Comments on: What’s that “zi” 子 thing?

By: Karan Misra

Karan Misra — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:47:35 +0000

It’s always interesting to compare to other fāngyán or topolects on topics like these. For example, Cantonese has very few of the 子 words.
盒子 is just 盒
 袜子 is just 袜
and so on. When they do have some 子 words, they use 仔 instead. So 败家子 becomes 败家仔.

The addition of 子 to words might be correlated with loss of some tones and the loss of -p, -t, and -k endings that exist in Cantonese and other dialects.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:05:51 +0000

Hi, Albert! Thanks for your pratical theory, it’s helpful when I teach westerners Chinese. I would like to make some supplements here. This is one of the ways how compound word is formed in Chinese. It is composed of a morpheme of concrete sense and an additional part. Similar examples are as following:

子：刷子梳子钳子夹子剪子
 儿：画儿棍儿盖儿圈儿
 头：馒头石头后头甜头苦头
 们：我们你们他们咱们
 第：第一第二第十

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:57:17 +0000

if you are looking for a rule that can be used to explain every problem you encountered, very probably you are barking upon the wrong tree.

By: Rachael Winkless

Rachael Winkless — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 20:54:34 +0000

I think you are correct that zi means thingy (German has a similar word, zeug, eg flugzeug = flying thingy = aeroplane).
My guess about which nouns take a zi is that it would be ones that would have been more used as other parts of speech. So maybe gou is more often used to mean dog than to mean dog-like or dog-ish (I’ll stop there). That would fit for shua, where the verb could well have been used more often than the noun. We say “brush the floor” more often than “pass the brush”.
The dual-syllable business doesn’t just apply to nouns. A lot of single-syllable adjectives, such as hao, should always be accompanied by something like hen, unless you have bu. So, wo hen hao, or wo bu hao, but not wo hao. (For more on this point I recommend Schaum’s Chinese Grammar, but only if you can cope with words like preposition). This paragraph is true, the rest is completely guesswork.

By: Will

Will — Wed, 02 May 2007 23:27:37 +0000

Hehe I found this ‘zi’ thing difficult to explain when teaching my friends Chinese as well. What I said then was the ‘zi’ here is like making it informal. For example tu is formal and tu zi is more informal. Well I know I didn’t explain it very well and to be honest, I don’t really know how this ‘zi’ thing works as well! So like a lot of things Chinese, you just have to practice and get used to them–After all it’s just something people say, there is no big deal of them!

By: Wesley Tanaka

Wesley Tanaka — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 03:29:26 +0000

A few more examples that don’t use zi: money, cat, dog, bear, tea, fish, chicken, cow, pig, ginger, green onion

I do think I’ve heard “shu4zi”, but I remember “wan-zi” (bowl) is incorrect enough that it made people burst out laughing. That (and trying to say “lion” without the zi and nobody understanding me) is how I learned that it’s important to remember whether or not there’s a “zi” at the end of a noun.

But it’s the questions like these that make me wish I had studied Chinese!

By: Albert

Albert — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:31:56 +0000

Wesley,

Fair enough. Those are certainly in the language. But, I’m not sure adding that “zi” would be illegal (although it seems unlikely for “shui” = “water” especially) if you needed extra clarity.

Also, interestingly, the ones that are minimal pairs (same sounds but just different tones) seem to have been given different measure words (“yi ben shu” = “1 book”, “yi ke shu” = “1 tree”). See also: Theory 3 in Why does Chinese have measure words.

I don’t know if that’s any where near an answer but when I say Chinese doesn’t like 1-syllable nouns, I guess I’m grasping for a reason why the “zi” is there for isolated forms and drops off when the noun is used in compound forms. But I don’t know!

“I’m making this up as I go along.”
- Indiana Jones

By: Wesley Tanaka

Wesley Tanaka — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 11:51:24 +0000

Aren’t there a lot of one-syllable nouns?

wan (bowl), shui (water), huo (fire), shu (book), shu (book), zhi (paper), bi (pen[cil]), tong (bucket), etc.?

By: Albert

Albert — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:59:48 +0000

Ok, well if Tom says so, then it is so. I guess I was right! Very interesting about the historical development of the language. See all the problems we laowai cause…

By: TongFh Tom

TongFh Tom — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:07:21 +0000

Ancient Chinese, (that is before Qin Dynasty,around BC221-BC206), abounded with one-syllable words, which was more than enough to meet communication needs because people talked in a more succint way at the time. With the development of society, particularly because of national homogenization(China was and is a graveyard for numerous natioanalities, most of which became assimated because of the magic and powerful influence of the culture of the Han nationality), the one-syllable-dominated language was no longer able to meet the communication need of the locals and “foreigners”, thus dual-syllable words increased greatly in number and suffixes like “zi” was born.