In classical Chinese

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

, ''shengxun'' () or ''yinxun'' () is a practice found in

Chinese dictionaries There are two types of dictionaries regularly used in the Chinese language: list individual Chinese characters, and list words and phrases. Because tens of thousands of characters have been used in written Chinese, Chinese lexicographers have d ...

where characters are explained by use of a

homophone A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning or in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (past tense of "rise"), or spelled differently, a ...

or near-homophone. The practice is ancient, and is present in texts predating the

Qin dynasty The Qin dynasty ( ) was the first Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China. It is named for its progenitor state of Qin, a fief of the confederal Zhou dynasty (256 BC). Beginning in 230 BC, the Qin under King Ying Zheng enga ...

(221–206 BC). The ancient ''

Shiming The ''Shiming'', also known as the ''Yiya'', is a Chinese dictionary that employed phonological glosses, and is believed have been composed . Because it records the pronunciation of an Eastern Han Chinese dialect, sinologists have used the ''S ...

'' () dictionary is notable for using ''shengxun'' for most of its definitions, and the highly influential ''

Shuowen Jiezi The ''Shuowen Jiezi'' is a Chinese dictionary compiled by Xu Shen , during the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE). While prefigured by earlier reference works for Chinese characters like the ''Erya'' (), the ''Shuowen Jiezi'' contains the ...

'' compiled by

Xu Shen Xu Shen () was a Chinese calligrapher, philologist, politician, and writer of the Eastern Han dynasty (25–189 CE). During his own lifetime, Xu was recognized as a preeminent scholar of the Five Classics. He was the author of ''Shuowen Jiezi'' ...

also employs the technique. For example, Xu's explanation of the word is: The words for 'ghost' and 'return' are near-homophones both in Xu's reading and in modern

Standard Chinese Standard Chinese ( zh, s=现代标准汉语, t=現代標準漢語, p=Xiàndài biāozhǔn hànyǔ, l=modern standard Han speech) is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912–1949). ...

. A similar explanation of the word can be found in the earlier '' Erya'' (). ''Shengxun'' can be highly fanciful, and often results in

folk etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...

. Put another way, the practice points to a notion of , or what

Bernhard Karlgren Klas Bernhard Johannes Karlgren (; 15 October 1889 – 20 October 1978) was a Swedish sinologist and linguist who pioneered the study of Chinese historical phonology using modern comparative methods. In the early 20th century, Karlgren conduct ...

See also

References

Citations

Works cited