basic pronunciation questions

[leosmith]

I’ve been using online tutorials to learn pronunciations/tones. Unfortunately, there are some discrepancies. Here are some questions.

1. I’ve heard it’s best to learn the Beijing accent. What do you think?

2. Is ‘c’ pronounced more like ‘ts’ or ‘h’? Different sites have different pronunciations.

3. Should I use this dictionary http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

to resolve any accent questions?

Thanks,

Leo

[Gulao]

1. You shouldn't learn the thicker Beijing accent, IMO. It can get to be just as unclear as any other accent. Ultimately, you should look up the "standard" pronunciations and make sure that each letter sounds like that. For instance, don't try to pronounce 学生 as 学儿生. You'll still get a bit of rhoticity at the end of xue, that way, but it will definitely sound more standard.

2. C is pronounded ts. Stop reading whatever source tells you that it is pronounced h.

3. That dictionary seems fine to me.

[leosmith]

Thanks Gulao,

1. Actually, I'm just beginning, so I don't know any characters yet. According to the dictionary, 学生(student) = xue2sheng5. For the mispronounced word, which of these do you mean: 学儿生 = xue2er2sheng5 or xue2er5sheng5?

2. The "c sounds like h" thing came from a syllable table. Do you, or anyone else, know of a site with a complete syllable table, including tones, that has good pronunciation? I've been using 3 different tables, all connected to

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/online.htm

One has correct pronunciation (I think), but is all in the first tone. The other two are complete, but have incorrect pronunciation (I suspect it's a messed up recording). I just want to try to read the pinyin, and click to hear the answer. These tables are great for that, but I need them to have correct pronunciation.

3. I love that dictionary, but I notice it locks up when I check a lot of pronunciations. Do you know of another one that has pronunciation on it? Is there a really popular chinese dictionary site? There's sort of a master dictionary for Japanese

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C

so I wonder about Chinese.

[imron]

This is probably what you're looking for.

[leosmith]

Thanks imron. Not bad, but I hope to find something a little faster like one of these:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/10268-help-me-find-a-syllable-table

[Gulao]

Actually, I'm just beginning, so I don't know any characters yet. According to the dictionary, 学生(student) = xue2sheng5. For the mispronounced word, which of these do you mean: 学儿生 = xue2er2sheng5 or xue2er5sheng5?

The second one tends to be romanised as, xuer2sheng5. The 儿 is used in text to indicate rhoticity, or the r-colored finals, in the Beijing dialect. This romanisation is also used in yi1dianr3 (一点儿), ger1 (哥儿), wanr2 (玩儿), etc.

[Craig]

Living in Beijing and studying in Beijing i still find it easier to understand, and now talk in, a southern accent. When i started i stuck very dilligently the beijing pronunciation but the longer i studied the easier it got to stop retroflexing r's.

I'd say start with learning the "standard" way to pronounce words and as you study more and are exposed to more materials (videos, music, people) from other parts of china one you will find easier than others to replicate. That is the one you will most likely end up speaking more like.

[Yang Rui]

IMHO, it's best to learn standard Putonghua and not try to adopt any kind of regional accent. There's nothing more cringeworthy than hearing a foreigner attempting to talk in an over-the-top Beijing accent.

Putonghua has rules about which words take a retroflex "r" and which don't. In Beijing, the "r" sound is added to words that technically should not have an"r" ending in Putonghua. In the south of China, the "r" sound is left off words that should have an "r" ending. Neither is standard Putonghua.

Unfortunately, the noble goal of trying to learn standard Putonghua is undermined by the fact that almost no one speaks it in daily life (although as it is based on the Beijing dialect, i think more people in the north of China speak standard Putonghua). So if you learn by talking to Chinese people, you will undoubtedly pick up their non-standard habits, and may end up with a slight regional accent.

Ultimately, the aim is to be understood by as many people as possible, and i think aiming for standard Putonghua is the best way to achieve this. Which i suppose is a roundabout way of agreeing with Gulao that you should not learn a heavy Beijing accent.

[leosmith]

IMHO, it's best to learn standard Putonghua and not try to adopt any kind of regional accent.

Ok, I'm convinced. So how do I make sure my learning materials are "standard" Putonghua?

[roddy]

All learning materials - ie textbooks, associated recordings, etc are going to be standard Putonghua, almost by definition. If you are using stuff like movies, TV shows, etc for study purposes you might want to check what kind of accents they feature, but you'll have to take those one by one.

[Mugi]

The second one tends to be romanised as, xuer2sheng5

Gulao, what book are you using that has 学儿生? Looks very dodgy to me, even for 北京话. You sure you don't mean 学生儿 xue2 shengr5?

[anonymoose]

Living in Beijing and studying in Beijing i still find it easier to understand, and now talk in, a southern accent.

IMHO, it's best to learn standard Putonghua and not try to adopt any kind of regional accent.

I definitely think it's worth aiming for a standard Putonghua accent. I think it's laughable when foreigners select a particular regional accent to emulate, as I'm pretty sure in 95% of cases you still sound like a foreigner to the locals.

[Lu]

When in Taiwan, I first sounded like a foreigner that had learned her Chinese in Beijing. I changed my accent, then went back to Beijing, and there I sounded like a foreigner who just got back from Taiwan.

Yeah, it's best to aim for standard putonghua. With a bit of erhua but not too much (wanr 玩儿 is good, nanmenr 南门儿 is not necessary), but with all the retroflexes and the difference between -n and -ng. If you end up living in one place for a longer time, you can adjust to the local accent if you want.

[daydreamer]

Recently I'm being a tutor of an Australian student. I'm trying to correct his "z" pronouciation. I looked at many Chinese textbooks, that when they teaches "z", they teaches students to pronouce as "dz". However, this pronouciation is hardly recognized by other Chinese people. I am trying to correct it, but still haven't got a clue. Another pronouciation is "r", his pronouciation sound not right, but I can't tell what is the problem, sounds like his tongue curls too much or so... Do you have any similar problem?

One more thing is, I'm now in a city in southeast, here people speak dialets a lot. So, when they speak Putonghua, they have a strong accent. That's a big problem. When I teach the Australian to peonouce "10(shi) correctly, but people live around him pronouce 10 as 4(si). He's losing confidence to talk to people around him. I surely can't teach him to speak Putonghua with accent, but the correct one is not as useful as those incorrect ones... What should I do?

[anonymoose]

daydreamer

As for the pronunciation of "z", I think you have to try and understand it from a native English-speaker's point of view. Different people have different aptitudes for language learning, and quite often, English speakers will try and map sounds represented by letters that they are familiar with onto words in the foreign language. This is by no means a phenomenon restricted to English speakers learning Chinese, but is perhaps more noticable since the sound values of many of the letters used in pinyin are very different from their English counterparts. So, if we forget about pinyin for a moment, to a native English speaker, the sound of the syllable of 在 would most accurately be represented by spelling it "dzai". Of course even this way it won't sound perfect as read by an English speaker, but it is probably the closest one can get to the proper sound using the English alphabet. So that's why your chinese books teach students to pronounce the "z" in pinyin as "dz". Of course this would not make sense to other Chinese people because one has to be a speaker of English to appreciate it, but really it is just different ways of representing the same sound.

The pinyin systems has its own strengths and weaknesses. Its major strength, of course, is that it employs an alphabet that is familiar to the majority of people worldwide, and is therefore readily accessible. The weakness is that the sounds represented by the letters in pinyin are often very different from their counterparts in other languages (and most letters differ in their pronunciation between languages that use the roman alphabet as standard anyway, for the example the "z" in English and German). Therefore those who try to map the sounds repesented by the letters they are familiar with onto Chinese are doomed to bad pronunciation from the outset. For this reason, I believe systems such as the bo po mo fo as used in Taiwan have the advantage, because then there is less of a temptation to ascribe the English "z" sound to syllables such as that represented by 在. Of course, the drawback is the added hassle of having to learn the bo po mo fo symbols.

As for the problem with "r", I think that's a much more tricky one because there is no way of better representing it to an English speaker. The only thing I can suggest is that you try to be patient with your student and go through repetitive pronunciation exercises, and if he still doesn't get it, then perhaps you have to accept that some people just don't have the aptitude for foreign languages.

[Lu]

Daydreamer: the best way I can think of to explain the Chinese r to an English speaker is:

it's between the English r (as in round) and the French j (as in Jaques).

As to the shi/si-thing: don't people in your city differ between shi2 and si4 by tone? Even if they say si instead of shi for 10, there is still the difference between si2 (10) and si4 (4). This is hard to hear for a foreigner, but it does show how important tones are.

[anonymoose]

As to the shi/si-thing: don't people in your city differ between shi2 and si4 by tone? Even if they say si instead of shi for 10, there is still the difference between si2 (10) and si4 (4). This is hard to hear for a foreigner, but it does show how important tones are.

Even with tones it can still be quite confusing if you're not used to it. I remember from my travels in the south of China that listening for, for example coach departure times, could be quite difficult if you are told something like:

si4 si2 si2 si4 si2

是十时四十

[Gulao]

Gulao, what book are you using that has 学儿生? Looks very dodgy to me, even for 北京话. You sure you don't mean 学生儿 xue2 shengr5?

I didn't learn it from a book. A long time ago in one of my high school classes, we were about to watch some film where the characters spoke in a fairly think Beijing accent, and my teacher tried to explain what we would be hearing. This is one of the examples I remember most clearly. She was from Taiwan, so her perception of the accent may have been somewhat biased.

In fact, she never specifically wrote down 学儿生 on the board, but she referred to the noticeable assimilation of the retroflex sound. Personally, I use the 儿 as an indicator of the sound change. 学生儿 is probably more valid, though.

si4 si2 si2 si4 si2

是十时四十

四是四。十是十。

十四是十四。

四十是四十。

十四不是四十。

四十也不是十四。

[atitarev]

zai can be described as "tzai" - because it's voiceless but unaspirated (compared to cai - tshai). Of course, both consonants should be pronounced together.

[Mugi]

...She was from Taiwan, so her perception of the accent may have been somewhat biased.

In fact, she never specifically wrote down 学儿生 on the board, but she referred to the noticeable assimilation of the retroflex sound. Personally, I use the 儿 as an indicator of the sound change. 学生儿 is probably more valid, though.

明白了!