User:Kevin J P Maynard

BINOME

A two-syllable word in Chinese. Grammatical term now widely used by linguists and translators. For example 'dongwu' means 'animal' and consists of a compound word formed from two individual monosyllabic words. Originally Chinese (being then an 'isolating' language) consisted almost entirely of monosyllabic words. Gradually the number of syllables that the average Chinese word contains has increased: now over 80% of words in Mandarin are disyllabic.