The character 言 is also used for a homonymous particle (OC ŋan) whose meaning is much debated. Some authors think that it means 'there; and so' (at the beginning of poetry lines); others think that it sometimes represents a form of the 1st person pronoun (and is thus related to 我, 吾 q.v.). It is also attested within an expressive reduplication 言言 *ŋan-ŋan 'to be high' (in Shijing).

    Finally, 言 occurs in Early Zhou texts (with the same reading *ŋan) as a phonetic variant of the pronominal predicate 然 *nan (q.v.) after velars, *-h ( < *-Ks) and *-ʔ [thus, e.g., in Shi 26,4] (see Schüssler 503). It seems also to occur after -ć ( < *-Ts) which is phonetically strange (perhaps reflecting a facultative articulation of -ć as -jh?).

    The word 言 'speak' is no doubt related to 語 *ŋaʔ q.v.