# Why aren't Chinese words spelled phonetically? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 6, 2001, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-chinese-words-spelled-phonetically/71501 "2001-07-06T16:56:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2001, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-chinese-words-spelled-phonetically/71501/41 "2001-07-12T05:31:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kris Rhodes \* > \*\*I don’t know, it doesn’t seem all that hard to me to look up things by radical. \*\* It is not difficult to look up Chinese characters by radicals or number of strokes, but it is SLOW. AS a student, expect to spend an hour or two a day in the physical act of looking up characters. If you know how a character is pronounced, you can then look it up by the pinyin, which is much faster. None of the romanizatin systems are that great, or to put it another way all of the systems have flaws. That said, the Mainland pinyin system has become the defacto system and I really doubt that a new romanization system will come along anytime soon. ---
**Author:** ![Doobieous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Doobieous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doobieous)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2001, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-chinese-words-spelled-phonetically/71501/42 "2001-07-12T06:25:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by bordelond \* > What if several charcaters are 3 strokes? How are they distinguished “alphabetically”? I think that they are distinguished by HOW they are written – what order the strokes are written, how the strokes are or are not joined, or something like that. I do know that stroke order is (said to be) absolutely essential to really knowing how to write Chinese, and that some similar characters can be distinguished based on stroke order. I dont have a degree in Chinese writing, but I do have books that explain stuff, so here we go: There are several chinese classifications. I’ll try to condense what my book has. 1. Native classifications - Classification by things. in AD 280, one of the classifications, characters were ordered under 16 sections: kindred, houses, utensils, music, heaven, earth, mounds, hills, waters, plants, trees, insects, fishes, birds, wild and domestic animals. 2. By radical (already explained). 3. Phonetic classification; by rhymes - In 500 AD, Shen Yao introduced the system, fan ch’ieh, which consists of associating for the expression of a sound of any unknown character, two other characters , the first which gives the initial consonant, the second the final vowel. Originally the finals were very numerous, the were about 206 finals to 36 initials, and finally this was reduced (by gathering all in one category that rhymed by Chinese prosody). To find a character, one must know the tone, then it’s prosodical category. 4. Phonetic Classification by sounds - This is the closest approach to alphabetizing any of the Chinese classifications came. Fan T’eng-feng invented this system, there were 20 initials and 12 finals. The drawback is that sounds like i, ih u, ei were confounded (dieresis over u). It was the most popular dictionary in the Ch’ing dynasty. Taken from: “Chinese Characters: their origin, etymology, history, classification, and signification” by Dr. L. Weiger, S.J. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2001, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-chinese-words-spelled-phonetically/71501/43 "2001-07-12T14:08:08Z")
While we’ve got all the people knowledgeable about chinese language: I read once a long time ago that even the chinese themselves debated among themselves whether there were “tones” in their language or not. The story was that there was this big dramatic moment in an emperor’s court where a scholarly cleverly proved that it was so, thereby saving his own life. My memory is hazy. Anyone else ever heard this? Is there any truth to it? -Kris ---
**Author:** ![OxyMoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e9a140/32.png) [@OxyMoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OxyMoron)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2001, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-chinese-words-spelled-phonetically/71501/44 "2001-07-12T15:07:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by friedo \* > \*\*Many Chinese characters are phonetic to a degree. Part of many characters is phoentic and part ideographical. As an example, the word for “horse” (“ma”) is made up of the radicals for (you guessed it) horse, which is the meaning, and female, which by itself is also pronounced “ma” but with a slightly different intonation. Two female radicals together is “mama” which means (you guessed it 🙂 ) “mother.” > > But I have no clue how you would look something up in a phone book or dictionary. > > \*\* For Japanese: This is in another thread, but I’m not about to burden our poor search engine when the answer’s pretty easy. 🙂 Anyway, with Japanese you have parallel phonetic characters that (in modern times) have a logical order: a i u e o ka ki ku ke ko, etc. Dictionaries are generally ordered on this concept, but of course it only works if you know the reading of the kanji you’re looking at. If you don’t, you have to work with the Chinese system of radicals described above. Initially it’s cumbersome as hell, but within a few months I found it not much more time-consuming than using an English dictionary. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-chinese-words-spelled-phonetically/71501.md?page=2)