One of the hardest things about Chinese is that it is full of homophones – words and characters that sound either identical, or nearly so. For example Pleco has more than ten entries for shī, and more than sixty for all five tonal variants (including neutral) of shi. In a correctly pronounced and intoned sentence, context will usually be enough for Chinese speakers to figure out which of many possible homophones is actually being spoken at any given time, but that is not always the case. Particularly for foreigners who cannot always hear or speak the tones correctly, but also sometimes for native Chinese， there can definitely be confusion or ambiguity around which character exactly was said. Luckily the Chinese have a method for resolving this confusion which I am going to teach you, to help you clarify not only what you have said, but what you have heard as well.
Like I said, this is a technique that Chinese people use themselves, particularly when describing their names, the reason being that names are effectively contextless and even native speakers therefore have no way of knowing exactly which of possibly many homophones was spoken. The way it works is to verbally identify the character in some way separate from its pronunciation. Usually this is done by reference to a distinctive word which contains the character, or less often either by describing psychically the structure of the radicals making it up, or by describing the meaning of the word with reference to a synonym. So for example, my name is 德伟 [déwěi]. Many foreigners take 大伟 [dàwěi] as their Chinese name, so I often have to explain that I mean 德伟 not 大伟, but because there are quite a few characters which sound like dé, I often have to explain which one is actually my name. There are a few ways to do this. 德国 [dégúo] means Germany, so I can say “德国的德” [dégúo de dé] which literally means “the 德 from 德国” which everyone understands. However, I am not German, and this can lead to confusion too, so I prefer to explain that a friend borrowed this character for my name from a famous chain of roast duck restaurants called “全聚德”. So I say, “我叫德伟， 全聚德， 那个德”. Which usually works.
Apart from describing words that a character appears in, you can also describe the character itself, but you need to be quite familiar not just with characters but also with the radicals, or sub components, too. If you are reasonably familiar with written Chinese, then you’re good to go. For example while there are over sixty characters which sound like shi, only one has the water radical 氵, which can be described as “三点水” or “three dots of water”. And while there are 14 characters specifically matching shī, only one has the mouth radical 口 at the left and can be identified with the phrase “左边有口” [zuǒbiān yǒu kǒu] – literally “the left hand side has a mouth”.
Knowing exactly what is the most appropriate way to verbally identify a character can be hit and miss, but descriptions based on common radicals are likely to be understood even if they do not seem the most natural for native speakers. If you have a Chinese name, and native speakers do not always understand which characters you actually use to write it, think about preparing a description of those characters in advance, which you can use next time you need to get the message across. People will definitely be impressed if you know this trick.
Willow Tree Chinese 