The final –n in Chinese different from English

[Scoobyqueen]

as title

[Don_Horhe]

To me, they don't seem to be different.

[liuzhou]

some Chinese close their lips immediately after pronouncing it which renders an –m sound.

People do the same in English.　It depends what is coming next. Try saying "ban meat" while watching in a mirror.

[Scoobyqueen]

I have heard this sound when the final -n is followed by a pause. .

[Luobot]

Try saying "ban meat"

No wonder we can't ban meat.

I hear a slight difference in the final Mandarin -n sound. Apart from regional variation, it seems to end without the slight vowel addition that westerners sometimes add to the end of an -n. It sounds to me as if our final n's sometimes come off as a very light -ne, or whatever that extra sound is that comes from moving the tongue off the upper mouth ridge, or the slight breath that follows the completion of an English -n sound.

However -ng is another matter. I often hear a nasalized -n in place of the final "g" on the -ng and mistake this for a regular -n.

One of the textbooks I'm reviewing for the Chinese-forums Book Review Project, titled Chinese Made Easier, describes the -n difference as, "in English the place of articulation is normally the alveolar ridge, in Chinese it is the upper teeth and gums.... ensure that your tongue tip touches the back of the upper teeth and gums, and that the middle part of the tongue is kept down."

So, yes, there is a difference.

[lilongyue]

In Chinese the "-n" is more nasal. For example in 烟 (yan1), the character for smoke, or 参(can1), you don't drop the tongue from the roof as your mouth as you are finishing the pronunciation of "-n" sound, like you do in English to get that "-eh" sound. The Chinese "-n" sound is much softer than the English, more of a nasal vibration. The Chinese doesn't rely on the tongue as much as the English does to produce the sound, if that makes sense.

[anonymoose]

It also depends on the region in China. In Shanghai for example, local people do not distinguish between the -n and -ng ending, pronouncing both as something like the -n in the french word 'en'.

[mitcho]

There was an article on the distinctions between -n in English and Mandarin in Xiandai Waiyu by Wang (1997). A summary is in Modern Foreign Languages and kindly reprinted here: The Different Nature of Syllable final Nasals in English and Chinese Article Summary.

The analysis here used a device called a nasometer, which calculates the ratio of sound produced through the oral cavity and nasal cavity, giving a quantitative measure of nasality. The results show that the syllable-final -n in Mandarin is a glide rather than a stop, different from the syllable-initial n-. As a result, the Mandarin -n is more like a part of the vowel ("more sonorant") than a fully separate sound (and less consonantal, and thus perceptively more significant).