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Pò 破 literally means ‘break’,  pòyīn 破音 ‘break the pronunciation’, that is: break the usual convention in pronouncing a Chinese character, not to read it in its usual pronunciation. Pòyīnzì 破音字 then refers to a character having, in addition to its usual pronunciation, another pronunciation for a different meaning. There are two major reasons for the emergence of pòyīnzì. First, there is the loangraph ( jiǎjiè 假借) phenomenon. When referring to a morpheme that lacked a character or that had not been consistently represented by a single character, ancient wri…

Fǎnqiè 反切 is a traditional convention for showing the pronunciation of Chinese characters, which are logographic and almost always monosyllabic in pronunciation. The convention uses different components in the pronunciations of two characters to put together the pronunciation of another character. Specifically, the initial of the first character combines with the final (including the tone) of the second character to render a monosyllabic pronunciation. For example, one may encounter the four-character sequence sǎo, sū lǎo fǎn 嫂, 蘇老反, which means the pronunciation of th…