Pronunciation of pinyin "jiu"

[jhargett]

Reading the post on the pronunciation of wu, I hesitate to post in fear of being even more confused, but...

How do you pronounce the pinyin "jiu"? I have heard this pronounced as "jew" (roughly), the way I pronounce it, and as "joe". Has anyone else heard it pronounced the later way?

[Guest Harry_Mudd]

If you mean jiu as Alcohol, then it closer to joe than jew

If you keep saying jew people might think you mean zhu (pork)

It is not really Joe, but more like jee-oh said very quickly, so it sounds like joe.

[kentsuarez]

for 九 久 酒 舊 就 救 (all jiu) say "geode" and drop the "d". Then speed up the diphthong (the joint e+o vowel sounds) so that it's one syllable, not two. Add the tone and you're all set. Hope this helps.

[smithsgj]

Kent, how do you say geode?

(whereabouts in 東湖 are you btw?)

[39degN]

hey, man, he is right, he almost got it!

http://cougar.eb.com/sound/g/geode001.wav

[Taibei]

It might help to keep in mind that -iu is merely a spelling convention. In Hanyu Pinyin -iu is actually an abbreviated way of writing -iou/you.

[kentsuarez]

smithsgj wrote:

<<Kent, how do you say geode? >>

The English word, jē'ōd, you silly rabbit!

<<(whereabouts in 東湖 are you btw?)>>

Kangle Ave., near Donghu Guozhong, you?

[smithsgj]

didn't know the word, thought it was a typo or something.

I live in Lotus Hill. Hang on... you're not the friend of JP's who moved down the mountain (and who I ignored on the bus cos I was in a daze)?

[kentsuarez]

You mean my friend JP who no one knew whether he/she was a boy or girl all through junior high?

[ever00t]

How to pronounce 'Jiu' in English ?

Try pronounce 'Jiu' in English as 'Joke' but just ignore 'ke'.this's very exact English pronunciation for that Chinese 'Jiu'.Just note to add different tones in different phrases it depends.

How to pronounce 'Wu' in English ?

Try to pronounce 'Wu' in English as 'uh-huh' but just ignore 'huh'.

[Quest]

How to pronounce 'Jiu' in English ?

Try pronounce 'Jiu' in English as 'Joke' but just ignore 'ke'.this's very exact English pronunciation for that Chinese 'Jiu'.Just note to add different tones in different phrases it depends.

How to pronounce 'Wu' in English ?

Try to pronounce 'Wu' in English as 'uh-huh' but just ignore 'huh'.

Can't agree with you.

Jiu and Jo are different.

Wu and uh are totally different.

[ever00t]

They are very much close aren't they ?

Fact is there are too many Chinese/English words/phrases/idioms ...they are barely freely being translated into English/Chinese with each other,or we can give it a try,but they then lose some distillates of their original meanings,pity,thus what it's been encouraging linguisticians to continue their ambitions,good.

Anyhow i'm very confident in telling you that 'joke' but drop 'ke' the pronunciation is very close to 'Jiu' in Chinese,so is 'Joey' forget about 'ey'.

About 'Wu',well,for a long story short,just try 'uh-hun' forget about '-huh'.

[Quest]

Joey is J-O-ee

Jiu is more like J-ee-U

Wu might sound similar to woo, oo, or voo, as discussed in the wu thread.

but uh-huh??

how do you pronounce uh-huh?

呜呼?

If I haven't been wrong all these years, "uh-huh" sounds more like, for lack of a pinyin correspondence, e-he (e.g.厄和), not quite but certainly nothing like 呜呼.

I made that guess because all my Chinese friends interpreted "hehe" as 呵呵/喝喝, when I meant "hee hee" (or hi-hi in pinyin, though there's no hi sound in Mandarin)

[ever00t]

Quest haha,i'm not going to continue with this thread ,anyway,it's interesting no ? :)I mean there are sometimes quite different between English and Chinese.

For example for Chinese ,you tell them how to pronounce 'thief' 'thus' note the pronunciations of 'th' here ,we don't find any similar pronunciations in Chinese to practice with ,none.The best way would be listen to English speakers,have to copy with all the way of it,deal.

Specifically as to 'Jiu' ,it may doesn't have an accurate pronunciation in English,another example is how to pronounce 'xie4xie4' a.k.a. 'thanks''to thank',what to do with it in English ? A trick is to steal any english word has letters 'sh',so you pronounce 'xie4xie4 ' as 'show' but drop the 'ow' part that is 'sh-e-she-e' something,here we grab pronunciation 'e' from 'egg' as well,finally they are very close ,yeah,but it doesn't mean hey That's it,they are still bit of different.

When learning a foreign language and always trying to translate them into our own languages,including the similar pronunciations to work it out,sometimes,however it doesn't work well.

[ala]

jiu?

If you mean by the number 9. Then you should first try WHISPERING "geode". Now raise your voiced WITHOUT vibrating your vocal cords. If before you reach the vowel, your throat is vibrating, then you've pronounced it incorrectly, for Mandarin-Chinese does not have voiced consonants. Therefore if it sounds anything like English j (a voiced consonant) out loud, then you got it wrong. But when you whisper, they are nearly identical (since you aren't vibrating your vocal cords when you whisper). Remember, with pinyin, you should really leave all your existing conventions out the door (most Western languages designate j as a voiced consonant).

[Alleluia]

(most Western languages designate j as a voiced consonant)

Ooh, I have to be a nit-picker now, though this isn't really related to the thread: most Western languages that I know do NOT designate j as a voiced consonant. In Swedish and Finnish j is more like the beginning sound in the English word 'yes'. In Spanish it's pronounced like a very strongly aspirated 'h'. In French it's rather close to a voiceless counterpart of the English j. That's not a comprehensive list but I think it shows my point: it's hard to speak of "Western languages" as an entity, because they differ so much from each other.

And so, many problems that native English speakers have with Chinese pronunciation are unknown to others. I think the biggest problem for most English-speaking people is that they don't have to study as many foreign languages as early on at school as speakers of "less important" languages have to, they're used to getting along with their native language almost anywhere in the world (a luxury most can't even dream of!), and so they're not as open to the idea of pronouncing things differently from what they're used to. I might be wrong, but that's the impression I always get. Another thing is that the way English is written is extremely inconsistent, compared to many other European languages, and the pinyin romanization system as well.

[ala]

Ooh, I have to be a nit-picker now, though this isn't really related to the thread: most Western languages that I know do NOT designate j as a voiced consonant. In Swedish and Finnish j is more like the beginning sound in the English word 'yes'.

Well let me nitpick too, the beginning sound of 'yes' is a semivowel and voiced, IPA /j/. Most Western languages do indeed designate j as voiced.

In Spanish it's pronounced like a very strongly aspirated 'h'.

Good example of an EXCEPTION. But Spanish used to have a voiced j, the originally voiced j in Spanish became a voiceless /S/ and then a /c,/ and then finally representing today's /x/ sound (gutteral h). So there's historic usage, unlike pinyin.

In French it's rather close to a voiceless counterpart of the English j.

French j is most certainly VOICED. Try to pronounce the "s" in "pleasure" without vibrating your vocal cords. French j voiceless? I'm beginning to think you have no idea what voiced consonants are.

That's not a comprehensive list but I think it shows my point: it's hard to speak of "Western languages" as an entity, because they differ so much from each other.

Again, most Western European languages do indeed designate the j as voiced; 3/4 examples from your list are not voiceless as you thought.

Here are some Western European languages that designate j as voiced fricative or semivowel:

English, Danish, French, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Swedish, Finnish

[Alleluia]

Oh, ouch! I didn't expect you to strike back quite so hard, but then I do in a way see how my post could seem like an attack...

French j voiceless? I'm beginning to think you have no idea what voiced consonants are.

Yes, I do agree that I was wrong about French. Didn't think about it for long enough, just wrote it down, but now I see it. Wouldn't use English as an example though, I approached it just by thinking about 'je' and how it's pronounced.

But excuse me, I do think I have an idea what voiced consonants are, since I have studied quite a few languages. Never studied linguistics though, so the meaning isn't imprinted in my spine yet.

the beginning sound of 'yes' is a semivowel and voiced, IPA /j/.

I never knew that semivowels could be voiced. I had to do some research on the Finnish phonetic system, and everywhere I can find it says that the Finnish consonant j (which indeed is a semivowel) is not voiced. I really do believe that, but then again, I'm not a linguist. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to compare the Finnish j to the beginning sound of 'yes', since I'm not a native speaker of English, and I might be just pronouncing 'yes' with the Finnish voiceless j. Ala, do you know the Finnish phonetic system or just phonetics in general? I was thinking that Finnish could be very different from other European languages since it isn't an Indo-European language like the rest of them (excluding Estonian and Hungarian).

I will stand behind my voiceless j until you can prove me wrong.

[Alleluia]

My point goes beyond voiced and voiceless consonants anyway. Whether or not the Finnish and Swedish j is voiced, it is very far away from the phoneme that is marked by the letter j in English, and equally far away from the Chinese phoneme that is marked by the letter j in hanyu pinyin. So whether or not voiced, I don't think it creates a problem when learning Chinese, because the two j's just can't be mixed, the old one bears no resemblance whatsoever to the new sound that should be learned.

[ala]

Anyway, didn't mean to strike back so hard, was probably somewhat irked by the French j being voiceless statement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language_phonetics

Well this is what Wikipedia had to say about Finnish:

j /j/ voiced palatal semivowel

I've heard Finnish from friends, and the j sounds quite close to English y (not in yeast though). I can dig around in reference books if you want.

My point goes beyond voiced and voiceless consonants anyway. Whether or not the Finnish and Swedish j is voiced, it is very far away from the phoneme that is marked by the letter j in English, and equally far away from the Chinese phoneme that is marked by the letter j in hanyu pinyin. So whether or not voiced, I don't think it creates a problem when learning Chinese, because the two j's just can't be mixed, the old one bears no resemblance whatsoever to the new sound that should be learned.

Yeah I agree. It's just that one of the key accents westerners have of Chinese is pronouncing voiceless initials as voiced. Hence, more awareness should be taken when pronouncing them. And certainly pinyin's using conventional Western voiced consonants for voiceless consonants doesn't help matters, especially with all the misinformation about how bi sounds like beat. The problem is also in people misinforming others that the j in pinyin ISN'T like German j, but like the English j, when it is neither. Everyone pays special attention to pinyin q, x, zh, sh, ch, z, c, r... but the b,d,g,j get ignored even though they are also very different from English usages.