What does it mean that a scholar can only read half a word?

"A scholar reads only half a word": Does it mean that a scholar is too lazy to look up a word he doesn't know, or is he afraid of losing face and asking for tips? Read a word.

It turns out that some pictophonetic characters, with the reform of Chinese characters, have changed the pronunciation of the phonetic part and no longer play the role of phonetic representation;

Nowadays, "a scholar can only read half the words" is often used as a derogatory term to satirize the ignorant.

China has a long history, a vast territory and great changes in pronunciation. Of course, the more important reason is change-that is, war, unrest and the large-scale migration of population caused by it.

China has a proverb since ancient times: "A scholar knows twice the result with half the effort." In Chinese characters, pictophonetic characters account for the vast majority, which has reached more than 90% so far, bringing great convenience to literates. Duan Yucai, a famous linguist in the Qing Dynasty, once said, "Homophones must belong to the same department." Translated into today's words: a group of pictophonetic words with the same word as the phonetic symbol, such as: how, he, ke, ke ... their pronunciations are the same or similar.

However, in a large number of pictophonetic characters, there are often "unsatisfactory" places. For example, if you only look at "half", it is bound to make people laugh. As a result, "a scholar can only read half" has become a laughing stock and a derogatory term to satirize the ignorant.

Example: When encountering a gong, read the "ke" sound; when encountering a gong, read the "gong" sound. All these words are pronounced correctly. But this method sometimes doesn't work. For example, the saved "ten thousand" does not give "exemption" and the wayward "blessing" does not give "comparison".