{"id":8068,"date":"2023-06-11T10:36:30","date_gmt":"2023-06-11T02:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=8068"},"modified":"2023-06-11T10:36:30","modified_gmt":"2023-06-11T02:36:30","slug":"mandarin-words-with-more-than-one-apostrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2023\/mandarin-words-with-more-than-one-apostrophe\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandarin words with more than one apostrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"
qīng’ěr’értīng
\n傾耳而聽
\nlisten attentively<\/div>\n

As I often note, apostrophes are used in only about 2 percent of words as written in Hanyu Pinyin. But when they’re needed, they’re needed.<\/a> Don’t skip them. <\/p>\n

A few years back, someone wrote to me to ask about multiple<\/em> apostrophes in Pinyin. I dug through a 2019 edition of the CC-CEDICT<\/a> (2019-11-12 04:41:56 GMT) for an answer. But I don’t think I ever posted my findings online. It’s time to rectify that. <\/p>\n

CC-CEDICT is not an ideal source in terms of words, because some entries are phrases<\/em> rather than single words, though they are not marked separately than words, which means that some entries might be better off with spaces rather than apostrophes, which would reduce the apostrophe count and percentage. <\/p>\n

So, with that in mind, of the file’s 117,579 entries, 3,006 needed apostrophes, or 2.56 percent. <\/p>\n

No entry needed three or more apostrophes. <\/p>\n

Only 52 entries needed two apostrophes, or 0.04% of the total (1 per 2,261 entries). <\/p>\n

Most of those were just Mandarinized foreign proper nouns. For example: <\/p>\n