|
 |
"J, q, x, zh, ch sh, u" Mandarin sounds | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| man Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6468 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German | Message 1 of 21 31 August 2006 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
This topic is exactly what I am having a problem with in learning Mandarin. I have the Teach Yourself book for Mandarin, and I read the section on pinyin, but I still don't understand the difference between x and sh, j and zh, and q and ch. Neither do I understand what sound the ü is supposed to make. Could anybody help me with this? Also, I feel it would be great if I could learn how to use the international phonetic alphabet; I know enough to write english with, but does anybody know a good book on the IPA that explains it in detail? Thank you! 谢谢你！
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7113 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes  6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 21 31 August 2006 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
man, I'll try to make a recording as soon as I can, but in the meanwhile, maybe the following untraditional descriptions might help:
sh - as in English, but enunciate well. Bite hard before releasing the vowel sound. x - Bite hard and smile - stretch your lips as wide as you can. You can feel the tension on both sides of your both, as well as between your teeth. Then link it up with the vowel sound. zh - say "j" in English, but bite hard, then release. j - As in x, stretch your lips and try to pronounce "j". You should feel quite a bit of tension. ch - as in English. You should have no difficulty. q - As in x again, stretch your lips. And approximate "ch" while retaining that tension. This is more difficult to explain. Hopefully hearing it would help. These were approximate descriptions and I am not sure if they can accurately describe the sounds pronounced. Do you have access to recordings, maybe as part of the Teach Yourself series? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6563 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 21 31 August 2006 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
With all due respect, the Mandarin sh, zh, and ch are nothing like the English sounds they resemble on paper! Making this mistake is the source of the most awful accents, and no Mandarin speaker will understand you. Finding a book that explains these in detail, with recordings, is essential, but I'll try and explain a little anyway.
There are three consonant pairs in Mandarin that resemble each other with key differences: sh - x zh - j ch - q x: This sounds a lot like English "sh", but your tongue is farther forward and higher in your mouth, making it more "hissy". sh: This sounds similar to x at first, but you have to curl the tip of your tongue up and back while saying "sssh". If you can't figure it out, try this: make your harshest piratey "darrrr" and stick your finger in your mouth to feel how your tongue moves back when you make that English "rrr" sound. This is where your tongue should be for the Chinese "sh", and it sounds like no sound in English. This is called a "retroflex" consonant — retro because your tongue is pointing backward. j: Add a light 'd' before the Chinese "x" sound, and you'll have it. It's almost like the English j in "judge" but with less voicing. zh: This is just like the Chinese sh except you add in your voice. It's like the 's' in Asia but with your tongue pointed way back again. q: Sounds like "ch" in English, but you make it with a 't' before the Chinese "x" sound. Like the "x" sound, your tongue is flat, high, and farther forward. ch: This is like the Chinese sh, except you start with your tongue touching the roof of your mouth as far back in your mouth as you can. Also that ü sound is just like the German one. Round your lips to say "ooh" and make your tongue pretend it's saying "eee". I spent several weeks drilling on these with my Mandarin teacher, and I'm told my pronunciation is excellent by native speakers. Edited by Captain Haddock on 31 August 2006 at 9:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7113 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 21 31 August 2006 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I moved these posts to a new thread so that we wouldn't take away the other discussion on learning pronunciation. (And the forum wouldn't let me type ü in the title, hence "u" as a substitute.)
I uploaded a sound file pronouncing all these sounds, which should clearer than written descriptions. I think that as long as you can make these same sounds coming from your own mouth, whether it's on the roof of your mouth or just over your teeth isn't all that important. captain haddock: I never trained for these sounds, so I have no idea how they are exactly pronounced, but I disagree that these sounds are nothing like English. Being the same is certainly not true, but from what I can tell, the Chinese "sh" sound only deviates from the English "sh" a bit, and are not entirely different sounds. I think the difference is that you made it retroflex. You are absolutely correct and many people say it, there is nothing incorrect about not adding this retroflex - I believe I have heard CCTV announcers speaking without the retroflex. As for "ch", I really can't tell a difference. I tried saying Charlie in a British accent, got rid of the "-rlie", and heard myself saying the Chinese "cha". The more I read your descriptions though, the more I realized it could simply be differences in accent, and my descriptions were hardly precise, so maybe that's why there is such a difference between our descriptions. Edit: Link to sound file Edited by victor on 31 August 2006 at 11:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6563 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 21 01 September 2006 at 4:40am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I wonder if perhaps you have a different idea of what the English sounds are, not being a native speaker? If you used the English "sh", it would sound more like Mandarin x than sh.
Standard Mandarin has no fricatives or affricatives that correspond to English aside from s and f. Wikipedia has a pretty good phonetic chart. Mandarin consonants significantly affect the following vowel. You can tell when a Westerner speaking "Chinese" in a movie has no idea what he's saying if he pronounces shi (to be) like the English "she". Edited by Captain Haddock on 01 September 2006 at 4:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6581 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 6 of 21 01 September 2006 at 4:46am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I think the first six consonants of the topic should be grouped into: J, Q, X; ZH, CH, SH (and R)
the place of articulation is the same for j, q and x, and the same for zh, ch, sh and r. But the aspiration is different. In English wikipedia, pinyin and Standard Mandarin contain lengthy paragraphs describing such sounds, just go and check them out! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6581 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 7 of 21 01 September 2006 at 4:49am | IP Logged | |||||
In fact, there are three versions of vowel /i/ in Standard Mandarin. 1) the one for most consonants 2) the one for zh, ch, sh and r 3) the one for z, c, s 2) stands as it follows the "back sounds" 3) follows the "front sounds" 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6689 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 21 01 September 2006 at 8:35am | IP Logged | |||||
Likewise, with all due respect, but this type of reasoning is also a source of many difficulties and horrible accents, for any language in general, not just mandarin. You might learn to produce nearly the same sound somewhere else in the mouth and a native speaker might not even detect the difference when pronounced in isolation. But when you start stringing sounds together in sequence and increse the speed, unless you learned it the right way from the beginning, the transitions between sounds end up being laboured, unnatural and artificial, taking a disproportionate amount of energy and concentration to produce and making it impossible to achieve anything resembling fluent speech. You need to a. listen to recordings and repeat out loud, b. have a clear idea of where in the mouth each sound is produced, the position of the tongue etc. c. have a native speaker listen and correct you, especially someone with experience as a teacher. If you can't have the latter at least the first two are absolutely necessary. (EDIT: another common mistake is to think that recordings are sufficient)
It is the same thing here. The sounds may be so similar that it is hard to tell them apart on their own, but in fluent speech you'll start stumbling and the difference begins to show. It is of course perfectly OK to model your pronunciation after some non-retroflex native accent, if you study and train for that and then stick to it. EDIT: If you decide to go that route though, you need to adopt all the other peculiarities of the accent of your choice into the bargain as well. Mixing variants is never a good idea. EDIT: Btw John Pasden has an excellent article about mandarin pronunciation on his website, where he describes how to produce some of the more difficult sounds, while at the same time setting straight some of the most common misconceptions. Highly recommended reading for anyone interested in the subject. Edited by Hencke on 01 September 2006 at 10:02am 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
