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Hi all,

I'm currently trying to deal with the explanations in Chinese given in Practical Chinese Reader I.
At this moment one particular character gives me a head ache; i cannot find it in my dictionary, nor in the various online dicos.
The context is:

是一个舌尖鼻韵母。宪发a，舌位比单元音a靠前，紧跟着舌尖抵向齿K，同时软颚下垂，让气流从鼻腔流出。

The missing character consists of two parts: the part on the left is 齿 (trad. 齒); the part on the right is 艮.

Could somebody help me out?

Thanks in advance,

Frank

Perhaps I confuse you more than I help but here is my guess. Tooth + Root = gum (toothbed).

Flam

<<<Perhaps I confuse you more than I help but here is my guess. Tooth + Root = gum (toothbed).<<<

Hi Flaminus,

Thanks for your reply.
It's indeed a description of the position of the tongue, so you are confirming my conclusion. But how is this character represented in pinyin?

Thanks.

Frank

My guess, like yours, was first founded on the context that the sentence explains how to articulate a phoneme. After I checked my Sanseido Jp-Ch dictionary, I am sure that ya1yin1 is booth bed in Chinese. Ya is tusk and yin is tooth + root.

As I am writing this from a Mac, I cannot pinpoint the kanji we are talking about. But hope this makes sense to you.

Flam

You're both right. The word simply means tooth root. The sound mentioned in the context should be the nasal 'an', as in
安

Hi,

Thanks for the replies and the help.
Maybe i should have mentioned that it was indeed a description of 鼻韵母 an［an］:-)
Anyway, your comments enabled me to find out that the character 龈 is kĕn in pinyin.

Groetjes,

Frank

As a matter of fact, the graph «龈» in this context («齿龈») is read yín….

Henri