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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 1430561" data-attributes="member: 3424">I have a passing familiarity with Chinese, having been required to study it as a second language for 11 years&nbsp; :\.&nbsp; It's not exactly true that most &quot;component words&quot; (for want of a better term) have no meaning outside of the compound words.&nbsp; Each component word has a general meaning, which combines with the general meaning of the other word to form a more specific meaning for the compound word.For example: dian4* has the general meaning of electricity.&nbsp; It can be combined with &quot;flash&quot; or &quot;fast&quot; (shan3) to mean lightning (shan3 dian4).&nbsp; It can be combined with &quot;reservoir&quot; (ci2) to mean battery (dian4 ci2).&nbsp; It can be combined with &quot;lamp&quot; (deng1) to mean electric light (dian4 deng1).In addition, not all compound words are exactly two letters long.&nbsp; The compound word dian4 deng1 pao4 (&quot;electric lamp bubble&quot;) means &quot;light bulb&quot;.&nbsp; It also has the connotative meaning of a third person who hangs around a couple, i.e. a gooseberry.Chinese does have plenty of homonyms. The component word for electricity (dian4) also sounds the same as the component word for &quot;shop&quot; or &quot;store&quot;, so if I just say the word dian4 without any modifiers or context, you wouldn't know what I was talking about.* Note: Chinese words generally have four intonations.&nbsp; As I'm not sure how to get accented characters on my keyboard, I've fallen back on the convention of denoting intonation with a number after the word</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 1430561, member: 3424"] I have a passing familiarity with Chinese, having been required to study it as a second language for 11 years :\. It's not exactly true that most "component words" (for want of a better term) have no meaning outside of the compound words. Each component word has a general meaning, which combines with the general meaning of the other word to form a more specific meaning for the compound word. For example: [I]dian4[/I]* has the general meaning of electricity. It can be combined with "flash" or "fast" ([I]shan3[/I]) to mean lightning ([I]shan3 dian4[/I]). It can be combined with "reservoir" ([I]ci2[/I]) to mean battery ([I]dian4 ci2[/I]). It can be combined with "lamp" ([I]deng1[/I]) to mean electric light ([I]dian4 deng1[/I]). In addition, not all compound words are exactly two letters long. The compound word [I]dian4 deng1 pao4[/I] ("electric lamp bubble") means "light bulb". It also has the connotative meaning of a third person who hangs around a couple, i.e. a gooseberry. Chinese does have plenty of homonyms. The component word for electricity ([I]dian4[/I]) also sounds the same as the component word for "shop" or "store", so if I just say the word [I]dian4[/I] without any modifiers or context, you wouldn't know what I was talking about. * Note: Chinese words generally have four intonations. As I'm not sure how to get accented characters on my keyboard, I've fallen back on the convention of denoting intonation with a number after the word [/QUOTE]

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