Why Chinese HATES 1 Syllable Words

[@ABChinese]

Hello beautiful people! So I've seen some criticism of this video in the comments and would like to address them all here. 1) This video only addresses, Mandarin Chinese and does not reflect Cantonese or other dialects. 2) Yes, ancient Chinese stressed one character words. I briefly cover how Chinese moved towards disyllabic words in part 2: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6eQlqyhZad1a9k 3) 听众 is a more common word, but I used 听者 only as a demonstration because 者 corresponds to the meaning of "-ence" in "audience". 4) "Chinese" in the title refers to the language, not people. And don't take the title too literally... 5) Native speakers, please keep in mind this video is meant for learners of Chinese who are often confused on how words are constructed in Chinese. It's not meant to be a high level dissection of linguistic knowledge. 6) Finally, looking back, I probably could have used some better examples, so here's a better example to demonstrate how 2 syllables is more concrete. 我心里有你 = (LIT. "I have you in my heart") aka "I care about you". 我心脏里有你 = You are literally in my heart (the organ) somehow. 哈喽各位同学们！由于某些人在评论区批评本视频的内容，我想在这里总结反驳。 1）本视频以普通话为主，而不代表粤语或者其它方言。 2）古文的确重视单音词。我在视频part 2简单的解释了这一点：kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6eQlqyhZad1a9k 3）听众的确是更常用的词汇，但是我用“听者”是为了对照英文的audience，因为“者”的意思和"-ence"的意思相同 4）视频题目的"Chinese"是指中文，而不是中国人。也别太纠缠它的详细含义了。。。 5）温馨提示，本视频的目的是为了解释给那些不了解汉字是如何组合的外国朋友而制作的，而不是中文语言的高级分析。 6）最后，我回头看也同样觉得我的例子可能不是最明确的，所以再送大家一个展示单音VS双音区别的例子。“我心里有你” = 我关心你。“我心脏里有你” = 你这人真的跑进我器官里了。

[@Aznbomb3r]

Lol, I was about to make a comment about other dialects. I believe the reason mandarin hates single syllable words because it has more homophones(possibly 10 times more than Cantonese) than other dialects, making the language insanely hard to understand if it didn't have another word attached.

[@marcussanderson9363]

@@johnbeeckler Wow why so aggressive? Also he didn't say you can't use them as single characters, just that in some situations it can cause confusion.

[@ABChinese]

Since you took the time to write this extremely long comment, I'll respond. First, did you even watch the whole video? I talked about the purpose of 子 at the end. Now, you make good points, but the reason why this video is so helpful to my viewers but irritatingly bad for you is because this video is meant to explain confusing concepts to BEGINNER learners of Chinese, to help them learn COLLOQUIAL Chinese. To them, they won't understand why when they want to translate "eye", both 眼 and 眼睛 are valid answers. They don't care about Ancient Chinese or regional dialects or advanced literature. Of course I know you can create rich language with single character words. Anyone who's read the most basic 静夜思 would know that. I do think my explanation on 你看他的眼 was not that great, so I might make a future video addressing that. My point is that in that sentence, you only know the meaning of 眼 by deduction - the same way "I wear glasses" is usually not ambiguous, but the complete, and more precise form is "I wear eyeglasses". Anyways, I always welcome criticism because that keeps me accountable, but like I said, try to view this video from the angle of beginner learners and I think you'll see why I did things this way.

[@HyperLuigi37]

I wonder if one reason Chinese was mistaken for the people rather than the language among Chinese speakers is because of the long-prevailing mistake of thinking nationalities like Chinese and Japanese that end in -ese can be used as the language, an adverb, AND as a stand-alone noun, because the abundance of -an nationalities work this way. This is a common mistake among Japanese English speakers (I've been learning Japanese and have seen it in many videos I watch made in English by Japanese speakers, and I believe I've heard Chinese natives make it too), and so reading the title with that mistaken understanding in mind, one might come to the conclusion it's talking about the people. Of course, grammatically "hates" would have to be "hate" due to it being theoretically a plural, but it would be easy to not make that connection.

[@黑貓-d6b]

if u learn Cantonese, it keeps more 1 syllable words

[@syldraws]

i had a teacher tell me 子 was added just because it sounds prettier to have 2 syllable words. this video was enlightening!

[@ABChinese]

Sometimes it does feel that way tho 🤣

[@Erik_Emer]

So did mine! My Chinese part of the family "can" speak Cantonese, so coming into Mandarin was an actual shocker.

[@Erik_Emer]

@@skcathk Dude, you can edit your original comment to add more words. Please stop replying to add more because the notifications are annoying.

[@skcathk]

@@Erik_Emer ok sorry!!!

[@anonamatron]

Yeah, that's the only kind of explanation I ever get from native speakers. It's actually the best explanation though, because what that really means is that Chinese native speakers don't know or care why they do that, that's just how it is. If they can speak the language without knowing that, do you need to know it? I've had so many of them bug me for precise explanations about quirks of English, and really the answer is just "because that's what we say". This video made this concept make much more sense, especially the zi words, and I'm happy I stumbled upon it though.

[@oreo8460]

“why chinese hate 1 syllable words” to increase their word count for their compo

[@angelnajera5107]

Character* count. Word count would be the same.

[@baltazarus3307]

Better more compounds, than multiple readings per every damn character (like Japanese on-yomi).

[@faustinuskaryadi6610]

This is actually simply to avoid homophones if you just use single syllable word. So, actually the second syllable is used for context.

[@猪肉普]

If I want to increase the number of words in my composition, I usually use a lot of adjectives. XD

[@kittylam95]

哈哈哈我会不知不觉就写了很多字，短篇对我来说有点难，要不停删减我想写的修辞、形容

[@toothpasteboy1763]

I speak hakka chinese. Most words with 子 in mandarin are monosyllabic in hakka. 椅子 = 凳 桌子 = 檯 襪子 / 袜子 = 襪 / 袜 褲子 / 裤子 = 褲 繩子 / 绳子 = 索 房子 = 屋 孫子 = 孫 葉子 / 叶子 = 葉 / 叶 鍋子 / 锅子 = 鑊 稻子 = 禾 碟子 = 碟 被子 = 被 箱子 = 箱 帽子 = 帽 Here are some others : 眼睛 = 眼 / 目珠 牙齒 / 牙齿 = 牙 美麗 / 美丽 = 靚 / 靓 光亮 = 光 聲音 / 声音 = 聲 / 声 嗓音 = 聲 / 声 味道 = 味 尾巴 = 尾 嘴巴 = 嘴 生氣 / 生气 = 惱 / 恼 修理 = 整 蘑菇 = 菇 翅膀 = 翼 Hakka often uses the suffixes 頭(头) / 嫲 / 公 / 哥 / 仔 太陽 / 太阳 = 日頭 / 日头 早上 = 朝晨頭 / 朝晨头 小時 / 小时 = 鐘頭 / 钟头 罐子 = 罐頭 / 罐头 角落 = 角落頭 / 角落头 牆壁 / 墙壁 = 壁頭 / 壁头 菜刀 = 刀嫲 薑 / 姜 = 薑嫲 / 姜嫲 舌頭 = 舌嫲 勺子 = 勺嫲 雷 = 雷公 蝦 / 虾= 蝦公 / 虾公 螞蟻 / 蚂蚁 = 蟻公 / 蚁公 蚱蜢 = 蜢公 猴子 = 猴哥 小孩子 = 細佬哥 / 细佬哥 螳螂 = 豹虎哥 兔子 = 兔仔 小孩子 = 細人仔 / 细人仔 馬鈴薯 / 马铃薯 = 薯仔 蚊子 = 蚊仔 娃娃 = 公仔

[@LPTang-bj8vi]

粵語人士跑來給你一個大大的讚XDD

[@北梯]

山东话：土豆 / 马铃薯 = 地蛋子🌚 姥姥/外婆 = 姥娘 伯母 = 大娘 / 大妈 一段时间 = 一爿子 早晨 = 清起来 / 大清早 中午 = 晌午 / 晌午头里 以前 = 早里霎 / 以前霎 很久 = 老时届了儿 年初 = 散过喽年 去年 = 年时 奶奶 = 喃喃 花生 = 长果 蘑菇 = 毛菇 瓜子 = 长瓜秆子 / 毛嗑 西红柿 = 洋柿子 蚂蚁 = 米羊 / 马几阳儿 傻 = 憨 聪明 = 精 干活干净利落 = 麻利 月亮 = 老母 泥 = 囷 冰雹 = 巴子 厕所 = 茅房 毛病 = 才坏 /才歪 你说什么 = 啥高(啥三声) 歪门邪道 = 巧了咕咚 一点 = 丁丁个 骗人骗事 = 乌龙 / 糊弄 就是 = 可不含 锅盖 = 盖顶 肥皂 / 香皂 = 胰子

[@김성렬-q5h]

interesting

[@hkrelax]

原來客家話跟廣東話是一樣的嗎？

[@itshry]

我是东南亚华裔，祖籍潮州。母语潮州话。初中学习汉语/华语的时候也有这个困扰。因为在潮州话几乎都是但字词。所以常常用潮州话的结构来说普通话。 普通话 = 潮州话 眼睛 = 目 嘴巴= 嘴 鼻子 =鼻 牙齿= 牙 舌头 =舌 衣服 = 衫 裤子 =裤 被子= 被 椅子=椅 等等

[@annamorning]

As a Chinese native speaker, I had never thought why things are the way they are, what you say make a lot of sense.

[@juyngkwogayo206]

Because that’s not the way it is. Maybe true to “Mandarin Chinese” but not true in other Chinese languages.

[@Jcjjjakks]

Yes, totally agree. (I'm a Chinese native speaker too)

[@user-LinTH]

Agree. But though we native speakers can use "feelings" to use the exact word on the exact circumstance, non-native speakers need a system to explain everything new.

[@timetraveller2300]

classic Chinese is much more efficient.

[@samgyeopsal569]

@@timetraveller2300 because old and middle Chinese had more complex phonology

[@azurev2258]

As a Chinese person myself, I never knew how complicated our language really was. Now I understand the pain of foreigners trying to study our language. 作为中国人，我今天终于领悟到了外国人学我们语言的痛苦。

[@nichol4s338]

Same

[@Vidchemy]

I'm not Chinese. A few years ago, I asked my Taiwanese boss about something I saw in a Chinese market. There must have been romanized translation, because I only know some basic Japanese kanji. He didn't recognise the word, so I pronounced the word several times with different tones until his face lit up and he told me what the food was. Keeping the tones straight would be the hardest part for me if I ever tried to learn the Chinese language

[@アムグス]

@@Vidchemy As a Taiwanese, I could have understand what's the problem that cause confusion to your boss. I think it might because different tones in Chinese means different words or characters ,also means different meanings, for instants, 買( mai ˇ ) pronounced in 3rd tone and means "buy" as a verb. However, 賣 ( mai ˋ ) pronounced in 4th tone means "sell" also as a verb. the 2nd possibility might be the fact that even native Chinese speakers can't recognize all the Chinese character. On the other hand, sometimes we do bump into some words or character that we've never seen before. in this kind of cases, we still need to Google the word. For example, 闕 is a kind of "family names". And most of people I know, they don't even know how to say this character right. Idk what kind of Chinese market you went. if it's traditional market ,the signs might be hand-wrote. and some people's hand writing are much more difficult to recognize even for Chinese speakers. last thing I wanna point out is Japanese kanji's pronunciations are way different than Chinese, so try not to mass them up.

[@0303b]

Same. Chinese is hard.谁在学着中文的，加油哦!

[@azurev2258]

@@0303b 加油

[@wuerhyueh]

As a Chinese speaker, I was very shocked by this incident. I finally know why I like two words better than one. The fear of confusing meanings is a very powerful point, and this habit even extends to naming.

[@5skdm]

yeah even as a beginner, I tend to gravitate to 2 sylabble words so that I can remember them more distinctly because there are so much homophones

[@stevenchen3130]

Using IU as an example of beauty is perfection

[@ABChinese]

Yes, I always use the most perfect examples 😉❤️

[@jacoblee9765]

Yesss

[@bruhbro1181]

@@ABChinese 哈哈IU 是很美丽的。可以加wonyoung 吗

[@kwxutube]

As a matter of fact the “hating 1 syllable word” thing is applicable to Mandarin Chinese rather than Chinese in general. In Cantonese Chinese a lot of those words expressed in 2 characters in mandarin are kept with just 1 syllable. e.g 眼、耳、口、鼻、樽、鏡 It is because Cantonese has many more different sounds and tones and even using 1 syllable is already enough to make the items distinguishable

[@chaomingli6428]

Also, Cantonese is older than Mandarin and more close to the ancient Chinese.

[@MrVan1lla]

但是有的会带来歧义，比如“樽”可以做动词和名词；但“杯子”和“装水”则不会

[@feliciaclark852]

@@MrVan1lla I think Cantonese use 蹲 instead of 樽

[@kreideprxnzessin]

as an hker i agree :D

[@kreideprxnzessin]

@@feliciaclark852 蹲 is verb and 樽 is noun, but we usually use 踎 instead of 蹲 in hk

[@enguinpay600]

Thank you! 'What exactly is a Chinese word and why are they this way' is the kind of thing I have never wanted to ask my teacher - appreciate the explanation and look forward to the rest of the series!

[@marlonschluga]

Very useful! much appreciated

[@tung7055]

语言，没有理由。中文称作“约定俗成”。

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Love this!!

[@ABChinese]

Thanks for coming by!

[@GordonLonghouse]

Praise indeed.

[@SrChatty]

Yeah! This was top-notch stuff! 👍🙂

[@Goodmorningroosterlive]

A good teacher learns from other teachers 😊 I do the same thing as a music teacher. Your channel is also very good. Maybe you two can collaborate some day

[@jonahdunch4056]

Edit: Never mind, as several commenters have pointed out, wănzi (碗子) is wrong. Only pánzi (盤子) is right. 不好意思。 In some cases maybe the "zi" suffix is added to clarify that the word root isn't being used as a measure word, e.g., wănzi (bowl) and pánzi (plate).

[@thomasz.6764]

We don’t say wanzi but we actually say panzi

[@YYLiow]

No I just say Wan or Pan but i will say kuai zi.

[@さユりョケ]

@@thomasz.6764 that u dont say wanzi doesn't mean that nobody does

[@seam3686]

@@さユりョケ 碗子(wanzi) is really weird, it would be misunderstood to丸子（wanzi) easily

[@Strikerzification]

@@さユりョケ I don't think it is used in standard mandarin.

[@NUSORCA]

As a Cantonese speaker I have to say in Cantonese we tend to say an 1 syllable noun and just add a measure noun before it. 你睇佢*隻眼* 除咗你*頂帽* 將眼鏡放喺*張枱* 打開*個盒*

[@김성렬-q5h]

It's really insightful and concise explanation. It also helps to understand the compound words made of Hanja(Chinese character words used in korean) such as moja(帽子;모자, a hat) jeonja(電子;전자, an electron,electonics)

[@petervan7372]

斯密达

[@peterwang5272]

棒子🤣🤣

[@Grayson_Wu]

Please ignore those racist comments above. Thank you for further information.

[@Vincent-dl7ol]

In old Chinese a word is always a character but the characters had way more complex soundings ( you can search archaic Chinese/middle Chinese on youtube). It also means modern Chinese have more characters sharing the same pronunciation therefore Chinese tends to use more two syllable words to differentiate them. And this is also why in some southern dialects there are more one character words since they kept more elements of middle Chinese comparing to standard Mandarin (Putonghua), for instance Cantonese has 6 or 9 tones and syllables ending in consonants such as the k in character bok like bok choy.

[@olliejobson6371]

Fair point, as I was listening to the examples I realised why my mainland coworkers mentioned that my mandarin sounds weird. I subconsciously translate from Cantonese to Mandarin, and most of the time, Cantonese can have words that contains just one character which makes perfect sense when the intonation helps distinguish which specific version of the word you’re using, meaning you don’t have to be as precise and require a supporting character to help define what you’re saying.

[@ailo8964]

Cantonese Chinese loves monosyllable words a lot. Examples are 靚、仔、女、飯、菜、餸、枱、凳

[@ailo8964]

You nailed it! This video is about Mandarin only.

[@过儿过]

long history, and old Chinese more harder than now we use

[@mozhou4966]

即使在古代，文言文似乎也大多仅限于书面交流。。。口语交流可能还是类似于现在的方言 主要因为书面交流确切地表达了每一个字，而没有视频中关于同音字的问题 不过这只是我听说的，是不是真的我也不是很懂

[@pierpaolocasamassima8652]

I found this video so useful and enlightening. As an absolute beginner from the western world, characters and how they are used is a totally new and confusing topic. The fact that, by looking up a single character of a two-character word, I would find the same meaning, really messed up with my mind. Now I get it, 谢谢你

[@andrewchinese]

I always admire people like you who are able to explain complicated things within 6 mins, that is really impressive dude, thank you

[@JairoMorales123]

This would have been so helpful when i started studying. So many words seem to have very similar meaning (and different pronunciation many times) but this helps differentiate why they are.

[@demonschnauzer1555]

Reminds me of how my first year Chinese teachers would always correct me if I said a one-character adjective by itself and they said to add 很 beforehand. Thanks for the explanation!

[@samhwwg]

This video is very informative. Those who have read old Chinese know that singular Chinese characters on their own can sometimes be rather ambiguous, much much more ambiguous then modern Chinese where the words have already been more specialised.

[@davidcockayne3381]

Which is why, I presume, English translations of the classics can vary considerably.

[@xujieluo5376]

as a Chinese native speaker I don’t even know that there are many interesting phenomena in our language I hardly ever noticed 😂

[@py8554]

It’s more like modern Chinese tends to have multiple syllable words but in Classical Chinese 文言文 (which is still being taught in schools these days) there is abundance of single syllable words. And there’s clear difference in meaning between 眼and 睛for example.

[@juyngkwogayo206]

In Cantonese and chaozhou dialect, we still use single character to represent a lot of things. 靚 beautiful 眼 eye 帽 hat 凳 chair 檯 table ….. and others If you want to specifically say expression, eyelash, eyebrow or whatever , you say those words directly. The single word 眼 means eye, period. Don’t look elsewhere. 睛 means the ball of the eye. 眼珠 or 眼球. They’re different in meanings. 睛 doesn’t just mean EYE.

[@nehcooahnait7827]

I think you misunderstood

[@kalyxo_tb]

That's just what I was thinking! I also often use 知 instead of 知道 (to know) Although we still use 筷子 for chopsticks - if someone asked me 你有冇筷? I'd be wondering what piece (塊) they were asking me about haha

[@tsunetasora]

是，单音节词表原义，需要表相关词义时，再加字即可。3:05假

[@tsunetasora]

眼、睛，自古每个字都分别有意思，现代人忘了

[@Seele2015au]

@@tsunetasora 不同意義的字往往被黏在一起，令人忘記它們的原意。例如，「智」和「慧」分別是 intelligence 和 wisdom ，分別十分清楚，但併在一起，便出錯了。在白話前的古文，雙音節復合詞比近世要少得多。

[@barbarakangas3255]

Thank you for this! Understanding this helps in translating because when I've tried to translate reading each character as a word, the translations don't always make sense. My biggest problem so far is listening. Hopefully putting words together will help with that as well. I've found a couple of apps that I really like: Pleco and Immersive Chinese. Both have been very helpful so far!

[@ABChinese]

Yeah, it can be hard to know which characters are a group if you're not familiar with how they're constructed. Glad it helped!

[@呀咧呀咧]

Don’t “translate” anything when u learn a foreign language. It’s totally inefficient and always make things wrong. Imagine when you speak something, you first think about the image of a concept in your mind, then you think about the word of it. So the correct way to learn languages is to learn “Image to word”, but not “word to word translation”. Just learn it like you learn your native language

[@MADUPLAY]

very clarifying kind of video, I had noticed a lot of these just by studying chinese organicly by the past months, but knowing that my guesses were right and having a better explanation about it was great. Thank you once again!

[@pohkokcheah2409]

words from ancient Chinese mostly comes with single syllable… 桌子，镜子 in hokkien (one of Chinese dialect) we don’t say that, we just say 桌，镜. Hokkien preserve more of the ancient chinese as opposed to mandarin. mandarin on the other got influenced by other language chinese as Mongolian, Manchurian…

[@commenter4898]

Hokkien add diminutive 仔 to many words too, for example 藥仔, 書架仔, 今仔日, 狗仔. I see plenty of this "Hokkien/Cantonese/Hakka are more ancient" pseudoscience floating around. All Chinese languages are equally old, they just evolved differently over time and there's no inherent value to these differences. If you want to call Hokkien more traditional or canonical and prejudice other languages, others can also say Mandarin is more regular, standardized, and international.

[@xinghengzhou8548]

为啥南方某些地区的老是觉得北方话受满语或蒙语影响很大？汉语的复合词化实际上从先秦就开始了，从尚书到史记的文本很容易就能看出这个趋势。原因无非是信息大爆炸，单字词已无法支撑和描述更精细的概念了。这和满语蒙语有个屁的关系。

[@rashidisw]

This explains the jokes in an old Japanese Playstation game, on that game one of the character insists only replying in 1 syllable words, the joke of course was lost when the game was translated to English.

[@CourtneySchwartz]

Don’t know the game, but… Couldn’t they just translate into English that’s terse?

[@bobboberson8297]

I don't know what game you are talking about, but that probably is not the case. Japanese has too many native (japanese) words (and also non-chinese loan words) where this wouldn't apply, and even among the chinese loan words they mostly come from variants of chinese not discussed in this video (ie not 21st century mandarin)

[@numburger]

I was always confused why 帽子 had "child" in it even in Japanese (ぼうし) so thanks for clearing that up lol

[@jysanzimx410]

I'm glad you made this video. I felt the same way for a long time. It's much easier to have the full word as two syllables. I tend to memorize the words and compounds associated with a particular hanzi. As I do in my Japanese studies, one kanji can have many different readings and meanings.

[@RammusTheArmordillo]

As someone learning japanese kanji, it's weird to realize that the characters are actually different. It thought they were mostly the same. Of the list at 5:39, only hand (手) and light (光) are the same. Book is 本, river is 川, and dog is 犬

[@mqegg]

For book, the kanji is actually the second character from 书本 and 犬 is another word for dog although not really used as much

[@なめたけ-y6e]

As a native Japanese speaker, 河 is commonly used kanji. (It often means big river. like 黄河) 书 is simplified but it's same as 書,which is used as book.(It sounds old-fashioned.)

[@HyperLuigi37]

Yeah, essentially Japanese imported a set of a few thousand Chinese characters when they invented their writing system, preserving the meanings, but over time both languages have evolved the character set in different ways. Chinese simplified a lot, Japanese simplified some but often didn't. There are said to be about 800 characters used for the same basic meaning in both languages (and sometimes the same words), but past that there are hundreds to thousands that are either slightly different (you can see the shared roots when shown two equivalent ones), or completely different.

[@なめたけ-y6e]

@@HyperLuigi37 As a Japanese student of Chinese, I don't think the meanings of Chinese characters have changed that much between Japan and China; some have changed, but most can be understood in terms of the meanings of Japanese kanji. Otherwise, China would not have been able to adopt the translations of foreign words from the West that Japan translated into Chinese characters in the modern era. Simplification does not change the meaning of the original Chinese character, so the corresponding Chinese character are understood as identical.

[@boigirl4266]

In Korean, hand, light, dog by themselves are always expressed in pure korean, but book is 책(冊), and river is 강(江)

[@aguaf]

Unfortunately I have to say that your observation was wrong. I grew up in Guangdong province in the 70s and we used a lot of one syllable words we had no problems in communication clearly. When I went to Beijing for college I noticed people would be confused if I use one syllable words. The reason is simple: Mandarin is a simplified open version of Chinese in terms of pronunciation compared to ancient Chinese. So there are more much more homophones in Mandarin than Cantonese. If you use “traditional” pronunciation of Chinese characters, you can still use a huge amount of one syllable words.

[@naruteoh123]

Same with my Min Nan dialect. We also use many 1 syllable words.

[@tiongkueng]

if you look at ancient texts，you can see that many words only had one syllable, many speculate that in ancient times (at least thousands of years ago, because the formal writing remained pretty much the same till early 20th Century but the daily speech has changed a lot(in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation and even grammar)) the pronunciation of words was much harder back then. As time goes by, the pronunciation of words became easier and easier, therefore nowadays a lot of vocabulary in every variety of Chinese has two syllables.

[@birch8109]

Because I’m ancient times writing was done by carving characters into bamboo so they were very economical with their words to save time and effort

[@huevos_de]

I don't even learn chinese, but still this was a very interesting video and it even helps a bit with my Japanese studying. Thank you!

[@jeremias-serus]

Japanophile.

[@TheTMax]

I love everything about this video! I've done many videos where I try to understand Chinese through my logic (usually comically to no avail), but you have mastered explaining this is a clear and concise manner. Well done! 😎

[@MyItalianCircle]

Excellent video. Takes me back to my college years in Venice studying Chinese ❤️

[@ashketchum596]

This was super insightful. I loved the delivery, you’re amazing 😍👏 thank you!

[@elvisharcher]

As a native Chinese speaker, I never really paid attention to any of these before, but your explainations do make a lot sense. I guess what we can say is that, you don't have to know all these to be really good at speaking the language, but it takes a lot time to practice. And this type of knowledge can help ppl to learn a new language more effectively.

[@davedaihatsu2585]

FWIW, Overseas Chinese has no problem with 1 syllable words as we usually speak dialects like Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Hainanese or Teochew (you noticed that most of us are Southern Chinese?). All of which preserved the way that middle or old Chinese is used or spoken. IF we can use a single character word to describe something, we would not use two. The modern Chinese language (Mandarin) descended from the middle and old mandarin has always been the opposite of the dialects

[@obsidianstatue]

What's also great about Chinese is that you can fit WAY more words and information in a tweet than any other languages.

[@Ladiusmann]

Doesn't that apply to Japanese too?

[@obsidianstatue]

@@Ladiusmann No, Kanji (Chinese characters) used in Japanese are very different from their native written script, hiragana and katakana, the Japanese native script are used more, with some Chinese characters sprinkled in the middle. And the native japanese characters are syllables, sort of like Latin languages. So Chinese is the only widely used language in the world to preserve their logographic/ hieroglyphic roots

[@thejword4279]

@@obsidianstatue Japanese used Kanji before using Hiragana and Katakana. Japan used to write using only Chinese characters, but created Hiragana afterwards probably because it was easier for less educated people to read.

[@justinhale5693]

I live in China for a year and never did I hear such a sensible explanation. Thank you.

[@cheninfo]

Funny, when I'm with Chinese friends, they would introduce me as "Joe Chen" instead of just "Joe". I think for the same reason, wanting to use 2 syllables

[@caque6454]

That’s because we introduce people with their full name, that has nothing to do with syllables

[@CourtneySchwartz]

Helps if you know a lot of people with the names “Joe” or “Chen”… Both are common names. Therefore using only first or last name might not be specific enough.

[@dingchengyue5946]

Thanks for the video. I just randomly stumbled upon this one. I am a native speaker and the explanation is very well. One thing I would point out is that 听众/观众 are two more common words and suit the meaning of 听者 much better, as I think audiences are often used in plural?

[@bjap1563]

Somehow, this also applies in Japanese. Though, a character may have a different reading depending on the context.

[@illasra]

it gets much, much worse in Japanese, seeing basically all words have on'yomi (Chinese-derived) and kun'yomi (native Japanese derived) pronunciations. There are also often multiple on'yomi because the word was loaned from Chinese at a different time, or multiple kun'yomi readings because reasons. For example, the character «人» can be pronounced as jin / nin / hito / ri in normal words and as kiyo / sane / ji / to / ne / hiko / hitoshi / futo / fumi / me when used in names

[@Maickellz]

Yep. 表す "to express" and 現す "to express" as well, both pronounced identically あらわす (arawasu), when combined, give 表現 (ひょうげん, hyougen, here their Chinese readings differ) "an expression".

[@bkakkvod166]

@@Maickellz 表現也可以用作動詞 名詞也行

[@nofearchinesepodcast]

Thank you so much for this video. The minute I saw it I dropped everything to watch it because this has been plaguing me for months. Instant follow.

[@lam2506]

Ｗhen some characters are followed by 子, the combinations have different meanings. For example, 雞 means chicken while 雞子 means chicken testicle. 魚 means fish while 魚子 means fish roe. 光 can also be followed by 子 to become 光子, which means photon.

[@Polymath9]

In your first two examples, that’s because 子 also has a meaning of “offspring”, so that could also work when the character is functioning as a suffix.

[@さユりョケ]

all 子 from ur examples are with 3rd tone, meaning beads. more of a word base instead of a suffix, which 子 with 1st tone is

[@Polymath9]

@@さユりョケ 子 is never a 1st tone character, when it's functioning as a word base it's in the 5th tone, or the "neutral tone"

[@alexwang982]

@@Polymath9 A light offspring?

[@វៈ់]

l dont know what is 魚子 but l know 魚子醬

[@Weeping-Angel]

I first noticed when was little that we say 生气 in mandarin but in Cantonese we say嬲. And then I learn that instead of saying 凳 and 枱, we had to say凳子, 椅子, 桌子.

[@strawberrymilky15]

I noticed this too while learning Japanese where a lot of words are formed with 2 kanji that have the same meaning like 場所(basho - place) and 選択(sentaku - selection, choice)

[@bkakkvod166]

选择 我没有选择(i dont have a choice)，我没有选 (i didnt select) 选择=選擇(selection ，select ) can be n or v 。

[@pingq2081]

Because those are Chinese words.

[@lew_wloczega]

Awesome content. Very useful

[@seanscap]

i realized i never really questioned but damn this makes so much sense when you use the language all the time lmaoooo

[@averaust]

This is the best explanation of why Chinese use two syllable words. Thank you!

[@nanonainanasi5876]

I really don’t remember how I naturally understood the Chinese compound words when I was a kid. But as time goes you’ll soon realize that there is no need to remember every single meaning of each Chinese character. Just see the paired characters as a whole without separating the meaning of each.

[@danielasat29]

I needed this so long ago... Great video!

[@pachomiussinanicus1728]

the Cantonese/Hongkongese doesnt hate monosyllable for it is having a more complex pronunciation system than Mandarin which can handle monosyllable. As to mandarin, its pronunciation system is too simple which creates countless similar Homophone. Therefore, Mandarin avoids monosyllable for avoiding misunderstanding

[@Little.StudyCandy]

普通话是以北方方言为基础 以现代白话文著作为语法规范的规范汉语 其诞生本来就是为了实现广泛的沟通和不同方言体系下人们的沟通 你这么一比较就好像广东话比普通话更高级一样😳

[@Little.StudyCandy]

方言 和普通话本身就不需要也不应该放在一起比较

[@doksa29]

@@Little.StudyCandy I disagree with the idea that some languages/dialects are superior or inferior than others. The only reason why Putonghua is a "language" and Cantonese is a "dialect" is because of political reasons. Linguistically speaking, they are totally different languages and should be respected equally (same with many other Chinese "dialects")

[@pachomiussinanicus1728]

@@Little.StudyCandy 你就是北支殖民者的心态，将被征服者的母语当成上不得台面的方言

[@pachomiussinanicus1728]

@@Little.StudyCandy 那你觉得mandarin比粤语高级吗？

[@xXJ4FARGAMERXx]

This was such a useful and great video! It's consice, it doesn't linger on to try to pander to an audience who isn't even interested in chinese (mandarin), it's also very well edited! Here's my like.

[@alpha9775]

Ah yes "The atmosphere here is not great" made me laugh haha. But seriously this is an extremely underappreciated video, it really helped me in understanding how Chinese defines words and why it´s better to use 2-syllable words, rather than 1-syllable ones.

[@sunj8346]

Keep in mind that Mandarin Chinese is not the only Chinese language. When we speak Cantonese, a language in the Chinese language group, we do speak 1 syllable words more often. For example, we speak beautiful as 靚, hat as 帽, eye as 眼. We normally only speak the one syllable. Maybe we are just lazier. At 4:28 , we do add 子 for 筷子 and 獅子, but we use a one syllable word for all others.

[@RaymondHng]

_You look at his eyes_ in Cantonese is actually spoken as 你睇佢嘅眼.

[@user-gimmechickenwingz]

@@RaymondHng 除非你係形容一個人嘅眼神,好似通常係「你睇吓佢隻眼」或者「你睇吓佢對眼」⋯

[@paulsitt]

I had an interesting experience when I attended a Chinese class back in High School. One time we were given a worksheet on body parts, and the idea was that we would listen to the lecture, and then fill in the worksheet after that. Since I knew a bit of Japanese (and also because I didn't want to pay attention), I decided to fill in the body parts with their corresponding single-Kanji words because I thought the vocabulary was 1:1 with Mandarin. My Japanese friend who sat next to me had his worries, but ended up doing the same thing I did. When we handed the worksheet in, the teacher looked visibly hesitant but she didn't say that we were wrong. Instead she said that the single-character words are technically correct but they're "old" and nobody uses them anymore. I looked the words up on the internet, and that's basically when I noticed that a lot of these Mandarin words are 2-syllables. I've always wondered why that were the case, and I have to say that I'm happy to have stumbled across this video!

[@martinhawes5647]

Interesting that they think it’s “old” to use single characters in mandarin. That’s just normal usage in Cantonese and Hakka.

[@pia_mater]

I think the main reason why Chinese uses so many compounds is to avoid homophony. I just looked up "yì" (with the fourth tone) on Wikitionary and it lists 228 characters with that reading

[@supertrouper]

It depends on the situation and how you use them in sentences. Yes in some situations, the two syllables have to be used together to be specific on a meaning or an object, but some situations are not necessary. Like 帽子 for hat. If you used the word alone without a sentence, yes, it is necessary to use, but let's say if you were saying, I am wearing my hat, you can say 我戴上我的帽子, but if you were to say 我戴上我的帽在頭上(I am wearing my hat on my head) is also fine because you expressed it is on your head and they will understand what you are saying. If you say the air is not so good by saying 這裡的氣不太好 is fine and they will understand it means the air quality is bad, saying 這裡的空氣不太好 is just an added word, but yes if you want to say the atmosphere is bad, then you have to more specific with saying 這裡的氣氛不太好. For plate盤子, you can use it without the 子, if you use it in the right sentence like for example, if you say "get your plate to put some food", you can say 拿你的盤子來放一些食物 or 拿你的盤來放一些食物. As for 美麗, if you use it to describe certain objects or places in sentences, you can use 美麗 or just 美, like for example, if you were to say, "The sunset is so beautiful", you can say 夕陽真是這麼美麗 or 夕陽真是這麼美. If you were to call a girl beautiful, you can just say 美女, no one ever calls a girl beautiful saying 美麗女, unless they are talking about the beautiful girl with other people, like if you were to say, "There is a beautiful girl", normally they would say 有一個美女, but 有一個美麗女 also can be said, but it would sound better to say 有一個美麗女人 or 有一個美麗女子. As for audience, 觀眾 is the normal usual Chinese translation, but 聽著 is really just saying listeners and it is less specific because it could also be describing listeners listening to a podcast or radio. 觀眾 is more specific with people sitting in to watch and listen to a presentation or an event.

[@さユりョケ]

我戴上我的帽子 -> 我在戴我的帽子呢 我戴上我的帽在頭上 -> 我頭上戴了顶帽子 這裡的氣不太好 -> 這裡的空氣不太好 拿你的盤子來放一些食物 -> 把你的盤子拿过来放点吃的 拿你的盤來放一些食物 -> 把你盤儿拿过来放点吃的 (u cant use a single 盤 for plate) 夕陽真是這麼美麗 -> 夕陽是如此的美麗 / 夕陽真是美麗啊(u cant use 真是+這麼 together) 夕陽真是這麼美 -> 夕陽真美啊 / 夕阳這麼美/美麗，…… (u need to add something after using 这么, like 夕阳這麼美/美麗，你为什么不看？) 有一個美麗女 -> 有一個美麗的女人(first, u should use 的 in this case, since 美麗女 is not a word. Next, u cant use a single 女 for woman) 有一個美麗女人 -> 有一個美麗的女人 有一個美麗女子 sorta okay

[@supertrouper]

​@@さユりョケ If you are speaking about writing Mandarin formally, then yes probably you may have to write it the way you mentioned, but very often Mandarin speakers do not always necessarily speak it the way it would be formally written, especially if they are speaking quick. Also, it depends which regions in China as well, because each region speaks and writes Mandarin differently and 子 is not always used in the same way in some regions of China and sometimes will drop the 子 for certain words, especially in the dialect regions in southeast China, they speak Mandarin a little bit differently including Taiwan.

[@covaycafe]

As a Vietnamese, this video also make a lot of sense, since we also use a lot of that, especially when we borrow words from Chinese

[@wxshes1]

I’d love to learn Chinese, my friend can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and another dialect and I would love to speak to her in one of them.

[@keith819]

Thanks for such quality content. I've been studying Chinese for about 4 months and I've been wondering about this. It's been very challenging, but I really enjoy the extra context I get when watching movies, etc.

[@lauramau2530]

I had noticed the two character thing. Your information really helped to clarify why. I have seen in some apps the “zi” character referred to as a noun suffix.

[@robertschlesinger1342]

Excellent video. Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video.

[@YitingZhi]

To be honest, all the examples you gave when you could use 1 word instead of 2. The one word version actually made it sound so poetic and beautiful. Using it like that in essays is the key to get high score :)

[@lzh4950]

Because we usually are referring to the most common meaning that single-character words can have; so there isn't as much confusion happening when we use single-character words. E.g. when we use '眼' we usually think of 'eye' & not 'eyelash' or "eye expression" (眼神)

[@gasun1274]

classical chinese is fundamentally monosyllabic (except for more recent works in it which incorporate multiple characters to explain newer concepts). old chinese had its start being nearly monosyllabic, its ridiculous amount of consonants and consonant clusters allows the language to hold so much one-syllable words. (the same is true of old tibetan and old burmese). tones eventually get developed because they require less effort than complicated triconsonantal clusters, and when all consonant clusters disappear in place of tones, extra syllables are needed for disambiguation.

[@Ziijiang]

I would say classical written Chinese is monosyllabic, but spoken Chinese is not. Probably because in written system, written characters directly tell the meanings

[@phyreballs6151]

Yet another gem of an insight, never knew these growing up

[@user-JWZ]

结论：‘子’ 就是将一个具有多种词性的单字名词化，或者减少歧义

[@loliganz]

great episode and very informative!

[@user-ed4cr7fz7j]

I am glad that i'm a native Chinese speaker. If Chinese is not my native language , I will never figure out this damn complex difficult language.

[@mastermirror3888]

In classical Chinese, 1 character words are very common. However, modern Chinese added a lot of 2 syllable words in order to reduce ambiguity. Adding redundancy to the communication is an efficient way of reducing error.

[@l3enjamin5in]

1 character words are still very common in different Chinese dialects, which have more different tones to avoid homophones. It seems to me the most important reason for Mandarin Chinese to have that many 2 character words is that there are too many homophones.

[@mastermirror3888]

@@l3enjamin5in Yes. Adding redundancy is a good way to reduce ambiguity. It's an elementary principle of communication.

[@nemesisurvivorleon]

This was so awesomely informative

[@helloworld0911]

There's less ambiguity in Cantonese we have a richer vocabulary and sounds so we either use different words or words sound different enough... I can think of 獅子 and 筷子 that use that has to use that word.

[@suethinker852]

Thank you so much for this video. Even though I’m learning Korean, things make so much more sense now. Since Korean language borrowed many Chinese words, it make sense that one also finds the same phenomenon of two syllables of a word meaning the same thing!

[@Schubbbbbb]

I feel like Cantonese contains far more monosyllabic words. I love Chinese as a language so much! 眼睛 - 眼 美丽 - 靓 帽子 - 帽

[@thomasb7237]

快走 - 閃

[@mishmishm7847]

Xie xie ! That was fascinating for a beginner like me!! I really love to discover the logic behind the mandarin Chinese hanyo. I recommend to the viewers: watch it on a lower speed!!! M.m

[@taoliu3949]

This only applies to Mandarin. Classical Chinese is primarily monosyllabilic. The shift started during the 16 Kingdom period after northern China was conquered by the "barbarians" who spoke multisyllabic languages (Mandarin is primarily spoken in the north) which influenced the local language. There was also a simplification in the tones which made multisyllabic words increasingly necessary. The current monosyllabilic words are basically vestiges of the older language. Southern Chinese is a lot closer to classical Chinese and still has a lot of monosyllabic words.

[@tcosmos]

I am so glad I found this video. I spent a long time wondering about this 😩 Great explanation 👍🏾

[@AungAung-ou1eh]

Burmese and Chinese language have the same concept like this even though we Burmese don't use characters and same grammatical systems. And that's why burmese are usually easier to learn Chinese, Japanese and Korean than western languages like English

[@BernhardKohli]

Great video!! Thank you - this has been so confusing to me!

[@olliejobson6371]

For all the Cantonese speakers out there, yes we do have a lot of singular character words. BUT, we’re also more liberal about our use of measuring words. 眼 instead of 眼睛, but we use 你隻眼, 你對眼. Even then when we have to talk about a specific thing related to the eye, we still use compound words such as 眼珠,眼球,眼袋,眼眉. We also do share some things with Mandarin in words like 筷子, which even the measuring word doesn’t suffice in defining what it is due to 筷 and 塊 having the same sound. Sure you can say 你對筷 and hope someone understands, and their brain will try to fill the gap. But they would most likely be annoyed and ask 筷 what? It could be 你對快餐券 for all they know. The word 木 means wood. We can say 嗰嚿木 for that block of wood, 嗰塊木 for that plank of wood, 嗰片木板 however is that piece of wood plank. The measuring word gives us a vague sense of what shape and sort of item it is but we still have to using compound words to express exactly what we mean sometimes. 學校 means school. 你返咗學未 means have you been to school yet but 你返學未 means are you going to school yet. While 學校means school, you can’t say 我間學 because 學 by itself means to learn. 間 in this context is a measuring word for buildings (一所 in written Chinese) but 陣間 means later. 我返學 means I’m going to school 我返返學 means I’m starting school again 我陣間學 means I’ll learn later. 我陣間返學 means I’ll go to school later 我陣間返返學校 means I’ll go back to school later Context matters a lot in Cantonese. All the examples above lack one important thing though. Ending sounds. Cantonese especially utilises ending sounds to make precise our meaning.

[@MediaConsumption-x4k]

This seems to be more common in Mandarin. But in older Chinese, a single word was the norm. That is still quite common in Cantonese to use single word, such as 眼instead of 眼睛，帽instead of 帽子，枱instead of 桌,梳instead of 梳子，一個樽instead of 一個瓶子，食個包instead of 吃個包子。Of course Cantonese also use 筷子，獅子,etc. and does not escape completely from using two characters when one is perfectly good.

[@IvAnLe0nG]

in daily cantonese,we use 靚 instead of美麗，帽instead of 帽子 ，眼instead of 眼睛。i think it is the diffrence of the ancient chinese and the modern chinese.

[@loltim2109]

I believe it could be related to the fact that there are less homophones in Cantonese since it has more tones and vowels compared to mandarin. Of course, education and user habits would also contribute to the difference.

[@friendshk]

Guest you are still learning Chinese. Yr explanation is partially right. Good try though

[@IvAnLe0nG]

but i am a macanese.

[@IvAnLe0nG]

@@friendshk i guess u are taiwanese? cuz i saw ur last name, tang.

[@reichan8363]

One of the Chinese teachers I had before did mention that Chinese people loved using two character words, but the only reason they gave was that Chinese people loved two character words. LOL This explains a lot. Thanks!

[@JBUHJBUH]

I got this same explanation. But then they get annoyed if we respond with 'it sounds better' or 'that's just the way it is' when they ask why something is a certain way in English. Even though it's true 😅

[@reichan8363]

@@JBUHJBUH trueee hahahaha

[@solitarycathy]

汉语音节结构、声韵系统简化导致同音词变多，为了避免过多多同音词带来的不便，语言的使用者就自然地造出了多音节词。

[@Sam-kz1sc]

说得太对了。比如 “袜”，粤语读mat，不用上下文就懂；而普通话读简单的wa，所以要说“袜子”或“我买袜”, 别人才懂。

[@atsukorichards1675]

帽子 (ぼうし/boushi/hat) is used in Japanese. I didn't have any idea why 子 was there before. Now I am enlightened. Thank you!

[@alanjyu]

It's not Chinese that hates one-syllable words. It's Mandarin. Chinese dialects such as Wu, Min, Yue have 8-9 tones, ptk final endings, long and short vowels, more vowels, more consonants including some that use voiced consonants and many one syllable words.

[@feelsored3623]

I like your voice, and the content looks easy to understand!!

[@halgaci]

As a native speaker, I noticed this phenomenon when I was in high school. I found Chinese always use 2 syllable words in real life but it is very rare to find such two-syllable words in the classical Chinese literature we learn in high school. My explanation for this phenomenon is that, firstly, it may be caused by the separation between the language and the writing system. Chinese script is hard to learn and hard to write, it was especially hard before the invention of paper when people had to use knives to "write" on wood and bamboo. So ancient Chinese had to create many one-character words to save some time. And it is very possible in real life people never use those one-character words as a single syllable may have too many different meanings. As a result, the separation of the language and the writing system created lots of confusion for foreigners. Secondly, it may be caused by the transformation of pronunciation of Chinese characters. Today, most Chinese characters were one-syllable. However, many characters in ancient times may not be one-syllable and they became one-syllable in just hundreds of years. That forced people to add another character to make it into a two-syllable word as the one-syllable word is hard to use in speaking.

[@trungson6604]

Classical Chinese has far more sounds and far fewer homophones than Mandarin. Mandarin was influenced by non-Han people like Mongolians and Manchurians in Northern China. Perhaps Northern foreign invaders had hard time pronouncing all the sounds of Classical Chinese, so ended up with a much simpler form of spoken Chinese that all people can easily pronounce, like Putong Hua. Spoken Classical Chinese has thousands of sounds in comparison to Mandarin which has only around 450 sounds, thus Mandarin speakers will need more 2-syllable words to avoid confusion in verbal communication, while other Sinitic languages derived from Classical Chinese, like Cantonese, Hokkien, Korean, Vietnamese etc...still keep the many sounds of Classical Chinese and therefore use far more single-syllable words in daily verbal communication, and those languages have far more similarity in pronunciation of Han characters than Mandarin.

[@faustinuskaryadi6610]

Yes, it's added simply to avoid homophones confusion in spoken form. Second syllable is actually the context.

[@xinghengzhou8548]

@@trungson6604 包括声调普通话有1000个左右的音节。满人也好，蒙古人也好，对汉语的音系没有任何影响。音系简化是语言交流的产物，北方是中国文明的中心，且战乱频繁，人口迁徙交流频繁，某种音系上的创新更容易扩散。类比藏语，作为藏文化中心的卫藏地区语音发展跟北方话如出一辙，浊音复辅音全部消失，声调已经发展稳定，但更偏远的康藏、后藏地区不仅声调不发达，甚至还保存有复辅音。足以说明问题了。

[@kikorushii]

The way you explain makes it so easy to understand 😂 I know nothing about mandarin but this makes it so easy? Cool videos👍

[@AdrynJohanna]

I'm from Malaysia and I speak Malay. So in Malay Moon is called "bulan". But month in Malay is also called "bulan". Just like Chinese where "yuè" means moon but it also mean month.

[@thallium54]

That's probably because of the lunar calendar.

[@juyngkwogayo206]

Month also came from the word moon i think.

[@RaymondHng]

@@juyngkwogayo206 _Month_ is Middle English, from Old English _mōnath_ ; akin to Old High German _mānōd_ month, Old English _mōna_ moon _Moon_ is Middle English _mone_ , from Old English _mōna_ ; akin to Old High German _māno_ moon, Latin _mensis_ month, Greek _mēn_ month, _mēnē_ moon

[@faustinuskaryadi6610]

Actually month and moon shared same origin.

[@faustinuskaryadi6610]

@@RaymondHng By proto Indo-European language theory, all words that use listed probably share same ancestor since all contains m-n consonants.

[@elizabethkong7354]

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[@haoyoung5200]

Actually, in southern parts of China, Many dialects still speak nouns without 子. Like in Sichuan dialect and Cantonese, we say 梨 rather than 梨子。

[@chengyu1634]

I think many places in China also just say 梨, 梨子 sounds strange to me

[@camilogomez3822]

多谢!!! This video was very helpful and entertaining and it really helped me understand a lot of things that confused me.

[@chloecheng5766]

As native Chinese who has some background in ancient Chinese literature and linguistics, this is FARRRR from the truth. In Chinese, a character IS a word “一字一词”. Compound word is more prevalent in colloquial context, while single character words are much more frequently used in writings. Compound words in Chinese are more general in meanings than single character words, and that arguable creates even MORE ambiguity. For example, 美 and 丽 actually has different meaning, similar to that of "beautiful" and "pretty". But when you combine them to form 美丽, anything that's close to the meaning of being pretty is included, thus losing the nuance and becoming less precise.

[@be236]

Great explanation.. I always wondered why most Chinese words were two-characters (two syllables).

[@hkmarhk]

I actually think that it depends on the situation. If you want to complement someone on her look, you can say 你好美啊 or 你好美丽啊. Both means the same thing but I think most people will say the first one because it sounds more natural. Sometimes the 1 character word fits the sentence better, sometimes the compound word sounds better. Also, to your example "你看他的眼", I think most people will understand what the speaker wants to say, which is to look at someone's eye, not eye lashes, eyeglasses etc.

[@hkmarhk]

Great videos anyways!

[@kebilaoda]

Never thought I can really learn some new knowledge about my language from a English channel😳 Good job bro!

[@nahlene1973]

Thanks this is a very unique perspective. Chinese did have many unique characters to mean specific things, but that adds up to too many characters (eg. check how many dead characters associate with horse to say horses of different color)or too much ambiguity(目 = “眼睛”, but it was used in many other words too). So the current two syllable versions, like you said, is probably the result of thousands of years of optimization in vernacular applications.

[@elsasofei7597]

Very informative video, I will definitely refer to it in the future for help!