Hi everyone! It is now another session for Chinese character discovery!

In this post we will be looking into another new Chinese character that represents part of the human.
That one part of the human that can be used both input and output.

Can you recall any part of your body that actually has both input and output function?

Hint:

It is 99% of the time not concealed.

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You can see it every day.

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You use it every day.

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Most women use it more often than men.

(I am pretty sure some, or even most of you, agree to that)

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In this post, we discover the word – mouth

It is very simple to identify the word because it shows what it is literally.

Especially when it is opened; well, we will just imagine no teeth were shown and no tooth were plugged out of this sharing.

The mouth is very useful to a human, you can use to enjoy food, drinks, and also, you use it to express with sounds and words.

And it is that simple. One square says it all.

So what does it happen when you start to multiply it? Let’s have a look.

This word is actually only exist in the simplified version of the Chinese character and it is not commonly used, as it is more complicated to write it in the traditional format (which I will explain in the future). But this word’s pronunciation is more than one; and in this post, we will only look at one of them.

When you look at the word above, with a x2 multiplied mouth, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

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You amplify what you need to speak out?

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How about you amplify the sound of your mouth?

Such as, in the usual English comic context:

*Image courtesy from Georgia Girl in Toronto

That’s right folks. The word 吅 is the word to express when you are letting out your frustration.

When you are frustrated, you can 吅 it out near the airport when you see a plane pass you by, or even by the sea; and you will feel better.

Ever heard that from a friend’s advice? I know I used to have friends do that with me.

Quite a useful word, isn’t it?

How about multiplying the mouth x3?

What would you get?

Now this word takes a turn, it is not talking about letting out frustration anymore, but it speaks of something that attracts more than one “mouth” to talk about it.

What is the first thing that comes to your mind to describe anything that requires more than one mouth to describe it?

A product?

A quality product?

That’s right; anything that you need to emphasise the quality you will see this word in a phrase or a sentence.

So, you see that sometimes when you multiply the mouth, it could be explaining a verb (gesture) or it can be teamed up to become a noun.

But what happens when something as good as 品 adds a mountain underneath it?

Remember the previous sharing of the word “bing” 仌 there was an indication of “compress” or “suppress” element in it?

And when you “suppress” a mountain with amplified emphasizing, what happens?

Let me try to explain it into a sentence:

“You keep talking from sun rise (from the mountain) to sunset (where the sun hides behind the mountain)”

Which means: You YAP all the time!

It explains a person who talks too much, or nags too much (negatively)

It also has other negative elements into the word above, but we can look into that in the future.

The word above is hardly used these days, but it sometimes exists in Taiwan or Cantonese vocabulary.

There’s another twist!

What if you reverse the mountain and the product? (this is a traditional spelling, which could still exist in Taiwan or Hong Kong)

This tradition spelling of the word above represents “rock” A “mountain with quality”. It used to pair with other words that form into expressing quality stones like marble, granite etc.

That’s all for this post! Do you find you have more understanding of the root Chinese character “mouth” and how it can express into other words with multiplication?

Let me know at the comments below!