com/tempogain/32/264650_2.png) [@tempogain](https://tw.forumosa.com/u/tempogain)\
**Post date:** [June 16, 2026, 5:34am UTC](https://tw.forumosa.com/t/chinese-characters-i-always-forget-how-to-pronounce/237028/402 "2026-06-16T05:34:45Z")

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So you mean the etymology of the phonetic word is unknown? Or just the character, or how the character came to have that reading,?

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**Author:** ![hansioux](https://forumosa-12829.kxcdn.com/user_avatar/tw.forumosa.com/hansioux/32/253648_2.png) [@hansioux](https://tw.forumosa.com/u/hansioux)\
**Post date:** [June 16, 2026, 5:49am UTC](https://tw.forumosa.com/t/chinese-characters-i-always-forget-how-to-pronounce/237028/403 "2026-06-16T05:49:16Z")

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> [@tempogain](#):
>
> So you mean the etymology of the phonetic word is unknown? Or just the character, or how the character came to have that reading,?

The character is one of those rebus characters, where it just used 艮 as the phonetic component because at when the character was created 艮 sounded the same as 眼.

However, /\*[ŋ]ˤə[n]ʔ/ is not a word for eye in all other languages in the Trans-Himalayan family. Nor is it found in other language families that came in contact with Old Chinese. As far as I can see, the earliest usages of 眼 seem to refer to the iris and the pupil, and not the whole eye.

Now… the Austronesians call the pupil Cau nu maCa (tau nu mata), which means the “person of the eye”, or anak nu maCa, which means “child of the eye”.

Person in Chinese is 人 /\*ni[ŋ]/ or it could be from the word for kernel and heart 仁 /\*niŋ/? Those are my theories.

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**Author:** ![hansioux](https://forumosa-12829.kxcdn.com/user_avatar/tw.forumosa.com/hansioux/32/253648_2.png) [@hansioux](https://tw.forumosa.com/u/hansioux)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2026, 4:50am UTC](https://tw.forumosa.com/t/chinese-characters-i-always-forget-how-to-pronounce/237028/404 "2026-09-12T04:50:51Z")

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襾 what’s this @@

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