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This is a far smaller number of distinct syllables than in a language such as English. Since Chinese syllables usually constitute whole words, or at least morphemes, the smallness of the syllable inventory results in large numbers of homophones. However, in Standard Chinese, the average word length is actually almost exactly two syllables ...
Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past. As Chinese is written with logographic characters, not alphabetic or syllabary, the methods employed in Historical Chinese phonology differ considerably from those employed in, for example, Indo-European linguistics; reconstruction is more difficult because, unlike Indo-European languages, no phonetic ...
List of languages Language Language family Phonemes Notes Ref Total Consonants Vowels, tones and stress Arabic (Standard): Afroasiatic: 34: 28 6 Modern spoken dialects might have a different number of phonemes; for exmple the long vowels /eː/ and /oː/ are phonemic in most Mashriqi dialects.
Chinese phonology is covered by the following articles: Concerning modern Chinese: Standard Chinese phonology; Cantonese phonology; For the phonology of other varieties of Chinese, see the articles on the particular varieties; For an overview, see Varieties of Chinese → Phonology; Concerning pre-modern Chinese: Historical Chinese phonology
Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. Although the writing system does not describe sounds directly, shared phonetic components of the most ancient Chinese characters are believed to link words that were pronounced similarly at that time.
In traditional Chinese phonology, syllables that ended in a stop in Middle Chinese (i.e. /p/, /t/ or /k/) were considered to belong to a special category known as the "entering tone". These final stops have disappeared in most Mandarin dialects, with the syllables distributed over the other four modern tones in different ways in the various ...
This tone is known in traditional Chinese linguistics as the entering (入 rù) tone, a term commonly used in English as well. The other three tones were termed the level (or even ) tone ( 平 píng ), the rising ( 上 shǎng ) tone, and the departing (or going ) tone ( 去 qù ). [ 2 ]
Chinese varieties have the greatest differences in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants.