I can never remember the ci2zu3 in wen2fa3 de ci2zu3 (grammar phrase) and thinking that maybe I couldn't remember because I never analyzed the thing I just asked my wife whether the ci2 in ci2zu3 was the same ci2 as in "word."

She said that "ci2" meant "phrase."

I said no it didn't mean "phrase" it meant a two character word.

She said "A character is a word," so I said "How do you say "what" in Chinese?" She said "shen2me5."

Is that one word or two?

Two.

But it is not two words in the sense that say "Wo3 hao3 le5" is three words?

Huh?

Shen2me5 is one word.

It is two characters.

A word is not a character. Lots of words in Chinese are more than one character. Some words are one character, some are two, three or four.

If you say this you will drive Chinese crazy.

Etc.

Fox - And a lot of non Chinese I would expect.

bob - That's true. After that I begged her not to become hysterical but rather to try to look at it "logically". Shen2me5 translates to one word in English. You could look it up in a dictionary. Shen2me5 is what you might call a "concept." Isn't that right dear? I realize that the character system has not evolved sufficiently as to put a space between words but there is hope, right? Logic is a from of torture to the Chinese mind generally and so it goes badly. She sleeps now and looks cute while sleeping, for this I remain thankful.