Phonetic series (Chinese characters)

A xiesheng (Chinese: 諧聲; pinyin: xiéshēng; lit. 'harmonious sound') or phonological series is a set of Chinese characters sharing the same sound-based element.^[1] Characters belonging to these series are generally phono-semantic compounds, where the character is composed of a semantic element (or radical) and a sound-based element, encoding information about the meaning and the pronunciation respectively.^[2]

For example, the character 波 is composed of the semantic component 氵 'water' and the sound component 皮 (believed to have been pronounced something like *ba). Thus, 波 represents a word which has to do with water and was pronounced something like *ba. In fact, the word which 波 represents means 'wave' and was pronounced like *pa in Middle Chinese.

By grouping together characters with the same sound component into a xiesheng series, one is able to compare words that were perceived to be quite similar in pronunciation at the time that the characters for these words were invented.

As an example, xiesheng series no. 25 from Bernhard Karlgren's Grammata Serica Recensa is reproduced below, with Middle Chinese readings in Baxter's transcription system:

• a 皮 bje
• d 疲 bje
• e 被 bjeX
• i 陂 pje
• j 披 phje
• l 波 pa
• m 跛 paX
• n 簸 paX
• n 簸 paH
• o 破 phaH
• q 婆 ba

The Chinese writing system is a unique medium for discovering new differences for other writing systems besides the alphabetic system. ^[1]The Chinese writing system has differed throughout time and goes against any normally phonological knowledge taught in the alphabetic system.^[2] Researchers find that Chinese is a morphosyllabic system, meaning that the character represents a tonal syllable. ^[3]The example “桥” (qiao, bridge), is a process of spelling in Chinese, it pairs and connects sound information to an orthographic information and the phonological skills that play a role in pronouncing this word. ^[4]

Phonetic Chinese characters include syllables, the characters correspond to the morpheme when it is suffixed to another morpheme. There is a vowel portion in phonetic Chinese, and it can be presented alone. There are different levels of tones towards different characters that represent different vowel-tone combinations in Chinese Characters.^[5] Additionally, phonetic compounds are composed into two major components. A semantic radical is the definition behind each character and phonetic radical is the information of how the characters are pronounced. Characters like   “氵” and “木” combined means “take a bath” which is pronounced “mu4” in Pinyin. With 氵means water as the semantic meaning while the 木 is the phonetic radical of the characters, these are called regular characters. ^[6]Chinese phonetics' history is known to be really general within China and outside of China. Phonetics in China are the most known linguistics studies in the early decades of the last century, but it becomes marginalized as time grows.^[7]

Both phonetic and phonological systems are intertwined together, but there has never been a study for orthography and how it is adapted. Mandarin Alphabetic Words (MAWs) is when there are individual English letters that are borrowed and incorporated into Chinese Characters that eventually form new words, representing different meanings in each system.^[8]

• Phonetic series on Wiktionary
• Zhengzhang (鄭張), Shangfang (尚芳) (2003). 上古音系 [Old Chinese Phonology]. Shanghai: Shanghai Education Press. ISBN 9787532092444.