Xin Tang 6 - Pinyin.info

10 JOHN DEFRANCISyears, but many South Koreans remain afflicted with fear ofhomography. Only in the case of Viet Nam has the adoption of aphonemic system of writing completely dispelled earliermtmlfestatlons of homographobia.So thoroughly has this fear been eradicated in the case ofVietnamese that specialists in the language react with someamusement at its existence in the Chinese field. I encountered thesame reaction from my colleague Samuel H. Elbert, a specialist inHawaiian, when I questioned him about his statement that "Partlybecause of Its few phonemes [and hence limited alphabet of only 13letters], Hawaiian has more words with multiple meanings thanalmost any other language." (Elbert 19841 He responded withill-concealed derision when I asked if this caused ambiguity inwritten Hawaihm, and he declined to take the time to satisfy myrequest for a list of homographs to provide evidence forspecialists in Chinese that even extensive homography does notnecessarily lead to ambiguity. My own tentative search into thematter reveals that even in my little pocket dictionary (Pukui,Elbert, and Mookini 1975) many entries do indeed have amultiplicity of meanings, and, to compound the matter, manyentries, a few of which are listed below, are as much look-alikes asthe Chinese examples cited earlier:hahahahuhakahakuhehahekehuhahuhuhukakahakahekahukakekakukohl!kohekohukokekokokuhakukakukekukuDespite look-alikes such as these, I must, since Professor Elbert isprobably the world's leading authority on Hawaiian, accept hiscategorical assertion that the writing system presents no problemof ambiguity and that homographobia is completely unknown is his