Editing Homophone (section)

=== Mandarin Chinese ===
Due to phonological constraints in [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]] syllables (as Mandarin only allows for an initial consonant, a vowel, and a nasal or retroflex consonant in respective order), there are only a little over 400&nbsp;possible unique syllables that can be produced,<ref>{{cite web |date=2017-07-07 |title=Is there any similarity between Chinese and English? |website=Learn Mandarin Chinese Online |series=Study Online Mandarin Chinese Courses |lang=en-US |url=https://www.newconceptmandarin.com/learn-chinese-blog/similarities-chinese-english/ |access-date=2020-12-18 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125191859/https://www.newconceptmandarin.com/learn-chinese-blog/similarities-chinese-english/ |archive-date=2021-01-25}}</ref> compared to over 15,831 in the English language.<ref>{{cite web |author=Barker |date=2016-08-22 |title=Syllables |department=Linguistics |publisher=[[New York University]] |url=http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Syllables/index.txt |access-date=2020-12-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160822211027/http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Syllables/index.txt |archive-date=2016-08-22}}</ref>

Chinese has an entire genre of poems taking advantage of the large amount of homophones called [[one-syllable article]]s, or poems where every single word in the poem is pronounced as the same syllable if tones are disregarded. An example is the ''[[Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den]].''

Like all Chinese languages, Mandarin uses phonemic tones to distinguish homophonic syllables; Mandarin has five tones. A famous example,
* {{translit|cmn|mā}} ({{lang|cmn|妈}}) means "mother"
* {{translit|cmn|má}} ({{lang|cmn|麻}}) means "hemp"
* {{translit|cmn|mă}} ({{lang|cmn|马}}) means "horse"
* {{translit|cmn|mà}} ({{lang|cmn|骂}}) means "scold"
* {{translit|cmn|ma}} ({{lang|cmn|吗}}) is a yes / no question particle

Although all these words consist of the same string of consonants and vowels, the only way to distinguish each of these words audibly is by listening to which tone the word has, and as shown above, saying a consonant-vowel string using a different tone can produce an entirely different word altogether. If tones are included, the number of unique syllables in Mandarin increases to at least 1,522.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

However, even with tones, Mandarin retains a very large amount of homophones. ''Yì'', for example, has at least 125&nbsp;homophones,<ref>{{cite web |last=Chang |first=Chao-Huang |title=Corpus-based adaptation mechanisms for Chinese Homophone disambiguation |url=https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W93-0311.pdf |access-date=2020-12-18 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414135958/https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W93-0311.pdf |archive-date=2021-04-14}}</ref> and it is the pronunciation used for [[Chinese characters]] such as 义, 意, 易, 亿, 议, 一, and 已.

There are even place names in China that have identical pronunciations, aside for the difference in tone. For example, there are two neighboring provinces with nearly identical names, [[Shanxi]] ({{lang|cmn|山西}}) and [[Shaanxi]] ({{lang|cmn|陕西}}). The only difference in pronunciation between the two names are the tone in the first syllable (Shanxi is pronounced {{Audio|zh-Shanxi.ogg|{{translit|cmn|Shānxī}}|help=no}} whereas Shaanxi is pronounced {{Audio|zh-Shaanxi.ogg|{{translit|cmn|Shǎnxī}}|help=no}}). As most languages exclude the [[Mandarin tones|tone]] [[Diacritic|diacritics]] when transcribing Chinese place names into their own languages, the only way to visually distinguish the two names is to write Shaanxi in [[Gwoyeu Romatzyh]] [[romanization]]. Otherwise, nearly all other spellings of placenames in mainland China are spelled using [[Pinyin|Hanyu Pinyin]] romanization.

Many scholars believe that the Chinese language did not always have such a large number of homophones and that the phonological structure of Chinese syllables was once more complex, which allowed for a larger amount of possible syllables so that words sounded more distinct from each other.

{{See also|Old Chinese phonology}}

Scholars also believe that Old Chinese had no phonemic tones, but tones emerged in [[Middle Chinese]] to replace sounds that were lost from Old Chinese. Since words in Old Chinese sounded more distinct from each other at this time, it explains why many words in [[Classical Chinese]] consisted of only one syllable. For example, the [[Standard Chinese|Standard Mandarin]] word 狮子(''shīzi'', meaning "lion") was simply 狮 (''shī'') in Classical Chinese, and the Standard Mandarin word 教育 (''jiàoyù,'' "education") was simply 教 (''jiào'') in Classical Chinese.

{{See also|Classical Chinese lexicon}}

Since many Chinese words became homophonic over the centuries, it became difficult to distinguish words when listening to documents written in Classical Chinese being read aloud. One-syllable articles like those mentioned above are evidence for this. For this reason, many one-syllable words from Classical Chinese became two-syllable words, like the words mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Even with the existence of two- or two-syllable words, however, there are even multisyllabic homophones. And there are also a lot of harmonic words. The cultural phenomenon brought about by such linguistic characteristics is that from ancient times to the present day, people have been keen to play games and jokes with homophonic and harmonic words. In modern life, the influence of homophones can be seen everywhere, from CCTV evening sketch programmes, folk art performances and popular folk life. In recent years, receiving the influence of Internet pop culture, young people have invented more new and popular homophones.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-07-05 |title=Mandarin Homophones Explained: Enhance Your Chinese Language Skills |url=https://chinesevoyage.org/mandarin-homophones-explained/ |access-date=2024-07-04 |website=chinesevoyage.org |language=en-US}}</ref> Homophones even play a major role in daily life throughout China, including Spring Festival traditions, which gifts to give (and not give), political criticism, texting, and many other aspects of people's lives.<ref>{{cite web |title=Chinese Homophones and Chinese Customs |website=yoyochinese.com |type=blog |url=https://www.yoyochinese.com/blog/Chinese-Homophones-Chinese-Customs |access-date=2020-12-18 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210409045334/https://www.yoyochinese.com/blog/Chinese-Homophones-Chinese-Customs |archive-date=2021-04-09}}</ref>

{{See also|Homophonic puns in Standard Chinese}}

Another complication that arises within the Chinese language is that in non-rap songs, tones are disregarded in favor of maintaining [[melody]] in the song.<ref>{{cite web |title=How do people sing in a tonal language? |date=2016-09-08 |website=Diplomatic Language Services |url=https://dlsdc.com/blog/how-do-people-sing-in-a-tonal-language/ |access-date=2020-12-30 |url-status=live |language=en-US |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201128111951/https://dlsdc.com/blog/how-do-people-sing-in-a-tonal-language/ |archive-date=2020-11-28}}</ref> While in most cases, the lack of phonemic tones in music does not cause confusion among native speakers, there are instances where [[pun]]s may arise.

Subtitles in Chinese characters are usually displayed on music videos and in songs sung on movies and TV shows to disambiguate the song's lyrics.