How to distinguish between j and q

[strongneo]

Please help me, I just started learning Chinese, now I am focusing on practising pronunciation. I hardly differentiate between the initial j and q when listening and don't know how to pronounce them correctly.

[HashiriKata]

For j, try to say "jeep" (100 times exactly) and for q, say "cheap" (another 100 times). Afterwards, move to the Chinese words you want to practise that start with j or q and repeat each for 100 times. Keep doing this for 100 days and let us know how you've got on.

Good luck!

[Language Guy]

Cheap? Let's also not forget the difference between "q" and "ch". I find that distinction MUCH more difficult.

[HashiriKata]

Let's also not forget the difference between "q" and "ch". I find that distinction MUCH more difficult

Be a little more communicative, Language Guy. Tell us something about the difference!

(Incidentally, when I say "cheap", I don't simply mean "ch". You have to follow my exact instruction to discover the depth )

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EDIT:

Language Guy, my post above was due to my misunderstanding of your meaning. I see now that your "ch" is meant the pinyin "ch" and not the English "ch", is this correct?

If so, once "q" is already mastered, pull the tip of your tongue further back (from your front teeth) to pronounce words starting with "ch" (curl the tip of your tongue up to touch the roof of your mouth while producing the sound). The approximate sound in English for the Chinese "ch" is something like the "ch" in choose, church, charge, etc. The Chinese "zh" is simply a non-aspirated version of "ch", just as "j" is a non-aspirated version of "q".

[againstwind]

For j, try to say "jeep" (100 times exactly) and for q, say "cheap" (another 100 times)

Em...Perhaps it can work.

First of all, I wonder if you keb1717 are Japanese or you have learned Japanese. If yes, that will be easy to explain.

If not, anyway, the most obvious difference between [j] and [q] in Chinese is that [q] is aspirated and [j] is not.

And the difference between Chinese [q] and English [ch] is, simply speaking, when pronouncing the former the lip is not protrudent, whereas when pronounceing the latter the lip is protrudent.

As for Chinese [q] and Chinese [ch], can you differentiate them by yourself now?

Here is my recording of Chinese [ji],[qi],[chi].

Any more question on their difference is welcome.

p.s.

Sorry I can't input the font of IPA in this forum.

ji,qi,chi.wma

[leosmith]

I hardly differentiate between the initial j and q when listening and don't know how to pronounce them correctly.

Hi strongneo,

Welcome! I'm also a beginner. This site should answer most of your pronunciation questions:

http://www.sinosplice.com/lang/pronunciation/04/

For j, try to say "jeep" (100 times exactly) and for q, say "cheap" (another 100 times). Afterwards, move to the Chinese words you want to practise that start with j or q and repeat each for 100 times. Keep doing this for 100 days and let us know how you've got on.

HashiriKata-kun, please don't mislead us beginners; we may not understand that you're joking.

[HashiriKata]

HashiriKata-kun, please don't mislead us beginners; we may not understand that you're joking.

Sorry leosmith, what makes you think that I was joking? Seriously, I do not joke when that could mislead.

By the way, the "kun" you used after my name is not correct. Where did you learn that usage?

[nephridium]

The difference between j and q is that q is an 'affricative' consonant, the other one isn't. Affricative means that if you say the consonant in front of a candle the flame will move noticeably from the air puff.

As for the location of the tongue, it's located for both consonants at the same position; try to make a sound halfway between "ts" (can't think of an English word with this sound) and "tsh" (this would be the sound in "cheap") or "ds" (as in salads) and "dsh" (as in "jeep") - that should come close to the correct pronunciations.

[Jose]

Let's also not forget the difference between "q" and "ch". I find that distinction MUCH more difficult.

In fact, q and ch can be regarded as two variants (allophones in phonetic jargon) of the same sound. This is so because they are used with different vowels. In front of all Mandarin vowels except "i" and "ü", you find "ch" and "zh". These are retroflex consonants, the first one being aspirated and the second one unaspirated. You also have "c" and "z", which sound more like English "ts". The distinction between "ch" and "c", and "zh" and "z", is the hallmark of elegant Mandarin pronunciation. Many, maybe most, people in China, both in the South and the North, are unable to make the distinction.

Now the imporant thing to bear in mind is that this elegant distinction between "cha" and "ca", "che" and "ce", and so on completely disappears in front of "i" and "ü". In front of these vowels you only have "qi" and "qü" (spelt "qu" in pinyin orthography just as a convention). The vowels "i" and "ü" are high front vowels and they are articulated at a very different position within the mouth when compared with the rest of the vowels. You can imagine these vowels as somehow pushing the pronunciation

of the consonant so that the "c"/"ch" pair merges into "q" while the "z"/"zh" pair merges into "j". Try saying ca and cha, and then c + i and ch + i. You will notice that it is more difficult to keep the distinction, and if you find articulating a palatal consonant, you're probably getting it.

Be careful here not to be tricked by the double use of "i" and "u" in pinyin. Some people assume that "q" and "ch" have distinctive value because of bogus pairs like "chi" - "qi" "chu" - "qu" "chuan" - "quan", and so on. But all these syllables actually have different vowels. The "i" in "chi" is the so-called empty rhyme, while the vowel in "qi" is the normal "i" as in "yi" or "bi". Similarly, the "chu" - "qü" "chuan" - "qüan" pairs look clearly different if we clarify the spelling by using the actual vowel "ü".

You can see this schematically:

Elegant standard pronunciation:

Middle and back vowels                   front vowels

ca     ce     [...]     cu   

                                         qi   'qü'  
                                   /
cha    che    [...]     chu    

Widespread non-Beijing pronunciation:

Middle and back vowels                   front vowels

ca     ce     [...]     cu               qi   'qü'  

The same thing happens with "z"/"zh" v. "j", and with "s"/"sh" v. "x". Because of that, the use of different letters for "j", "q", and "x" is not fundamentally necessary in transcription systems of Chinese, and systems like Gwoyeu Romatzyh or Wade-Giles do not make this distinction. In pinyin it is probably a legacy of bopomofo.

This is one of the points about pinyin I don't completely like. A few months ago I wrote a few criticisms of pinyin in an older thread, where I tried to explain some conventions in pinyin that I find misleading, and that confused me greatly when I was starting to learn Chinese. I think it probably took me two years or more to realise that qu was actually pronounced with the lü vowel!

[Language Guy]

HashiriKata, I'm glad you go the message of my post.

I'm only a beginner, and although I have training in linguistics and phonetics, I'm still no expert at the Chinese language.

The best way I would describe the difference between the pinyin sounds 'x' and 'sh', 'j' and 'zh', 'q' and 'ch' is that the formers are shallower, performed at the front of the mouth, while the latters are formed more near the rear.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Gulao]

These two sounds differ in only one way: aspiration (not affrication. They are both affricates). Aspiration is the expulsion of air following the sound. To see whether you pronounce a sound aspirated or not, hold a strip of paper in front of your mouth, and check to see if pronouncing the letter makes the paper move. If it does, you're saying an aspirated consonant, and if not, then it is not aspirated. /q/ is aspirated, /j/ is not, so when you say /q/, you should move the strip of paper, and when you say /j/, you should not.

Otherwise, they are both voiceless alveolo-palatal affricates, meaning you put your mouth in that shape, say it without voice, and say it kinda like "ts."

[nephridium]

Hehe, since we've now dug into the technical jargon here goes:

"sh" and "zh" are post-alveolar fricatives

"ch" is a post-alveolar affricate

"x" is an alveolo-palatal fricative

"q" is an alveolar affricate

"j" is an alveolar fricative

"s" and "z" are frontal alveolar fricatives

"frontal" meaning the tongue tip points more towards the teeth. "zh" and "sh" are allophones to "z" and "s". Most Chinese I met are used to it, but for learners of Standard Mandarin it might sound confusing when you hear some people pronounce "是" like "四".

Wikipedia is a great place to find information about linguistics (though the English part sometimes suffers in terms of accurate representation of pronunciation, so be cautious)

By the way, the fart sound is a bilabial affricative. :

[strongneo]

Thank you all for your great help, it is really useful for a beginner like me. I have also found a lot of useful information in this forum. I really appreciate.

leosmith, your link is what I am looking for.

Yes after some practice, the only thing I can distinguish between [j] and [q] is based on aspirated sound (the same thing between [zh] and [ch]), but only when playing them next together, when playing them randomly it is still hard for me to catch the sound. I need more practice, I think.

Jose, I like your analysis. IMO we cannot rely on pinyin or any phonetic transcript to pronounce any strange sound correctly because the combination of throat, nose, tongue, teeth, lips and cheeks in human vocal tract can make unlimited number of sounds theoretically, each language only uses small set of all possible sounds, and no language is the exactly the same with others, so a phonetic transcript of one or many languages (such Latin phonetic transcript) is only used for that language and readable by the person who already master that language. In some case using phonetic transcript is similar to using unknown concepts to explain another unknowns – just make things even more confused - How many time do you struggle with WHY questions from your children?

All tips trying to imitate English pronunciation don’t work with me as I am not English native speaker and my English pronunciation is very bad, it was a result of wrong way of learning foreign language – focus to much on grammar/structure/vocabulary and neglect practicing pronunciation right from beginning, basically I did wrong from the beginning, it is very hard for me to correct now. I like the below funny story about speaking foreign language and would like to share with you at the end of this post, somehow I find myself in this funny story.

Learning from that big mistake, now with Chinese - my second foreign language, I decided focusing more on practicing pronunciation right from the beginning. I use the material from http://lost-theory.org/chinese/phonetics/, I downloaded all the sound files and practiced by playing repeat the similar sounds together, if you know anything better please share with me, however I think they make some syllables mixed up, such as [ca], [ce], [c....]. Can someone check and confirm for me please?

I have no problem in distinguishing between following Chinese consonant pairs: [q] v. [ch]; [c] v. [ch]; [z] v. [zh] as in my native tongue we have almost the same counterparts.

BTW, For English native speaker, I think this link will help:

http://olimu.com/Notes/ChinesePronunciation.htm

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Lim Ah Lek’s English

This is hilarious. Even an Englishman could not construct sentences using numerics, which is exclusive only to Malaysians and Singaporeans.

Lim Ah Lek was asked to make a sentence using 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Not only did he do it from1 to 10, he did it again from 10 back to 1.This is what he came up with:

1 day I go 2 climb up a 3 outside a house to peep. But couple saw me, so I panic and 4 down. The man rush out and wanted to 5 with me. I run until I fall 6 and throw up. So I go into 7 eleven and grab some 8 to throw at him. Then I took a 9 and try to stab him. 10 God he run away.

So, I put the 9 back and pay for the 8 and left 7 eleven. Next day, I call my boss and say I am 6. He said 5, tomorrow also no need to come back 4 work He also ask me to climb a 3 and jump down. I don't understand, I so nice 2 him but I don't know what he 1.

[Gulao]

"sh" and "zh" are post-alveolar fricatives

"ch" is a post-alveolar affricate

If you're from Taiwan, yes. Standard Mandarin pronunciation, however demands that these sounds be retroflex.

Wikipedia is a great place to find information about linguistics

But it only goes so far. Case in point, the "raspberry" is not an affricate. I can think of six ways of producing this sound. 1. Bilabial trill, which is probably what you're thinking of. 2. labio-ligual trill. 3. sublabio-ligual trill. 4. superlabio-gingival trill (I can do this, but I don't think it's commonly used, mostly because it doesn't look mean, just stupid.) 5. bilabio-manual trill, and 6. bilabio-bimanual trill.

Okay, so those last three began to require me to make some stuff up, but I think my point is made. No field can be truly learned from wikipedia. It requires instruction, application and a great deal of creativity to truly understand the things wikipedia can tell you.