Pronunciation of 谁

[muyongshi]

So what do you all say shei or shui? Also if you can leave a message with your location it would be really helpful as I have a suspicion that how it is used depends on where you live/study...

[abuck]

I first studied in Philadelphia, which is where I learned this pronunciation from my (Taiwanese) teachers.

[Han-tiger]

I am a Beijing native, I say shei in my verbal communication.

[magudo]

we dont say谁 in our dialect (wuhan), we say "哪个"(na guo). when we speak mandarin, we say "shei"

[gougou]

I barely ever hear shui in Beijing.

abuck, you might want to mention that you voted for shei, because as soon as somebody chooses shui, that won't be obvious anymore.

[imron]

I mostly use shei, but occasionally will throw in a shui. Where I used to live in Hebei, I'd hear shui quite often (but it was still predominantly shei)

[Lu]

There are several threads on this word already, you could try looking for them.

[Luise]

As far as I know,we can say 谁 in shui and shei.

But I never hear someone who says shui,we all say shei.

I am born in Hunan,and now in Shanghai.

[muyongshi]

I've read the threads....wanted to see actual numbers... (didn't feel like counting every single post )

we dont say谁 in our dialect (wuhan), we say "哪个"(na guo). when we speak mandarin, we say "shei"

四川话 the same thing...

[magudo]

四川话 the same thing...

yes~ 四川话 and 武汉话 are very similar, because “湖广填四川”

[xianhua]

Forgive me for reviving an old thread, but I sit firmly in the 'shei' camp - as it appears the native speakers on here do. However, this begs the question as to why my daughter's Mandarin story books all give 'shui' as the Pinyin for 谁? Even 八仙过海 sides with the 'shuiers'. I've seen 'shui' on kids DVDs too. Perhaps one has to reach a certain age before entering shei-hood.

[Hofmann]

I say shei2.

How do you pronounce 淚?

[muyongshi]

Forgive me for reviving an old thread, but I sit firmly in the 'shei' camp - as it appears the native speakers on here do. However, this begs the question as to why my daughter's Mandarin story books all give 'shui' as the Pinyin for 谁? Even 八仙过海 sides with the 'shuiers'. I've seen 'shui' on kids DVDs too. Perhaps one has to reach a certain age before entering shei-hood.

Ummm...just glanced through those who have responded and hat to break it to you but the majority aren't native speakers and if you look at how many people have voted, it's only 22. Hardly enough to make a true statistical determinations from.

[tooironic]

Interesting. Wenlin says: 谁 is sometimes pronounced shéi, especially in 北京 Běijīng colloquial, but the more standard pronunciation is shuí. And yet the majority here (so far) have voted for shéi...

[muyongshi]

Sometimes, I've encountered it in those, "He's a foreigner so I better say it like this..." type of situations. You know where they say yuan instead of kuai because that's more whatever ["proper" I guess] so there is a larger likely hood of us knowing it. At least I think that is the train of thought. Same for this, I've heard people start to say shei and then switch half way through after a slight pause. Just a thought

[yonglin]

I think that shei2 is a variant of shui2 (which is official), just like 那, 哪, 这 (which are officially na4, na3, zhe4) are often pronounced nei4, nei3, zhei4.

I also have the feeling that shui2 is used more often than this thread would indicate, especially in formal speech.

[Guili]

I am in Shanghai ,and our teacher teached us to tell shei,cos it is easy to pronounce,and if I say shui2,it seems like I sayed 水 I don't know why,even if they are with different shengdiao