Problems with a Chinese character

[frank]

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

[Flaminius]

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

Flam

[frank]

<<<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

[Flaminius]

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

[yaoyao]

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

[frank]

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

[M. Henri Day]

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

Henri