Common Chinese homophones having two or more syllables

Certainly there are many, many Chinese homophones. Here I will largely or entirely be including only ones I have happened upon in the course of everyday life.

I expect I will keep adding to this list over time. Sorted by Pinyin, then by English meaning. Some character(s) may be shared between (or potentially among) homophones.

gōngkè

• 公克 gram
• 功課 homework

shuǐpíng

• 水平 level (noun)
• 水瓶 water bottle

I try to put similarly common homophones resulting from tone sandhi in this other blog entry.

Soir, rasoir

This time around (see here for last time), soir is the French combination of letters not necessarily pronounced the same way in all words.

I discovered this difference in an old http://www.dailyfrenchpod.com video podcast episode (one of my favored French podcasts). Being familiar with the sound of the commonly used word soir (evening), in which the s is pronounced like the English s, I was surprised to discover that in rasoir (razor), the s is pronounced more like an English z, which I confirmed with my Larousse English/French dictionary app.

Not that my having pronounced it incorrectly in Paris over 30 years ago prevented the saleswoman from understanding my request:

Vendez-vous les rasoirs jetables?
(Do you sell disposable razors?)

4/1/14: I had forgotten the word besoin (need), whose s is also pronounced more like an English z than an English s! The s in soin (care) is, just like the s in soir, pronounced like the English s.

The verb "to return" in Chinese

The transitive verb "to return" is rendered in at least the following two ways in Chinese. It can be particularly nuanced when the object is a book.

To return a book to a library, use the verb 還 (huán; this character is also pronounced hái, for which it has an entirely different meaning):

I'd like to return this book. 我要還這本書. (Wǒ yào huán zhèi běn shū.)

To return a purchase (including a book!) to a store, use the verb 退還 (tuìhuán):

I'd like to return this book. 我要退還這本書. (Wǒ yào tuìhuán zhèi běn shū.)

Origin of the Chinese word for "organic" for produce, etc.?

Ever since learning that the word 有機 (yǒujī) means "organic" with respect to produce, I had difficulty coming up with a satisfactory reason why it should.  The two characters just don't make any sense (well, to me, anyway) for such a meaning, and multiple native Chinese speakers have not been able to explain the origin of / rationale behind 有機 to me, either.

I finally came up with a possible reason: the French word for organic is biologique, the middle part of which bears a decent phonetic similarity to 有機.

This may not be as far-fetched as it might initially seem. The Chinese word for latte is 拿鐵 (nátiě), which is a purely phonetic conversion. Perhaps something similar occurred for "organic", from the French word for it?

Update 1:

Alternately, the definition of 機關 (jīguān) is "organ",  but that is in the sense of an organization/office, so it's not related to this meaning of organic, but perhaps whoever came up with 有機 mistakenly thought it did?

Update 2:
A native Cantonese speaker suggested that 有機 in Cantonese was chosen as being a decent phonetic match with "organic", further pointing out that Hong Kong would have been a natural place where Chinese language equivalents were created for foreign words. This idea seems to be the most reasonable explanation.

Different forms of "or" in Chinese

One of the difficulties ("nuances") about learning Chinese is that there are multiple ways to express "or". A specific one of those (還是; háishi) indicates a question or implies a questioning stance, while a different word(s) express(es) "or" as a statement (for that I normally use 或者 (huòzhě), but there are other(s)). I periodically catch myself in mid-sentence correcting the Chinese word I'm using for "or", which is at least better than unknowingly using the wrong one!

Do you usually buy two or three? (a question seeking an answer; Do you usually buy two, or do you usually buy three?)
你通常買兩個還是三個?
(Nǐ tōngcháng mǎi liǎngge háishi sānge?)

You usually buy two or three. (a statement, not a question; I know that you usually buy two or three.)
你通常買兩個或(者)三個.
(Nǐ tōngcháng mǎi liǎngge huò(zhě) sānge.)

I am told by a native Chinese speaker that it could be more natural to omit the 者; time will tell if I can get used to doing so.

I don't know if you usually buy two or three. (a questioning stance; I don't know if you usually buy two or if you usually buy three.)
我不知道你通常買兩個還是三個.
(Wǒ bù zhīdao nǐ tōngcháng mǎi liǎngge háishi sānge.)

A Chinese character not pronounced in any of the standard tones

Chinese characters are normally pronounced in one of four standard tones (five, counting the neutral tone).

There is, however, at least one character which is commonly pronounced in a style which differs from any of those four (five) tones. I've heard it often enough in (melo-)dramatic moments in movies or TV programs. If you've seen your share of those, you might have heard it as well.

The mystery character?
唉 (formally āi)
It's a sighing sound, and is often pronounced in a slowly falling tone, typically accompanied by the exhalation of breath commonly associated with a sigh.

One of my dictionaries gives "(an interjection of regret or disgust) alas"; my feeling is that it is more frequently a sigh of regret than of disgust.

Another of my dictionaries gives the fixed phrase 唉聲嘆氣 (āishēngtànqì) to sigh with distress; to moan and groan. In a context like that, where it is not someone's actual sigh, it would be pronounced in its formal first tone.

Tutoyer, vouvoyer

In the late 1980's, I had a French conversation with an American friend who had a wonderful French accent (she had married a Frenchman and had lived in France for some time). At one point she cut in to tell me, "Tu peux me tutoyer." ("You can use tu with me."), introducing me to an infrequently used, but still quite useful verb.

Tu is the familiar form of "you", while vous is the formal form. My belief is that it is fairly natural in an initial French conversation between two speakers, at least one of whom is an adult, that the younger (or perhaps somehow "newer") person would use vous to address the other person. I hadn't previously imagined that there were verbs dedicated to usage of tu (tutoyer) and vous (vouvoyer [not "vousvoyer"]; subsequently realized this sounds the same as Vous voyez ["You see"]).

More than a decade later, I was giving a 2-hour ride to a polite young Frenchwoman (from Martinique, actually), who began by using vous to address me, and switched to tu after I took what may be my only opportunity in this lifetime to legitimately remark "Tu peux me tutoyer.". That car ride was a wonderful, unexpected chance for me to have some French conversation practice.

I suspect tutoyer is used rather more commonly in spoken conversation than vouvoyer, since it strikes me that one would more commonly tell another person that "You don't have to be so formal with me." than the reverse.