Today I am answering some of the questions I’ve been collecting from my classes.
The very first question is how to pronounce differently s and sh. S is very simple, like s in the English word snake. Sh is very simple too, like sh in the English word bush. The key to pronouncing them differently is the tongue position. When you pronounce s, the tip of your tongue touches the front teeth and it is flat. That’s why we call it a flat tongue sound. When you pronounce sh, the tip of your tongue is curled up. That is why we call it a curled tongue sound.
The second question is regarding the word combination. The question is like this: the word 中 means the middle and the word 间 means between, but the word 中间 means in the middle too. Why do you need 间, why doesn’t the character 中 stand alone to indicate the full meaning? The reason for that is in Modern Chinese language a lot of words share the same sounds and therefore there are a huge number of homophonic words, which make spoken communication quite hard sometimes. To solve this problem, modern Chinese combines characters, in many cases of identical meaning, to build two-syllable words like 中间。 In other cases, we use prefix or suffix to form two-syllable words like 老 in 老鼠， 子in 儿子 ， 头 in 石头. In other cases, we simply repeat the character, like 妈妈 and 爷爷。Why most words are two-syllable words? That is because two-syllable words sound more vivid and better than one character, don’t you agree?
The third question is still concerning combining words together to make a phrase. The question is like this: The word for mouse is 老鼠，but when you say the phrase 鼠年, you drop the 老，why can’t we use老鼠 in the phrase and say 老鼠年.
To understand this, you need to understand that 老 in 老鼠 is just a "suffix"。 老 doesn’t have any meaning here, it is only used to build a new word that has two syllables. The other examples include 老师，老虎 etc. But as soon as you combine these two-syllable words with other new words, 老 itself has no meaning here and therefore you omit 老 in 鼠年. The 鼠character already carries the proper meaning by itself, so there is no need for an extra character老. That’s why we say 鼠年instead of 老鼠年。 The two characters can express the same meaning and are preferred. If I say that 老is "redundant", you might wonder why on earth we just use 鼠 instead of 老鼠？The answer for this goes back to the second question.
Hope you find this post helpful.
Written on December 2019
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