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…