correct pronounciation - beginners question

[j_spencer]

This is my first time trying to speak Chinese and I just want to make sure I have the correct pronunciation technique. I am basing this on one of my Chinese books, which tells me how to pronounce vowels and consonants.

This is a conversation; I’ll have a line in pinyin Chinese, and underneath, spelled out how it sounds as if you were speaking it (in other words the pronunciation). Note - I’m ignoring tones for this exercise:

Ni shi jones xiansheng ma?

Pronounced: Nee shee jones xyenshun ma?

Shi de. Wo Shi David Jones.

Pronounced: Shee dir. Wour shee David Jones.

Ni hao, Jones, xianshen. Wo shi wang lin. Hen Gaoxing jiandao ni.

Pronounced: Nee how, Jones, xyenshun wour shee wang lin. Hen gowxing jyendow nee.

Qing jiao wo lao wang

Pronounced: Qing jeow wour low won

Hao de, Lao wang. Jiao wo David ba

Pronounced: How dir, low won, jeow wour David ba

Huanying ni lai zhongguo, David

Pronounced: Hwanying nee lai jonggwar, David

Is this about right?

Is the structure for getting the right pronunciation as follows: you look for the longest letter combination in the pronunciations list (pictured below), and work your way from the longest to the shortest letter combination until you find the one that fits in with the letters in your word? Maybe I’m not being clear, let me give you an example.

In the word zhongguo. First off, zh together form a sound (j like in jade) so you don’t need to look at both letters individually. Then refer to the vowels list, there is iong (pronounced young) but the I is missing from that combination in the word, so you therefore look for the next longest with this combination, which is ong. The next part of the word is guo. There is no combination for guo, but there is for uo. So you pronounce the g on its own, and then give the pronunciation for uo (war). Hence, the pronunciation of zhongguo is jonggwar. Is this right? I hope it makes sense!

By the way, is it true that you don’t typically refer to or of someone by their first name only? Rather by lao zhang, xiao li, or first name as well as second name?

Thanks a lot!

Jamie.

[lokki]

Relying on written explanations like that for pronunciation in this day and age makes no sense at all. Get some audio material to practice with instead.

Chinese has a number of sounds not present in English so it is simply not possible to get it right like that. The pronunciations given are just very rough approximations.

And you cannot ignore the tones, they are crucial to the meaning of words and just as much a part of pronunciation as getting the consonants or vowels right. "Ignoring tones" is a bit like "ignoring" the vowels in English by pronouncing all of them as "i". It might bi pissibli ti indirstind simi pirts if whit yi iri siying bit dint bit in it.

[kdavid]

I'm quite sure you've got a bad copy of pronunciation here.

shi4 (to be) should not be pronounced 'shee'. This is absolutely incorrect. It would be more like a "shir".

I agree with the above poster. Pronunciation and tones mean everything in this language. Get some good audio materials and join a language exchange on Skype or somewhere else.

[OneEye]

Wow.

Here and here. Study at least the pronunciation and romanization tapes and PDF at the first site, more if you like the method. You'll have to register at the second site (it's free), but the China Panorama videos are great. You will have to buy the textbooks, and not all of the videos are uploaded yet, but they're adding more stuff regularly. If you'd rather not wait, you can purchase the VCDs on Ebay and many other sites. I recommend going this way if possible. Anything is better than learning pronunciation without actually hearing it pronounced.

[imron]

Agree with lokki. You're going about this completely the wrong way. If you want to get good Chinese pronunciation, you simply cannot think of it in terms of English sounds. Get some audio materials and practice with them until you can look at the pinyin and recognise/create the correct sound without needing to transform it into your own pronunciation system. There are plenty resources on the web, including pinyin tables such as this one, and also various websites that offer tone drills, pronunciation drills etc, that will help you with this.

Regarding how the sounds are combined, usually, you combine the initial and the final together. It's a good idea to familiarise yourself with the initials and finals, and in the table listed above, the initials are the left-most column, and the finals are the top-most row. It's best to think of a syllable as constructed of an initial and a final, with initials and finals being the smallest absolute units. For example with zhong, the initial is zh, and the final is ong (note, that the final for zhong is not iong, but ong, and that iong only goes with the j, q, and x initials). Similarly, for guo, the initial is g and the final is uo, and put together you get guo.

Anyway, in Chinese, the common way to practice the pronunciation of the individual syllables is to say the initial, then the final, and then finally combine them into one sound (adding whatever tone is necessary). The table I linked to above has examples of this for each syllable under the link "BPMF spelling"). The example for zhong can be found here, and the example for guo, here.

You will note in the examples above that when pronouncing the initials individually, they also add a final onto the initial. The standard finals to add when individually pronouncing initials are:

bo po mo fo

de te ne le

ge ke he

ji qi xi

zi ci si

zhi chi shi ri

Which is why for guo, you will hear them say ge, uo, guo, for guo, even though there is no 'e' sound in that syllable. This is just used as an aid for pronouncing initials individually. When you combine the initial with another final you would use that final instead.

Finally, if you want to know whether or not you're getting the pronunciation for the various sounds correct, rather than posting your approximation of the sounds in English, a much better method would be to post an audio recording (Audacity is great for making sound recordings). This will be a far more accurate way of knowing whether or not you've got the pronunciation correct, because using English to approximate Chinese sounds is usually imprecise and ambiguous.

[cdn_in_bj]

By the way, is it true that you don’t typically refer to or of someone by their first name only? Rather by lao zhang, xiao li, or first name as well as second name?

Yes, that is correct. You either refer to them by their surname only or their full name (surname + given name). The exception is if you are close to them (ie - friends or family).

Also, many Chinese of more recent generation only have full names consisting of two characters, in which case you would never refer to them by their given name only.

[j_spencer]

Thanks a lot for your help everyone. My initial post wasn’t as clear as it could have been so I apologise for that.

Firstly, I’m not ignoring tones don’t worry! I just ignored them for this example; it saved me having put a number after every word/syllable.

shi4 (to be) should not be pronounced 'shee'. This is absolutely incorrect. It would be more like a "shir". I'm quite sure you've got a bad copy of pronunciation here.

Are you sure? This is where I am deriving my pronunciation from (see pictures below). You can see why I thought “shi” would be pronounced “shee”. I is pronounced ee like in bee. This follows sh. So “shee” is the logical pronunciation surely?

Imron, Redeye, thanks a lot for those links. They are exactly what I need. The pinyin table in particular hopefully means I’ll be able to pronounce all words properly now.

Are there any online audio dictionaries in Chinese to help with pronunciation? The pinyin table is very good but I’d like to here the whole word just to confirm and make sure I have it correct.

My final question on the matter, what is skype language exchange? I know what skype is but am unfamiliar with language exchange. Is it when you get in contact with someone from China and learn via them?

Thanks again.

Jamie.

[Shadowdh]

Are you sure? This is where I am deriving my pronunciation from (see pictures below). You can see why I thought “shi” would be pronounced “shee”. I is pronounced ee like in bee. This follows sh. So “shee” is the logical pronunciation surely?

If you read a bit after the explanation where it says ee like bee there is a bit commenting on the change in pronunciation after initials like sh... the other posters are right... get some audio files and practice, practice, practice and then for good measure practice some more... also try to find a native speaker (shouldnt be too hard in Bris-vegas) and then get them to help you and make you say it right... the funny thing is that the language really needs to be spoken as there are differences to how the try to explain it through the written word...

[Shadowdh]

Ni shi jones xiansheng ma?

Pronounced: Nee shee jones xyenshun ma? Nee shi (short I sound) jones sscheeanshung ma is probably closer but its hard puting it in writing...

Shi de. Wo Shi David Jones.

Pronounced: Shee dir. Wour shee David Jones. shi der (short on the er though) war shi...

Ni hao, Jones, xianshen. Wo shi wang lin. Hen Gaoxing jiandao ni.

Pronounced: Nee how, Jones, xyenshun wour shee wang lin. Hen gowxing jyendow nee. ssscheeanshung war shi ... jeeandow...

Qing jiao wo lao wang

Pronounced: Qing jeow wour low won jeow (rhymes with meow) war lau wang

Hao de, Lao wang. Jiao wo David ba

Pronounced: How dir, low won, jeow wour David ba - how der lau wang jeow war...

Huanying ni lai zhongguo, David

Pronounced: Hwanying nee lai jonggwar, David whoanying...

my reply in bold but its really hard to articulate sounds in writing.. use things like chinesepod.com or FSI (found on this board) and listen to everything you can get thats in Chinese...

[imron]

I think the last few posts just serve to illustrate why you shouldn't use English to represent the sounds of Chinese It's just too fraught with ambiguities and open to interpretation by the reader, not to mention if the written material isn't clear then it's easy to make mistakes like what the OP did with shi/shee. If you listen to the audio recordings of this syllable you will find it is nothing like shee at all, and I think the book you listed failed to really explain that more clearly. Anyway, although it might feel comforting and familiar to see a description of the sounds as related to English, if you learn pronunciation like this, then in the long term it will be more of a hindrance than a help.

j_spencer, In addition to just listening to the audio files on that site, I would also recommend recording yourself saying these sounds and then comparing the recording you make with the original audio, and trying to figure out where the differences are. This can be a really useful way of spotting mistakes in pronunciation.

Oh, and if you find a discrepancy between what the book says, and the audio files, trust the audio not the book

Finally, if you're finding it a pain to type tones in pinyin, you might like to check out this thread :-)

[koreth]

One thing I'll add is that if your goal is to type out Chinese words in such a way that an English speaker would be able to come anywhere close to correct pronunciation without prior training, then you might want to use Yale romanization rather than pinyin. It's not perfect; fundamentally there are a bunch of sounds in Chinese which do not occur, ever, anywhere in English, so you are doomed if you try to transcribe them accurately for untrained English readers. But its goal was to approximate the pronunciation for English speakers, so it gets a lot closer than pinyin, whose goal was simply (as far as I can tell) to use Latin characters to represent Mandarin sounds.

As others have said, the best thing is to listen to words and sample sentences, repeatedly, as pronounced by a bunch of native speakers with good diction.

When you're listening, be picky about who you're listening to. Chinese pronunciation can vary widely by region. A southerner will pronounce "shi" more like "si", altering both the initial and the final sounds. IMO, and let the flames begin, for a beginner it's much easier to develop listening comprehension by listening to northern-style standard putonghua than to southern diction (Taiwanese, etc.) The sounds are more distinct from one another and there's thus less ambiguity to get tripped up by. Once your vocabulary and fluency are good enough, it won't matter much; you'll be able to tell from context whether someone meant "zhong" or "zong" even though they pronounce the two nearly identically.

And make sure you're listening to native speakers. For example, if you go to chinesepod.com to listen to their stuff, pay zero attention to Ken's pronunciation. He has a very very thick foreign accent and, while we all sound like that at first, you don't want to treat it as a goal. There are a few exceptions to this rule (Da Shan, etc.) but why handicap yourself by aiming for less than perfection?