Author: Liu Haiyan (Associate Professor, School of Law, Communication University of China)
In teaching Chinese as a foreign language, a student asked me this question: The seventh edition of Modern Chinese Dictionary (Modern Chinese for short) has the phonetic notation of "Tiā nxuá n-dí zhuà n", and the phonetic notation of "Zhuan Zhu" is "Xuán Zhu m \u n". Why are the two words "Zhuan Zhu" pronounced differently?
In order to better answer this question, let's first talk about the pronunciation and meaning of "Zhuan".
"Zhu ǐ n" has two pronunciations: "Zhu ǐ n" and "zhàn". Different pronunciations have different meanings.
Reading Zhu m: n means "changing direction, position, etc.", for example:
(1) Turn left at the first crossing and walk for 200 meters.
(2) Don't turn your head to me, turn your face away.
It means "around a circle, around a center". For example:
The wheels turn very fast.
He walked around the playground several times.
That is to say, "Zhuan Zhu" and "Zhuan Zhu" are both movements, but the trajectory of "Zhuan Zhu" is arc-shaped, just changing the direction and position, while the trajectory of "Zhuan Zhu" is circular. Because they have different meanings, they will form different words.
The vocabulary of "Zhuan Zhu N" includes: "Turn around, turn over, turn around, twist, change, turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around" and so on. The word "turn" in these words means "change direction or position due to movement", because its meaning is limited after combination. For example, after the combination of "Zhuan" and "Zhuan", "Zhuan" means that "Zhuan is not straight and has a certain radian", and the movement track of "Zhuan" is arc, which should be read as "Zhuan m: n Bend".
The word "turn" consists of "revolution, revolution, rotation, converter, revolving door, rotary mill, rotation, turntable, revolving ladder, swivel chair, rotating shaft, rotor, connecting shaft, revolution and rotation" and so on. The word "turn" in these words means "make a circular motion". For example, the word "circle" in "Zhuan" means "ring" and the trajectory of "Zhuan" is circular, so it should be read as "Zhuan circle".
But some words can't define the meaning of "Zhuan", so the pronunciation can't be determined. For example, "turn" and "move" do not explain whether the trajectory of "turn" is arc or circle. At this time, it depends on the combination of "Zhuan" and other words, such as "Turn your head slowly to the left, and look back to the left", which means that your head has moved and your direction has changed, so it should be pronounced as "Zhuan m: n move" and "Rotation" and "Rotation"
The above discussion shows that to determine the pronunciation of "rotation", we must first look at the meaning of "rotation" and the combination of words and "rotation". "Xuan" means "circle movement", such as "circle, circle", and "Xuan" and "turn" are synonymous compounds, so the meaning of "turn" is the same, so "turn" should be read as "turn".
Look at the context of "rotation" again;
(5) The gyro rotates at high speed.
(6) The earth always goes around the sun.
The trajectories of gyro rotation and earth rotation are circular or annular, so "rotation" should be pronounced as "xuánzhuàn".
Obviously, it is inappropriate to read "rotation" as "xuanzhu" in the seventh edition of Modern Chinese. On the one hand, this is because the phonetic notation does not match the meaning. Please compare the phonetic notation and interpretation of "Zhuan" and "Zhuan" in the 7th edition of Modern Chinese.
Turn zhàn① Turn: The wheels turn very fast. (2) move around something; Turn around: ~ Circle | ~ Come and go. (3) A circle is called a circle.
Rotate xuá nzhu m: n [Move] An object moves in a circle around a point or an axis. For example, the earth rotates around the earth's axis and also around the sun.
Note "zhàn" means that a single word is synonymous with a compound word with "rotation", so this single word is synonymous with the same word in a compound word, and its pronunciation should be the same. There are many similar examples. For example, modern Korean notes "thinking and convenience" respectively, so "thinking and convenience" is synonymous with "thinking and convenience".
On the other hand, it is because the voice system is not coordinated enough. For example, the seventh edition of Modern Han has a phonetic notation of "Everything is spinning":
Very dizzy. Tiānxuán-dēZhuàn describes the feeling of dizziness: I just feel dizzy.
There is a figure of speech in Chinese called intertextuality, which means that the same thing is said separately, but the meanings complement each other and express a complete meaning. For example, "upside down" should be understood as "heaven and earth upside down", which is just a different expression with basically the same meaning. Mao Zedong's poems "Handstand Generous" and "Try to See the Turn of Heaven and Earth" are proof that the same "everything turns" should also be understood as "the turn of heaven and earth". Therefore, the phonetic notation of "everything turns" and "rotation" is inconsistent, which shows that the phonetic notation system is not coordinated enough, which is easy to arouse learners' doubts and is not convenient for learners to remember. Therefore, it is safer to change the "rotation" phonetic notation to xuánzhuàn, which is more in line with the phonetic notation system.
Guangming Daily (September 3, 20 17? Version 12)