ABSTRACT
In 1999, a legal dispute arose in Jiangsu Province. A certain M r Sun borrowed 20,500 yuan from his friend Mr Li. An IOU was written for the purpose. Some months later, Mr Li was in need of money and M r Sun repaid part of the money. A new IOU was drafted: Li jie Sun 20,500 yuan (Sun borrowed 20,500 yuan from Li). Jin hai qiankuan 18,500 yuan (Now 18,500 yuan is still owing). The two parties fell out later on and could not agree as to how much money was repaid and how much still owing. The written IOU further complicated the matter. The problem was with the character hai. The character has two different pronunciations with two different meanings: hai, ‘still* or ‘yet’, and huan, ‘to return’, or ‘to repay’. In the above sentence, it is indistinguishable grammatically as to which meaning it refers to. Jin hai qiankuan 18,500 yuan (Now 18,500 is still owing) can just as well be read as Jin huan qiankuan 18,500 yuan (Now 18,500 has been repaid). If one chooses to read the first version as Mr Sun did, Mr Li was owed just 3000 yuan. If one chooses to read the second version as Mr Li did, it means Mr Sun had repaid 3000 yuan, and 10,000 yuan was still owing. So they went to court to argue the case.'
