Talk:言

Shanghainese pronunciation

@Wyang Hi Frank. Is it /ɦi²³/, as in the main table or /ȵi¹³/ as in the dialectal pronunciation table? Minidict gives "yie" (平). --Anatoli T. ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 13:13, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

3hhi is the usual pronunciation. There may be some colloquial words which use 3nyi, but I can't think of any. The table value has been changed. Wyang (talk) 03:55, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Graphic similarity to 宫

There is a marked similarity of the characters 言 and 宫 if you aren't looking closely- the upper square of 宫 can look like the two lines in 言. I don't know if that would make this worthy of an "also" at the top of the page. It would probably require that other people had made a similar mistake and that the mistake was documented in the literature somewhere. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:33, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Chinese Glyph origin

When I visited the page (25 April 2025) this section pointed to a linked source after "of the tongue", the source being https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/yanbian?char=%E8%A8%80

I like sources, great.

But the section contains more information than the source provides. Additionally, the source it points to actually lists several separate sources with conflicting analyses, which the section seems to combine according to the editors own interpretation? It is not clear. Compare the current section, the source, and a chatGPT translation.

Ideogram (指事): 言 was created by adding a horizontal stroke to the top of the ancient version of 舌 to indicate movement of the tongue. This indicates speech, where 舌 is a mouth (口) with a tongue sticking out; hence 舌 doesn't indicate the speech, but the tongue as an organ of the body. In the modern version, another horizontal stroke (then stylized as a point) was added on top and the vertical body of the tongue disappeared. See also 音.

Shuowen erroneously analyzes the glyph as a phono-semantic compound (形聲 / 形声): phonetic 䇂 (qiān) + semantic 口 (“mouth”).

The text of the source:

鄭樵《通志》：“言，从二、从舌。二，古文上字。自舌上而出者，言也。”郭沫若《甲骨文字研究》：“（言的甲骨文像以口吹簫），《爾雅》云：‘大簫謂之言。’按：此當為言之本義。”“其轉化為言說之言者，蓋引申之義也。”《漢語大字典》按：“甲骨文｀言’像舌從口中伸出形。”

Here's the English translation of the passage:

Zheng Qiao’s Tongzhi:

“The character 言 is composed of 二 (two) and 舌 (tongue). The component 二 is an ancient form of the character 上 (above). That which comes out from above the tongue is called speech (言).”

Guo Moruo’s Studies on Oracle Bone Script:

“(The oracle bone form of 言 resembles someone blowing a flute from the mouth). The Erya says: ‘A large flute is called yan (言).’ According to this, that should be the original meaning of yan (言).” “Its transformation into the meaning of speaking is likely a derived or extended meaning.”

According to the Comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Characters (《漢語大字典》):

“The oracle bone script form of 言 resembles a tongue extending out from the mouth.”

Hurdsean (talk) 15:53, 25 April 2025 (UTC)