fanqie

Fanqie is a method used in traditional Chinese lexicography to indicate the pronunciation of a monosyllabic character by using two other characters, one with the same initial consonant as the desired syllable and one in which the rest of the syllable (the final) matches. The method was introduced in the 3rd century AD and is to some extent still used in commentaries on the classics and dictionaries.

== History == Early dictionaries such as the Erya (3rd century BC) did not indicate pronunciation. One of the innovations of the Shuowen Jiezi (early 2nd century AD) was to indicate the pronunciation of a character by the (, 'read as') method, giving another character with the same pronunciation. The introduction of Buddhism to China around the 1st century brought Indian phonetic knowledge, which may have inspired the idea of fanqie. According to the 6th-century scholar Yan Zhitui, fanqie were first used by Sun Yan (), of the Wei kingdom (220–280 AD), in his Erya Yinyi (, "Sounds and Meanings of Erya"). However, earlier examples have been found in the late-2nd-century works of Fu Qian and Ying Shao.