yī zhì zì

Translation

  • (orthography) consistent words (e.g. "dean", "bean", and "lean", where "-ean" is pronounced the same in each case)
  • consistent characters (e.g. 搖|摇[yao2], 遙|遥[yao2] and 謠|谣[yao2], which share a phonetic component that reliably indicates that the pronunciation of the character is yáo)
Chinese Tones