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[Chinese] pronunciation rules | ||
Tags: Pronunciation | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| zeroByte Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4564 days ago 8 posts - 11 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 1 of 17 03 June 2012 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi,
I'm currently on my way to learn Chinese on my own with "The New Practical Chinese" [..]. The pronunciation rules are only given for the initial sound. All other sounds have to be picked up from the "Pronunciation Excercices". My problem is that exceptions to the rule are _not_ pointed out - e.g. "bu" with the first and the last tone are pronunced with the English "u", the two other ones with "o" for example. I had to hear every example recurringly to discover even subtle differences. That's no hassle so far, but I've stumbled upon this for several times now and it's really annoying because I don't know if: a) I did not get the pronunciation correctly before b) this is an exception to the elsewhere correct pronunciation c) this is a completely new rule I'm probably just a bit too fussy and it's not necessary to spell everything correctly in the beginning - but what's the gist of the exercices then? How to handle this "problem"? Do I have to learn every exception I was able to squeeze out of this book by heart without an "official" rule? Is there a widelyacknowledged approach to latch on the pronunciation exceptions? Is there a site offering a semi-official catalogue of exceptions and, perhaps, also audio files? I've of course tried to look some of those things up, but I got several pronunciations on several sites :( Thanks in Advance, Regards, 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JasonCZS Bilingual Super Polyglot Newbie China Joined 4609 days ago 8 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English, Mandarin*, Cantonese*, GermanB1, Latin, Hungarian, Ancient Greek, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Esperanto, Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Finnish, Polish, Italian, Modern Hebrew, French, Hindi, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Estonian, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Slovak, Arabic (Gulf) | Message 2 of 17 07 June 2012 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi zeroByte!
What's said in your textbook about the first and last tone being u and others being o, is just a close equivalent, or not even close. For practical reason that can be the case, but the four tones are by virtue the same phoneme, just pronounced with different tones. Take "a" for example, and this is also a practical tips, the first tone is what you will say when your dentist asks you to open your mouth, a plain "ah". Try to pronounce the second tone while raising you eyebrows and looking up. The third tone is a bit complicated; you can try to pronounce it while dropping your chin onto your neck and raising it again. And try to pronounce the fourth while stamping you foot. Speaking of exceptions, Pinyin is like the spelling system of Esperanto: it hardly has exceptions. As a native speaker, the only exception I can find is when 2 words with third tone are put together as a phrase, the first word will be pronounced as with a second tone, e.g, 你好ni3+hao3= ni2+hao3. The phonetic value of each letter is fixed. Vowels have tones, but what tones is a vowel pronounced with doesn't affect the consonant beside it, nor its phonetic value. I am not an expert with music, but I think it's like the difference between the first and last "Do" in Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si Do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zeroByte Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4564 days ago 8 posts - 11 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 3 of 17 07 June 2012 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi,
thanks for your answer. As far as I got it, the tone is more important than some aberrated (subtle) spelling, is that correct? I just found another one: fei (first tone on e) is spelled rather like the french "feuille" than the expected "fay". Another one: kou (third tone on o) and gou (third tone on o) are both spelled with "au" instead of "ou". As you (fourth tone on o) is spelled as expected, it must be an exception to spell "ou" like "au" if the tone on o is the third one? EDIT: as I said, I stumble upon such things from time to time :) Why is "zhong" and "chong" (both first tone on o) spelled with "u", whereas "dong" (third tone on o) is spelled with "o"? Regards, Edited by zeroByte on 07 June 2012 at 4:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 17 07 June 2012 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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To me it seems as your book doesn't use pinyin transcription but rather something else. (In pinyin, vowels are indeed spelled the same regardless of tone)
Can you give a few more examples from your book? Maybe somebody else here knows which system this is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 5 of 17 07 June 2012 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm not aware of such rule. Don't judge the sounds based on just few recordings, if the vowel is just between your u an o, it may sound as either randomly, depending how the speaker happens to pronounce them. Phonemes are not exact sounds but rather ranges of acceptable pronunciation. Languages often allow nearly as much free variation as is the difference between two phonemes, the perception of phonemes as exact sounds is an illusion. Learning pronunciation by listening to few recordings over and over again is not a good idea, because you can't recognize what is random variation and what is a rule. Edited by LaughingChimp on 07 June 2012 at 8:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zeroByte Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4564 days ago 8 posts - 11 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 6 of 17 07 June 2012 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
The pronunciation sections are titled with "Pinyin" so I can safely assume it is :) Another one: rè (hot) is pronunced rather like "ror" instead of "rergh". If you like I could also take such an example and upload it on youtube for you to listen. I'm just so fussy about it because I deem the distinction of those things to be very important in Chinese ^^ @LaughingChimp: So it's rather characteristic for the speaker and I can simply forgo it? I've already searched on youtube and there I got several different pronunciations for one thing. I just thought I could adhere to what the book says, where authors take care to keep everything clean. Regards, 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 7 of 17 07 June 2012 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | ||
Uh, do you realise that 'to spell' in English means 'to write with certain letters'? In German, it means either 'schreiben' or 'buchstabieren'. You're referring to the pronunciation, not to the spelling of the words, so you wanted to ask how certain words are pronounced, not spelled. I think this might have caused some confusion in this thread. I cannot contribute to the topic though. Me no studying Chinese... Edited by Josquin on 07 June 2012 at 11:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 8 of 17 08 June 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, or it may be even that single utterance. We don't pronounce things as precisely as you think. Learning to ignore the variation is as difficult as learning to recognize new sounds. German distinguishes many vowels, Mandarin distingishues much fewer, so it's very likely that many words that sound the same to native speakers will sound different to you each time you hear them. Eventually you will learn to recognize them as one sound. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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