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Mandarin phonetic difference.when? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5332 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes  Speaks: Swedish* | Message 17 of 25 20 December 2009 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with the first part, about different u's, but I am starting to think that pinyin only seems like a perfect fit because the standardized language has been forced to align with pinyin. It is entirely possible that what is now acceptable standard Mandarin is in fact merely a construction that was designed to be logical and regular. I wouldn't put that past the communists. For example, several similar but non-identical vowels may have been merged into one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6705 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 25 20 December 2009 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good point. It is possible, and I was only referring to the fit that exists today, with standard Mandarin. Still, the communists were only at it for half a century or so. It should be possible to verify if this did in fact take place. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 19 of 25 22 December 2009 at 6:07am | IP Logged | |||||
I was confused the first time I read this so I just want to clarify for any other simple-minded people like me out there: there is lu and there is also lü and they are different sounds. SOMETIMES you will see the umlaut dropped [ETA: when it shouldn't be], but it should be a pretty uncommon experience. A quick look at the Zhuyin Fuhao will make it clearer: ㄌㄨ and ㄌㄩ respectively. Think "road" vs "green." The first rhymes with ku, the second rhymes with yu and is in general pretty rare. I can't actually think of any common characters that would be transliterated as lü apart from "green" and "donkey" but it's something to keep in mind. Don't you love exceptions? :) I agree that shi is voiced which probably means there's a vowel (actually I'm not sure on the technical definition of "vowel," but I'll trust you on this), but I understand where the confusion may be coming from - in Bopomofo it is simply written as the Zhuyin Fuhao equivalent of the sh. Edited by annette on 22 December 2009 at 6:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 20 of 25 22 December 2009 at 6:50am | IP Logged | |||||
This is a very interesting question and I'm not sure what my thoughts on it are. My initial impulse was to look towards Zhuyin Fuhao, which is now almost exclusively used in Taiwan but was initially widespread in mainland China, too (that is, dating from before the KMT withdrawal to Taiwan and the establishment of the PRC). Zhuyin Fuhao was created in the early 1910's in the early days of the Republic of China. The "letters" in Zhuyin Fuhao largely reflect the shapes of archaic characters, and the sounds of those "letters" reflect the pronunciation of certain modern characters those archaic characters are now found as a part of. The example I always remember is the first letter of the Bopomofo: ㄅ or pinyin "b," which you can see reflected in the character 包 bao1, which is where it gets its pronunciation. As Zhuyin Fuhao clearly predates the dominance of the PRC, and the ancient characters are, well, ancient, this could be construed as an argument for the existence of modern standard Mandarin pronunciation prior to any PRC plans. On the other hand, maybe the Communists were just so successful in promulgating their pinyin agenda that our modern interpretation of Zhuyin Fuhao has nothing to do with its original form! Who knows? Edited by annette on 22 December 2009 at 6:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DavidGretzschel Newbie Taiwan Joined 5320 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes | Message 21 of 25 23 December 2009 at 11:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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well, mandarin is an artificial standard language
obviously, vocals had to be merged, because the northern mouth might be able to form different vocals than the southern. So it had to be a compromise of different dialects. So why not simplifying it. That`s how I would create a language for everyone in a very big country. That`s not communism or capitalism, that`s pragmatism. And of course not everybody is able to speak the comproomise in the same way. In Germany, I`m from the north of it, I often barely understand someone from Bavaria. Their ``standard German`` sounds different too. And China is bigger, wider and more splitted than Germany. @egill thanks man, that`s pretty helpful 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 22 of 25 23 December 2009 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with you that Mandarin is an "artificial standard language" (insomuch that
standardized languages are to some extent artificial), but I'm curious about whether Gusutafu's suggestion of Communist-spearheaded standardization is a viable possibility. I really think that the process of standardization as we know it today must have started prior to the Communists as a long-term process. "That's not communism or capitalism, that's pragmatism." I think Gusutafu's point in bringing into the Communists was not to ascribe an ideological agenda to the general process of language standardization; I think he brought in the Communists in order to situate us historically... and to bring in some humor (I mean, language standardization isn't in itself a Communist act, but don't you think it would be right up the CPC's alley?)... of course, I can't speak for Gusutafu, but that was my interpretation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5192 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 23 of 25 03 March 2010 at 12:58am | IP Logged | |||||
That is exactly what I was going to say. They may not be the same phonetic vowel, but they are the same phonologically. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6895 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 24 of 25 03 March 2010 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I believe I've also heard meng4 pronounced with more of an "o" sound. For most speakers, does meng4 rhyme with
feng1 or sheng1? (Or do all three rhyme?) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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