Fanqie

Fǎnqiè (反切) is a historical method to specify the pronunciation of Chinese characters. Two other characters were used to explain the pronunciation of an unknown character.

System

Initial position and final position to be explained syllables are separated by one other syllable. The sound of the syllable while transported to the classic concept about the final sound.

Due to various sound changes within the last millennium, the Fǎnqiè spellings are usually not congruent with today's debate in standard Chinese.

The following example returns the debate荒Huang at:

• 呼, HU for initial sound, and h
• 光, Guang -final for - uang high tone (first tone).

The system agrees here for today's debate. The classic debate was actually χuo ꜀ Kuang = ꜀ χuâng.

For this example, the modern pronunciation is no longer correct: The pronunciation for "east" (Chinese东/东, Pinyin Dong ) is specified as follows:

• 德, dé today represents the initial sound d,
• 红/红, hóng today is the final sound -ong.

For the purposes of this debate, this system is no longer correct, because a syllable dong does not exist. The classic debate has been doing correctly specified with ꜀ transfer = tək ꜀ γung.

The characters used for the declaration were not set, so did not form a basis for the description of other characters. In practice, however, it is apparent that certain characters are high frequency, so can recognize a de facto standard in the habit.

Today's use

The system of transliteration by Fǎnqiè is made ​​redundant by the use of Pinyin, Zhuyin and other Latin inscriptions, but knowledge of this system have still quite the status of a cultural technique and traditional dictionaries that use the Fǎnqiè system, are still needed.

In addition, the Lautungen specified in Fǎnqiè are valuable working material for linguistic studies.