> Yes, there are TC which maps to two or more SC :-) There are ~4 of them > on a single character basic. More if you look into 2-3 character words. > > -James Seng Yes, that is true. But I think that is not what Tin Wee is trying to point out. One TC character does not map to a two or more SC character "phrase" (the keyword being "phrase", as used by John in his previous mail), which is the error in John's understanding that Tin Wee was trying to point out. TC-SC equivalence would best be described as "many cases of 1-1 mappings for the same source TC character" and not "1-n mappings" which is gives the false impression of a possible decomposition process where one character becomes two (e.g. one character "a with umlaut" -> two characters "a" + "umlaut") Although one Chinese character may map to a two or more Chinese character phrase, that is not strictly a TC-SC equivalence rule, but rather just a relationship between synonyms (e.g. "录" = "青"). The semantic meaning may be equivalent, but the pronunciation and number of syllables would be different (e.g. in English, "car" = "automobile"). This is in contrast to Japanese, where one abstract character in Kanji may map to a two or more abstract characters in Katakana, and yet still bear exactly the same semantic meaning, pronunciation, and number of syllables. But I am no Japanese expert so please correct me if I am wrong here. maynard
