Tonal vowels for a newbie

[ala]

This is my problem with pinyin, it misleads people, and does it in a way that people are extremely convinced they are right, even though they are wrong. Although English voiced consonants aren't that voiced, they are certainly not voiceless like in Mandarin.

b- as in bath

No, the pinyin "b" is like the p in English "shopping." It is NOT like the b in bath, unless you are whispering.

d- as in dig

No, the pinyin "d" is like the t in English gestapo. It is NOT like the d in dig, unless you are whispering.

sh- as in shirt

No!!!

j- as in jeep

No, the pinyin "j" has no English equivalent. It is a palatized form of ki. And pronounced similar to the Japanese chi (ti), although teeth closer together. Try to get "jeep" from the pinyin (ji2pu), you will never succeed.

q- as in cheek qi

x- as in sheep xi

Not quite, but they are close enough to English, that it wouldn't be a big problem.

g- as in give

NO! The g in pinyin is like English k in cooking. It is nothing like the English g, unless you are whispering in English.

You are not alone. Even the BBC site made the same fallacies. Most of these "misinformation" sites are actually done by the Chinese themselves. Mainlanders particularly are the most ignorant and arrogant about pinyin. They always laugh at how Wade-Giles uses p for what they see as clearly "b." Most actually believe it was because foreigners could not learn Chinese well, and that reflected on their Romanization systems. And most can't understand why this would happen, since foreigners apparently have b's too.

[zh-laoshi]

Theoretically, yes, the system I use on the site for Chinese pronunciation is not 100% perfect for the model Mandarin Chinese dialect. The form of Chinese I learned is not from Beijing, but more from the south-east part of China.

I've traveled the world and I've found that nobody speaks their native tongue exactly as the books say it should be spoken. There are dialects to consider, and the countless sub-dialects spoken. This is why people who learn Chinese from books and tapes can't understand a native speaker.

It's impossible to tell someone that they are pronouncing something the wrong way. For example, "I don't understand" in pinyin (sorry I don't know how to create the tone marks in this forum) would be "wo bu zi dao", yet I learned to speak it as "wo bu c dao". Or take China - "zhong guo". I speak it as "cong-guo". Other Chinese understand me when I speak that way, and I understand them if they say "wo bu zhi dao".

It's all about dialect.[/b]

[ala]

Theoretically, yes, the system I use on the site for Chinese pronunciation is not 100% perfect for the model Mandarin Chinese dialect. The form of Chinese I learned is not from Beijing, but more from the south-east part of China.

Where exactly in southeast? Fujian? Zhejiang? Guangdong? I know no southern variant of Mandarin that has the pinyin sh- pronounced like the English "shirt." In fact, it usually is a crisp /s/.

Mixing voicing with Mandarin voiceless initials MIGHT only be a problem in Zhejiang and some parts of Fujian. But both Zhejiang and Fujian have THREE-way distinctions of the plosives (as opposed to English's two), and thus will pronounce the Mandarin with the two voiceless sets (Middle Chinese voiced syllables tend to merge into aspirated voiceless in Mandarin rather than unaspirated, and so are even more unlikely to be muddled by speakers of dialects with voiced initials).

If by Southeast, you meant Guangdong, then it's not possible for them to have such a Mandarin accent as your analogies indicate.

It's all about dialect

And no, it's not all about dialect, when by teaching pinyin, you are strictly teaching Mandarin. What you meant was accents by southern non-Mandarin speakers trying to speak Mandarin.

I'm afraid the "dialect" you are trying to correlate with your system of analogies is that of an English speaker trying to speak Mandarin.

[roddy]

Mandarin, which is one of many dialects spoken in China, is introduced in this program. Mandarin is China's official language and is used broadly. Mandarin is spoken and taught in China, Hong Kong and many other places.

That's from your site, zh-laoshi, and then you tell us

the system I use on the site for Chinese pronunciation is not 100% perfect for the model Mandarin Chinese dialect

Perhaps you should add the sentence 'however, I've decided to give you something slightly different, as that's what I happened to learn' to the end of the information on your site.

This is why people who learn Chinese from books and tapes can't understand a native speaker.

That and a million other reasons. Fact remains that learners have to start with something, and to have the best chance of success surely that should be whatever is the generally accepted 'standard' - which in China is undoubtably Mandarin.

And apologies to our original poster - yet another eager learner of Chinese asks an innocent question and gets indepth linguistics as a response

Roddy