Talk:歌

Documentation for alternative facts on the 造字法 of this character

Alternative explanation: Ideogrammic compound (會意 / 会意): 可 (“sound of singing”) + 可 (“sound of singing”) + 欠 (“open mouth”).

Lee, Philip Yungkin. 250 Essential Chinese Character for Everyday Use. Vol. 2. Tuttle Publishing. 2004.

This book was written by a teacher with 30 years of experience teaching Chinese to foreigners.

I absolutely don't believe this is the correct explanation for this character, but I have documentation that it is an existing, published explanation. I'm guessing that this explanation is probably used in teaching Chinese to primary school youth in Asia as well as Chinese language learners. Most people aren't aware of the historically-grounded phonetic-semantic compound explanations. My question to the community is: Should we totally ignore the only 造字法 explanations that most Chinese people (including Chinese language teachers) believe? Why not include them here as 'alternative explanations' that are noted to have some degree of popular acceptance among the actual users of the actual language? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 13:11, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Here is another explanation for 歌 from Baidu Baike. After brushing over the fact that this is an obvious phonetic-semantic character, it too is also trying to find a way to say that the 哥 element of 歌 is part of the meaning of 歌. Here is the relevant text:

歌字从欠，从哥声。“哥”字从二可，可字义为“肩挑、荷担（以运送土石）”，即服徭役；二可上下叠加所造成的“哥”，表示的是“服过二次徭役、资深服役者”。“欠”即“欠身”，指上半身动作、胸部动作。“哥”加“欠”表示“资深服役者的胸部动作”、“资深服役者用声音抒发胸怀”。 歌 on Baidu Baike This explanation is different because 可and 可 are no longer sounds in a song. Instead of that, the meaning of 哥 as a whole is directly incorporated into the explanation for the logic of the character. Is there a way to incorporate these seemingly spurious yet probably widely accepted 造字法 into these articles? I think it's what people believe, and we need to know what people believe while simultaneously letting people know what the academically accepted answer is and that this explanation represents a popular understanding rather than a fact. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: How about saying "a common folk etymology used in pedagogy is that it is a compound of [etc whatever]"? Instead of just saying "alternative explanation", say that it is wrong too. —suzukaze (t・c) 03:32, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I welcome any changes you would make. The explanations given for 歌 here may be too uncommon to be described as a 'a common folk etymology used in pedagogy'. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:02, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Support for a 形声兼会意字 viewpoint: http://www.guoxuedashi.com/kangxi/pic.php?f=hzyl&p=1696 --Geographyinitiative (talk) 08:28, 19 March 2018 (UTC)