Page 17 - EALC C306/505

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14. 學而不知求師則無知哉

Supplementary Exercise Vocabulary

汝 rǔ (Pronoun) you [this is the most common second person pronoun]

N.B. This pronoun is frequently written without the water radical,
as 女, in which case it must not be read nǚ

師 shi (N) teacher, army, general, populace

多 duo (SV) much, many; (Adv) often, a lot

足 zú (Adj/SV) sufficient, adequate, enough

食 shí (V) to eat; (N) food [N.B. Pronounced sì: (V) to feed (someone or
something); may be written 飼]

行 xìng (N) conduct [N.B. Pronounced xíng: (V) to act, to go, to leave, to
travel, to implement, to enact]

王 wáng (N) a king [N.B. Pronounced wàng: (V) to act as a king; to treat as
a king]

Added note on variant readings:

The last three items in the exercise vocabulary are examples of pòyinzì 破音字, that is,
characters with multiple readings. These are extremely common in Chinese, and are keys
to understanding WYW – early commentaries that teach us how to interpret texts
frequently devote a great deal of space to noting these sorts of “variant” readings.
In the cases illustrated by the final three items, the variants mark alternate forms
of nominal and verbal uses of the characters, as well as verb forms with different types of
objects. In the case of xìng (conduct) and xíng (to act, go, etc.), we clearly have different
words that are etymologically related but distinct in meaning and pronunciation (in
reconstructed Old Chinese, they would be represented as *grângh and *grâng,
respectively – these asterisks are used to indicate that the pronunciations are theoretical
reconstructions). An English equivalent might be seen in the sentence: “I will record this
for the record,” where recórd (verb) and récord (noun) are different words, nearly
homophonous but pronounced differently, yet written identically and sharing a common
etymology. We will term such words “cognates.”
Other instances of this type of 破音字 in this lesson include 舍 and 知; in those
cases, later characters arose to “disambiguate,” distinguishing the nominal and verbal
terms (舍 / 捨; 知 / 智 ), as was the case with 食 and 飼 (exercise vocabulary).