Chinese thread

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M Mira
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Re: Chinese thread

Post by M Mira »

Qwynegold wrote:Okay, so [ʂʐ̩ː˧˥] (or my attempt of pronuncing it) was completely wrong for shí, so now I'll just say [ʂyː˧˥] because that's what it sound like when the teacher says it.
Here's an audio file for shí(石) from MoE, does this sound like your teacher's pronunciation?
http://dict.moe.gov.tw/jdict/wav/all/4900.wav
石 石部 零畫 共五畫 石 石
shí shíbù línghùa gòngwǔhùa shí shí

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Re: Chinese thread

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M Mira wrote:
Qwynegold wrote:Okay, so [ʂʐ̩ː˧˥] (or my attempt of pronuncing it) was completely wrong for shí, so now I'll just say [ʂyː˧˥] because that's what it sound like when the teacher says it.
Here's an audio file for shí(石) from MoE, does this sound like your teacher's pronunciation?
http://dict.moe.gov.tw/jdict/wav/all/4900.wav
石 石部 零畫 共五畫 石 石
shí shíbù línghùa gòngwǔhùa shí shí
No, that sounds more like a real to me. On this site, if you click the S, the vowel sounds not quite same, but similar to both vowels that she uses after s, z, c and the retroflexes. (The vowel with Sh on that site does not sound the same as hers though.)
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M Mira
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Re: Chinese thread

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Qwynegold wrote:
M Mira wrote:
Qwynegold wrote:Okay, so [ʂʐ̩ː˧˥] (or my attempt of pronuncing it) was completely wrong for shí, so now I'll just say [ʂyː˧˥] because that's what it sound like when the teacher says it.
Here's an audio file for shí(石) from MoE, does this sound like your teacher's pronunciation?
http://dict.moe.gov.tw/jdict/wav/all/4900.wav
石 石部 零畫 共五畫 石 石
shí shíbù línghùa gòngwǔhùa shí shí
No, that sounds more like a real to me. On this site, if you click the S, the vowel sounds not quite same, but similar to both vowels that she uses after s, z, c and the retroflexes. (The vowel with Sh on that site does not sound the same as hers though.)

Hmm, I can't really tell the difference between the two besides that the recording there seems to be not as good. The s there sounds like a [T] to me, as I can't hear the "hissing" onset. Here's a closer one to that, with the same tone (1st):
http://dict.moe.gov.tw/jdict/wav/all/4892.wav

If there's any difference, it likely remains within my allophonic threshold thus I can't detect it.

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by Rui »

[ʂyː˧˥] would definitely be wrong, if only because the vowel is definitely not rounded.

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by Seirios »

Some do pronounce the vowel in zhi chi shi ri with some roundedness, but in any case the vowel is definitely not [y] or .
Always an adventurer, I guess.
-
Tone: Chao's notation.
Apical vowels: [ɿ]≈[z̞̩], [ʅ]≈[ɻ̞̩], [ʮ]≈[z̞̩ʷ], [ʯ]≈[ɻ̞̩ʷ].
Vowels: [ᴇ]=Mid front unrounded, [ᴀ]=Open central unrounded, [ⱺ]=Mid back rounded, [ⱻ]=Mid back unrounded.

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Qwynegold
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Re: Chinese thread

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M Mira wrote:
Qwynegold wrote:
M Mira wrote:
Qwynegold wrote:Okay, so [ʂʐ̩ː˧˥] (or my attempt of pronuncing it) was completely wrong for shí, so now I'll just say [ʂyː˧˥] because that's what it sound like when the teacher says it.
Here's an audio file for shí(石) from MoE, does this sound like your teacher's pronunciation?
http://dict.moe.gov.tw/jdict/wav/all/4900.wav
石 石部 零畫 共五畫 石 石
shí shíbù línghùa gòngwǔhùa shí shí
No, that sounds more like a real to me. On this site, if you click the S, the vowel sounds not quite same, but similar to both vowels that she uses after s, z, c and the retroflexes. (The vowel with Sh on that site does not sound the same as hers though.)

Hmm, I can't really tell the difference between the two besides that the recording there seems to be not as good. The s there sounds like a [T] to me, as I can't hear the "hissing" onset. Here's a closer one to that, with the same tone (1st):
http://dict.moe.gov.tw/jdict/wav/all/4892.wav

If there's any difference, it likely remains within my allophonic threshold thus I can't detect it.

In that recording it sounded quite similar to my teacher's pronunciation. Oh, btw. She says that she has a hard time distinguishing between yin and ying. So she probably doesn't speak Putonghua.

And her /s/ does sound a bit lisped at times. I have this print out that describes the sounds, and it's pretty good. I've gotten a little better with my consonant thanks to it. It has this to say about [s]:
s [s] is a blade-alveolar voiceless fricative. It is produced by pressin the tip of the tongue against the back of the lower teeth and letting the air squeeze out from between the blade of tongue and the upper teeth.

So this explains the lisp.
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Qwynegold
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Re: Chinese thread

Post by Qwynegold »

Rui wrote:[ʂyː˧˥] would definitely be wrong, if only because the vowel is definitely not rounded.
But that's the closest I can do. :(
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M Mira
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Re: Chinese thread

Post by M Mira »

Qwynegold wrote: In that recording it sounded quite similar to my teacher's pronunciation. Oh, btw. She says that she has a hard time distinguishing between yin and ying. So she probably doesn't speak Putonghua.
ying -> yin is actually pretty common in Taiwan, and people display this "error" all over the Internet, creating terms such as 因該 yin.gai instead of 應該 ying.gai. While not accepted and likely mocked when typed, it's pretty common to hear it in speech. I don't think it's due to Minnan influence (there is such distinction and AFAIK it's not much of a problem in Taiwanese as in Mandarin). IMHO, it could be that we've already off-loaded the burden of -n and -ng to the vowel, fronting it when there's -n but not when -ng. While that's doable with a and ê, it's not possible with i so the distinction of -in and -ing disappears. My ears tell me that the reverse is applied to i in Beijing: the vowel in their -ing sounds like an iotated schwa.
Qwynegold wrote: And her /s/ does sound a bit lisped at times. I have this print out that describes the sounds, and it's pretty good. I've gotten a little better with my consonant thanks to it. It has this to say about [s]:
s [s] is a blade-alveolar voiceless fricative. It is produced by pressin the tip of the tongue against the back of the lower teeth and letting the air squeeze out from between the blade of tongue and the upper teeth.
So this explains the lisp.
I thought it's just poor recording messing up the fricatives, guess I'm wrong :o

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by sirdanilot »

iotated schwa
Io what?

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by M Mira »

sirdanilot wrote:
iotated schwa
Io what?
Something like [jəŋ] or [jɤŋ]? We already have [ɔ] -> [ɯ̯ʌ] in Beijing Mandarin and those neutral tone thingy so can't say I'm surprised.

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Re: Chinese thread

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by sirdanilot »

So you simply mean /jə/.

Iotation is most commonly refferred to as a diachronic process according to that wiki article and/or a still-productive phonological process.

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by Rui »

How is it not diachronic? It went from [i~ɪ] to [jə~jɤ]. Other varieties maintain the high front vowel, the Beijing-area dialect shifted at some point. Phonemically it's probably /i/, definitely not /jə/, if only because most varieties of Mandarin maintain [i~ɪ] in that position. I'm not even sure if it's [jə] tbh, it sounds much closer to [ɪə̯] or [ɪ̯ə] for me (I can't really tell which and if I start saying it over and over I'll get some observer bias I'm sure). I could be (and probably am) wrong about that analysis.

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by sirdanilot »

Okay in that case I can imagine calling it that, but for linguists outside this specific area of expertise a term like 'ioticized schwa' is quite opaque.

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by Rui »

Really? Because it means exactly what it sounds like. It's not like iotation or schwas are unique to Chinese...

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by KathTheDragon »

Iotation is quite transparently derived from iota, which everyone knows stands for /i/. It's not a very big leap to prethetic /j/.

Besides, it took like 5 seconds on Google to find the wiki article.

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Re: Chinese thread

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M Mira wrote:
Qwynegold wrote: In that recording it sounded quite similar to my teacher's pronunciation. Oh, btw. She says that she has a hard time distinguishing between yin and ying. So she probably doesn't speak Putonghua.
ying -> yin is actually pretty common in Taiwan, and people display this "error" all over the Internet, creating terms such as 因該 yin.gai instead of 應該 ying.gai. While not accepted and likely mocked when typed, it's pretty common to hear it in speech. I don't think it's due to Minnan influence (there is such distinction and AFAIK it's not much of a problem in Taiwanese as in Mandarin). IMHO, it could be that we've already off-loaded the burden of -n and -ng to the vowel, fronting it when there's -n but not when -ng. While that's doable with a and ê, it's not possible with i so the distinction of -in and -ing disappears. My ears tell me that the reverse is applied to i in Beijing: the vowel in their -ing sounds like an iotated schwa.
Aha, I was wondering if there was a distinction in the vowel, or if there was something about the presence or absence of [j], because when saying ying carefully I could hear a [j] in her speech. Thanks!
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Re: Chinese thread

Post by BGMan »

Chinese question:

In the Arthur Waley translation of "Monkey", the protagonists have adventures in kingdoms called "Crow-Cock" and "Cart-Slow". It occurred to me that because of their oddness, perhaps those are actually Chinese transcriptions of non-East-Asian names transcribed using the given Chinese characters, and was wondering what they could possibly me.

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Re: Chinese thread

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BGMan wrote:In the Arthur Waley translation of "Monkey", the protagonists have adventures in kingdoms called "Crow-Cock" and "Cart-Slow". It occurred to me that because of their oddness, perhaps those are actually Chinese transcriptions of non-East-Asian names transcribed using the given Chinese characters, and was wondering what they could possibly me.
The Chinese name of "Cock-Crow" is 烏雞. While 烏 does literally mean "crow", it's also very frequently used with the meaning of "black". So, really, this is the Kingdom of Black Cock (which, IIRC, is the name of one of the demon kings in it). I can't remember what the Chinese name of "Cart-Slow" is, but my impression is that everything from Chapter 19 on is basically invented and doesn't actually correspond to the geography of any place in Central Asia or elsewhere.

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by M Mira »

They're 烏雞國 and 車遲國, but they're just made-up foreign-sounding names AFAIK.

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by awer »

How do you distinguish between "i see an interesting book" and "i'm reading an interesting book" in chinese?

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Re: Chinese thread

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awer wrote:How do you distinguish between "i see an interesting book" and "i'm reading an interesting book" in chinese?
Same as in English: by your choice of a verb. IANANS, but I think "我看見一本有趣的書" would be clearly understood as "I see an interesting book". It's all in the presence of 見, which also means "see", whereas 看書 alone expresses the idea of "reading".

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by zompist »

A Mandarin pronunciation question... how are ri and er pronounced?

For er, my textbooks say [əɹ], but this site makes it sound like [aɹ].

For ri, that site has something I have trouble transcribing... could be [ɹ] or [yɹ] or even [əɹ].

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Re: Chinese thread

Post by Zhen Lin »

[aɹ] for 兒 sounds very Beijing-ese to me. [ɹ̩] (or perhaps more accurately, [ɻ̩]) for 日 is not unusual, I think. You might also hear a more vocalic off-glide.
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Re: Chinese thread

Post by Rui »

linguoboy wrote:
awer wrote:How do you distinguish between "i see an interesting book" and "i'm reading an interesting book" in chinese?
Same as in English: by your choice of a verb. IANANS, but I think "我看見一本有趣的書" would be clearly understood as "I see an interesting book". It's all in the presence of 見, which also means "see", whereas 看書 alone expresses the idea of "reading".
There's also 读 for "read"

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