I’m starting to get a little frustrated with my Chinese studies at the moment.
I’m self-studying using a variety of resources (signposted from this forum ). One thing I’m doing is working through PAVC. As I learn a new word, I look it up in the Far East 3000 Chinese Characters dictionary so that I can note other meanings for the character at the same time, and look at other characters that go with it to make other words. But I’m starting to find characters that are taught in PAVC but that don’t appear in my dictionary. So far it hasn’t been too important - such as a character that means ‘Oh’ - but now PAVC is telling me that character for wei4 as in weishenme and yinwei is one thing , but the dictionary only has it as the identical character but with the deformed character for ren2 incorporated on the left and the meaning is false, bogus.
So this isn’t exactly the character for wei4 from PAVC,and I don’t know if it’s related in meaning to the wei4 in weishenme or not.
I expect there to be differences between Chinesepod and Taiwanese Mandarin study aids, but I thought my dictionary was for Taiwanese Mandarin. Should I expect these discrepancies to continue? I like to learn individual meanings for characters because it helps me understand and remember compound words.
I a not sure if I understand your question.
Yinwei and Weishenme is the same wei4. That is correct.
If you ad the radical for people (ren2). There is no connection between the characters in meaning.
I (might be wrong) undersand that wei4 is a pictograph of a female monkey and used purely for the sound while wei2 with the person radical could mean persn like a monkey - fake.
[quote=“heimuoshu”]I a not sure if I understand your question.
Yinwei and Weishenme is the same wei4. That is correct.
If you ad the radical for people (ren2). There is no connection between the characters in meaning.
I (might be wrong) undersand that wei4 is a pictograph of a female monkey and used purely for the sound while wei2 with the person radical could mean persn like a monkey - fake.
Hope this helps.[/quote]
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. My major question is why my dictionary, which is Taiwanese Mandarin, or so I thought, doesn’t contain the character for wei4 as in weishenme. From what you say it would seem that wei4 never stands alone as a character and that’s maybe why it isn’t in the dictionary?
Yes, there it is! In PAVC it’s wei4 in weishenme and yinwei. :s[/quote]
People in Taiwan generally say wèi. But the “official” pronunciation is wéi, which is also how (I think) it is said in China.
My sources say 為 derives from a graph showing an elephant, plus a hand atop it. Are we talking about the same character?[/quote]
Yup, that’s the one.[/quote]
Yeah, the oracle bone form clearly shows a right hand above (leading) an elephant, and the graphic structure later became unrecognizable by around the late Warring States to Han dynasties period. The Shuowen Jiezi analysis at the end of that period by Xu Shen is incorrect for this reason (he didn’t have access to the oracle bone and bronze record we have now) and some amateur modern works by Westerners such as Harbaugh’s blindly follow Xu Shen. There were elephants in Shang-period China, but not in Xu Shen’s time. I don’t recommend relying on sources that merely follow Xu Shen or on works by amateurs like Harbaugh, Weiger, Wilder and Ingram, Tan Huay Peng’s Fun with Chinese Characters series, etc. for real etymology.
My accuracy on these things should be questioned. I remember wei4 as the reason - monkey see monkey do and wei2 (with the radical for person) as fake from person like a monkey. How I remember it and whether the stories are true obviously don’t match up. You are more than likely correct. I will try to remember where I got the idea from and check the source but that is like finding a …whatever I have never looked for needles.
There are lots, some of them very common. Some of them have two common pronunciations (like 重: chóng and zhòng), some have one very common one and another uncommon one (like 中: zhōng and zhòng). Others have three, four or more variant pronunciations.
Don’t you wish you’d learned Spanish instead? I do, I’d be near-native, reading Don Quixote by now. Instead I have the pleasure of struggling through a newspaper in chicken-scratch, looking up ten characters a minute.
There are lots, some of them very common. Some of them have two common pronunciations (like 重: chóng and zhòng), some have one very common one and another uncommon one (like 中: zhōng and zhòng). Others have three, four or more variant pronunciations.
Don’t you wish you’d learned Spanish instead? I do, I’d be near-native, reading Don Quixote by now. Instead I have the pleasure of struggling through a newspaper in chicken-scratch, looking up ten characters a minute. [/quote]
Maybe, but it wouldn’t be much use to me in Taiwan.
Plus, I like a challenge!
So, do the pronunciations change according to which word they’re next to, like bu2 and yi1? Or according to something else? Or is it just completely arbitrary? (Please don’t let it be answer three. )
Any electronic dictionary worth its salt will also allow searches without tone marks based on Pinyin. Pleco would be a prime example. Very useful for listening and for problems like this one. Pleco on the iPhone or other electronic device also offers handwriting lookup, which would have solved this problem for the OP right away.
Beyond the problem of poyinzi (characters with multiple tones), there are also systematic differences in the tones commonly used in Taiwan and in the Mainland, and textbooks will take these into account in varying ways.
To make things even more interesting, if you ever went to China and just hung around in certain areas, you could hear Mandarin spoken with only 3 tones, or other combinations. So “standard Mandarin” is one thing (and ought to be represented in textbooks) but there is a whole quivering pulsing world of Mandarin out there that isn’t standard at all.
Here’s the thing: Shuowen was, forever and ever, treated as the ultimate authority on etymology, and its author, Xu Shen, did claim (based on a corrupted, unrecognizable Qin to Han dynasty “small seal script” form) that 為 was a 母猴 female monkey. Lots of sources blindly copy Shuowen on this, and it probably worked into the mnemonics you learned. But there’s no doubt among modern sinopaleographers that it’s a hand 爫 and an elephant 象 in the oracle bone and early to mid “bronze” forms; aside from the hand component it is identical to the OB form of 象, showing a creature with a long trunk. Xu Shen made many such errors. Shuowen is still an important resource but it should be used with great caution in light of newer archaeological information.
I feel somewhat smarter but I will probably forget all the lesser important details tomorrow. I’ll have to remember something about an elephant and a hand now and to make sure it sticks I’ll add some dragon bones
Your post was actually quite interesting. Thanks
Well, there’s no way I’m going to forget this character now!
DB, could you give me the story for the next 3,000 or so? Plus the ways they’ve been put together to make new words?
Just to respond to some comments: my dictionary is alphabetic, based on Hanyu Pinyin. The problem was that there are about 12 weis and I didn’t look through all the different tones, just the one that appeared in PAVC - wei4. I was confused because I thought PAVC and my dictionary used Taiwanese Mandarin, which they do, but they didn’t correspond on this character. This is the third time this has happened and as it was clearly an important character I wanted to find out what the problem was.
I’ve got an Android phone and the last I looked Pleco still haven’t put out the Mandarin app for it.
). One thing I’m doing is working through PAVC. As I learn a new word, I look it up in the Far East 3000 Chinese Characters dictionary so that I can note other meanings for the character at the same time, and look at other characters that go with it to make other words. But I’m starting to find characters that are taught in PAVC but that don’t appear in my dictionary. So far it hasn’t been too important - such as a character that means ‘Oh’ - but now PAVC is telling me that character for wei4 as in weishenme and yinwei is one thing , but the dictionary only has it as the identical character but with the deformed character for ren2 incorporated on the left and the meaning is false, bogus.
)
and early to mid “bronze” forms; aside from the hand component it is identical to the OB form of 象, showing a creature with a long trunk. 
Xu Shen made many such errors. Shuowen is still an important resource but it should be used with great caution in light of newer archaeological information.
