Group items tagged

Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings. This article explains what homophones are in the Chinese language, how it impacts Chinese culture, and provides examples.

Chinese New Year, known in China as Spring Festival, has an abundance of unique traditions associated with it. Some of these traditions are more widespread than others. Among the many New Year's customs are a few whose meaning is derived from puns of Mandarin words.

This Wikipedia article details several categorical contexts, e.g. Internet posts, text messages, Chinese New Year, in which Chinese homophonic punning is used.

An interesting (if crass read) about how Chinese Internet users have circumvented governmental censorship via homophonic, sometimes cross-lingual puns, often taking the form of Internet memes, in order to talk about forbidden topics, use taboo words, or criticize the government.

Just in time to celebrate the Year of the Dragon, a comprehensive listing of lucky foods to eat for Chinese New Year. Generally, these foods fall into two categories: they either physically resemble lucky objects (e.g. dumplings look like gold ingots, carrot rounds look like coins) or are homophonic with auspicious phrases (e.g. "ye zi"= coconut, sounds like the words for "father/son", conveying the idea of harmonious parent-child relations). Food for thought.

It's often said that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. Given the fact that many of the words we use in English stem from Latin and Ancient Greek words - in common with many other European languages - what is it about English that has attracted this reputation for being so fearsomely difficult?

Learning a foreign language is hard. Learning English as a foreign language is also very hard. Words in the English language that we speak, say and write without question might not make sense to foreigners because of the many "exceptions" that comes with the English language. This article discusses what makes English so challenging for foreigners to learn. In particular, it gives examples of pronunciation and spelling, emphasis, homophones, synonyms, idioms, and dialects.

In order to evade government censors blocking free expression, Chinese social media posters utilize homophonic (same sound) and logographic (character) resemblances in order to voice controversial/politically-charged content.

Grateful shout-out to Thomas Morris '13 for this link, which aggregates language-related podcasts from Public Radio International. Listen on iTunes for free or stream the story links on the website. Some of the highlights: "Dim Sum Warriors" a Chinese/English bilingual comic book app, the homophonic reason why Chinese marriages spiked on 1/4/2013, a 13 year old language activist teaching Kurdish, a banned language, in Turkey...