On Sat, 13 Dec 2003, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> Bill Bright claims that the famous three-syllable character for
> 'library' (transcribed tushuguan in Hockett 2003 and Mair, WWS) exists
> almost exclusively to demonstrate that at least one three-syllable
> character exists. Can you confirm or deny?

It seems to have existed at some time, as it is in the revised American
edition of Mathews' (1943)--it's handwritten next to the three-character
form of 'library', which itself is under the "tu" head entry (I don't know
if it's in the original edition). The character's also in the telegraph
code.

But why three? There's a number of four-syllable ones in Roar Bokset's
(umlaut over the second "o") monograph, _A Dictionary of Nonstandard
Simplified Chinese Characters_ (Stockholm: Society for Oriental Studies
Institute of Oriental Languages, n.d.) (circa 1980s)[1]. One's an
"obsolete" (defined as the main sources being older than 1965) kang mei
yuan chao (the Korean War slogan), the character being shou 'hand' radical
on the left (= the left half of "kang") and yue 'moon' on the right (= the
right half of "chao"). (The other four-syllable ones in the book are for
various -ism terms.)

[1] Available from http://www.orientaliskastudier.se/books.htm , or at
least was a few years ago.


Thomas Chan
tc31@...