A word which has more than one pronunciation(多音字)
One character is in my brain forever. This character is 的, which is a character has more than one pronunciation.
It was the time when I was in elementary school. In some exam of Chinese subject, I racked my brains to try to figure out what the pronunciation was for the words “的确良”.
Before that exam, I remembered so clearly I did not know this word.
After the exam, I went back home. My mom told me,
你 穿 的 就 是 的确良
nǐ chuān de jiù shì díquèliáng
I finally understood that there are three kinds of pronunciation for that character.
的 [de] (From nciku)
* 1. 用在定语的后面 used after an attribute ; to
* 2. used to form a noun phrase or nominal expression
* 3. used after a verb or between a verb and its object to stress an element of the sentence
eg 我的书包(my bag)
的 [dí] (From nciku)
* 1. true ; really eg 的确
* 2. taxi eg 打的
的 [dí] (From nciku)
eg 的确良(dacron ; terylene)
的 [dì] (From nciku)
* target ; bull’s-eye
eg 中的
In Chinese, there are many words with multiple pronunciations. I did not find such phenomena in English. That was interesting.