Expert: Sir William - 2/7/2011

Question
I just started learning Mandarin Chinese and it seems to me like there are many words in Chinese that sound exactly the same including the same tone. When my friends watch movies in Chinese, they always watch them with Chinese subtitles, while English movies can be easily understood without English subtitles. So I was wondering if Chinese speakers can understand a phrase or sentence containing homonyms that is taken out of context and if so, how do they know which meaning the speaker wanted to convey?

Answer
Dear KP,

Thank you for your question.

There are many words in Chinese that sound almost (some, exactly) the same including the same tone. The same thing applies to many other languages, I suppose. (e.g. in English, see and sea, land and lend, band and bend.)

Personally, I am not sure if I can understand precisely a phrase or sentence containing homonyms that is taken out of context. A lot of the times, however, I had to pretend that I understand - in order to be polite.

Some interesting facts: there are 7 languages and 80 different dialects in the Mainland China. The Chinese characters in use are about 40,000.  

Having "a few words" that sound the same makes learning the language more challenging. Isn't it?   

I believe we have to keep learning (and practicing) the language(s) that we are interested in.

Have a nice day,

Sir William