Aspirated or nonaspirated?

[geoffkhan]

As I learned in my "how do I pronounce C / Z" thread, some sounds in Chinese are "aspirated" -- which means that you say it while breathing out just a bit. Or something like that, it's hard for me to explain.

Could anyone give me a list of the aspirated/nonaspirated sounds in Chinese?

非常感谢，you people have been so helpful to me!

[galitonwu]

I think the pronunciation of aspirated/nonaspirated is same with English.

[galitonwu]

清音

[unvoiced sound]∶发音时声带不振动的音,如普通话语音中的p、t、k、f、s等

浊音

[voiced sound] 随着呼气使声带靠拢以发出可听见的振动(如发元音与该种辅音如v或z时的情况)

[ala]

No, galitonwu, Mandarin doesn't have voiced (浊), voiceless 清 refers to both Mandarin pinyin's p, t, k, and b, d, g. You speak some Shanghainese, right? You should be able to know the difference in Shanghainese between: 泰 (voiceless aspirated)、带 (voiceless unaspirated)、大 (voiced).

Chinese historically classify characters into 3 categories:

1. Voiceless Unaspirated 全清: sky, speak, stock, 到、刀、島、交、加、高、三、支、法、殺、西、小

2. Voiceless Aspirated 次清: test, peak, key, cheese, 炮、靠、討、看、吃、次、粗、卡、他

3. Voiced 浊 (濁): best, god, dog, zoo, viper, Jack, pleasure, 道、大、學、談、啤、被、強、象、堂、頭、同、從、是

Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, etc differentiate only voiceless aspirated (2) and unaspirated (1) stops and fricatives In Mandarin's case, typically all Middle Chinese voiced syllables (3) are now pronounced as voiceless aspirated, but exceptions abound （大、学、道、象、被 are voiceless unaspirated in Mandarin).

All Wu dialects (Shanghainese) differentiate all three (voiced, voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated), no randomization since Middle Chinese. Sino-Japanese differentiates voiced and voiceless. Min dialects have all three distinctions, but the voicing no longer follows that of Middle Chinese and are randomized.

Sino-Korean differentiates voiceless lax, voiceless aspirated, and voiceless tensed. Hence, the original voiced characters (大、学、同、道) are like Mandarin randomized.

A Mandarin-speaking Chinese linguist will have to memorize which characters were historically voiced. But a Wu speaker would immediately know all, and a well-educated Japanese speaker would get most right. Cantonese speakers might be able to guess by tones.

Could anyone give me a list of the aspirated/nonaspirated sounds in Chinese?

In Mandarin: characters that start with pinyin k, t, p, q, c, ch are voiceless aspirated. All others except r, m, n, l (voiced) are voiceless unaspirated. In my above list, row 1 and 2 are also consistent for Mandarin.