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Phonetic confusion - Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes  Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 1 of 38 02 January 2011 at 6:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a question for people who have mastered Mandarin sounds (or at least have made
more progress than me :)). I started Assimil Chinese With Ease today and have spent some time (few hours) on pinyin. One thing confuses me: pronunciation of 'j'. Whenever I hear this sound in a word, it sounds to me exactly like /ʥ/ (Serbian ђ. you can hear the sound here ). However, wikipedia pinyin page (first table, 'Initials' here )says that this is the /ʨ/ sound (which is Serbian ћ. pronunciation here ). While 'q' (the aspirated pair of 'j') does sound like 'ћ with more air expulsion', pinyin 'j', certainly doesn't sound like 'ћ'. Scrolling down on wiki pinyin page, in the "Pronunciation of initials" table both sounds are given as IPA symbols for 'j'. But /ʥ/ and /ʨ/ are quite different sounds, so, can someone tell me is it the one or the other? Or maybe it doesn't matter, as long as it is not pronounced as it's aspirated pair? Edited by Aineko on 02 January 2011 at 6:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6851 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 2 of 38 02 January 2011 at 7:33am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't comment on Mandarin vs Czech pronunciation, but I can recommend something that may help you more than Assimil and Wikipedia. The Pronunciation and Romanization module of the FSI Chinese Course is fantastic. They explain the differences in tongue position for pairs like this. Once you've learned how to produce it, you'll have no trouble distinguishing the difference when you hear it.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 3 of 38 02 January 2011 at 8:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Where did Czech come from? :) Well, the problem is that it seems to me I hear the
difference now, but I'm confused with the IPA symbols for this sound... Thanks for the recommendation, I'll take a look. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sun_Wukong Newbie China Joined 5080 days ago 34 posts - 46 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 4 of 38 02 January 2011 at 8:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Forget the IPA. The sounds they have for mandarin (actually PUTONGHUA - STANDARD
Mandarin. Make yourself aware of the sociolinguistics of chinese, it`s VERY important) on wikipedia and other resources, such as the Sounds of Chinese book, come from a rather idealized and autistic description of it. Several of the consonants are not 100% in accordance with even for the most standard TV and radio putonghua. You can go with the FSI module first and pay a lot of attention to your audio input afterwards. Just as an example, on real speech, even for official putonghua as pronounced by a trained beijinger or northeasterner, you will hear pinyin "b" either voiced or unvoiced (but always without aspiration). Even in a venerable tome such as Sounds of Chinese, you are lead to think otherwise. One last thing: there is a huge (HUGE) margin of variation for "initials" (consonants mostly) all accross China. Don't worry too much, or at all, about them, unless you know your pronunciation is making a distinction in meaning. Which is extremely unlikely, trust me. Worry instead about tones. A lot. Edited by Sun_Wukong on 02 January 2011 at 9:25am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 5 of 38 02 January 2011 at 9:02am | IP Logged | ||
Sounds like a good advice, thanks :). I've done some more reading and I think I might have figured out where my confusion came from. Like you said, you read everywhere that initials are unvoiced, but as you said yourself, in pronunciation they can come out voiced, as well. Given that /ʥ/ is the voiced pair of /ʨ/ (ђ-ћ, one of the voiced-unvoiced pairs in Serbian), that explains why I hear /ʥ/ in words, while IPA leads you to expect /ʨ/. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Po-ru Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5481 days ago 173 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, Mandarin, French | Message 6 of 38 02 January 2011 at 9:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Does anyone have any good materials for learning Persian? I prefer text with
accompanying audio. I usually like TYS but I didn't have a good experience with it when I was learning Korean, so I am unsure if it's worth it. . Any advice? Online sources and sites are also welcomed if anyone has any suggestions. Thanks everyone 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6851 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 7 of 38 02 January 2011 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||
Well that's me embarrassed. I was distracted, sorry about that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sun_Wukong Newbie China Joined 5080 days ago 34 posts - 46 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 8 of 38 02 January 2011 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||
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The sad part is that you may not hear such info from even very language-savvy people or
linguists working in the field. It's more than useful knowledge and it pertains specifically to standard mandarin, not to any "dialect", be it beijinghua or dongbeihua of one sort or the other. I had to first trust my ears and go through a lot of self- doubt. Natives might be confused if you ask them, so I just ran some tests. I first noticed for sure when they (people from more than one region) started writing my name (Pedro; in portuguese we have unaspirated voiced b and unaspirated voiced p, really unaspirated unlike English for the most part) with "b" but would voice it in pronunciation. It's was easy to trust my ears because I would hear it in the vocative, when it's somewhat stressed and prosodically isolated, and because it's my name and it's in initial position. You will see similar things for other sounds. I still haven't figured out how much position plays a logical role in it or if it's random. I wish I could, I wouldn't need inductive learning to try and sound more native. I could have just ignored it like many students, but the amateur linguist in me demanded otherwise. Since I'm digressing anyway, aspiration does make a difference to them. It doesn't matter much if your voicing d or not, but the aspirated unvoiced sound is surely something else to their ears. Same with b-p (pinyin, obviously). Chinese is a sorry mess, as far as didactics go. The sociolinguistic situation, govt. input, traditional mainland metholdologies etc. etc. etc. make the problem understandbly hard to crack, though. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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