The Tyranny of Chinese Spelling: The 'Passionfruit' Case 誤導外國人的漢語拼音：茅塞頓開 (百香果)

Modifying the spelling shows that bǎixiāngguǒ is the Chinese pronunciation of passionfruit. A disguised English word! Aha!

Hanyu Pinyin, China's official spelling system, was devised for the convenience of Chinese people. Although it is also used to teach foreigners, the strangeness of certain symbols makes learning Chinese unnecessarily difficult for foreigners, especially English speakers.

By changing the way Chinese words are spelled, we can easily see that certain Chinese words are borrowed from other languages. This makes Chinese much easier to learn and remember.

Let's see how this works for bǎixiāngguǒ

There are five key points:

(1) In Pinyin romanization (China's official spelling for Chinese words, promulgated in 1958), “b” and “p” do not stand for the same sounds as English “b” and “p”.

Pinyin's “b” and “p” are actually variations of the English sound “p”: Chinese “bai” sounds like English “spy” with the “s” cut off. In linguistic terms, Pinyin's “b” is an unaspirated “p”, very similar to a French or Spanish “p”.

Similarly, Pinyin's “g” and “k” are variations of the English sound “k”: Chinese “guo” sounds like English “squall” with the “s” cut off. In linguistic terms, Pinyin's “g” is an unaspirated “k”, very similar to a French or Spanish “c” before “a” or “o”.

(2) Pinyin's “x” is like an “sh” sound in English, but with the front of the tongue (the blade) flattened out. Notice that the word “passion” in English also contains the sound “sh”.

(3) The two “i” sounds are semivowel glides, much less important than the main vowel, a. We can thus rewrite bǎi and xiāng as “pa” and “shan” with tiny “i” sounds clipped on.

(4) The -n and -ng sounds at the end of syllables do not always sound different to Chinese ears. Some Chinese people mix up these sounds. Thus, -an and -ang can sometimes be interchanged.

(5) Last of all, notice that the word 果guǒ in Chinese means “fruit”

Let's put these facts into a table:

Now it is very easy to see that the “strange” Chinese word bǎixiāngguǒ is just a slightly different way to pronounce the English word **passionfruit”.

Even more interesting: the three Chinese characters that were chosen to render “passionfruit” have a very appropriate meaning as well: the “hundred 百, fragrance 香, fruit 果”! Passionfruit is indeed a very fragrant fruit.

Modern Chinese vocabulary includes hundreds of such cleverly translated compound words. Learning Chinese is fun and much easier than people think!

Related Post:
Passionfruit in Taiwan 台灣的百香果
https://steemitstage.com/cn/@wentong-syhhae/passionfruit-in-taiwan