Cantonese initials poll

[Hofmann]

In Standard Cantonese, most of those pairs are homophonous, but some dialects may differentiate them. I am wondering if anyone here differentiates them, and which pairs if initial-final combinations are differentiated more often.

For Cantonese speakers, please answer according to your own dialect of Cantonese. If none are homophonous, say so.

Edited February 25, 2009 at 05:33 AM by roddy

[roddy]

C'mon, tell people why you're asking. You'll get more of a response if you take the time to explain why the results are going to be interesting.

[Hofmann]

Alright. In Standard Cantonese, most of those pairs are homophonous, but some dialects may differentiate them. I am wondering if anyone here differentiates them, and which pairs if initial-final combinations are differentiated more often.

[roddy]

Edited into the original post.

[Hofmann]

Meh...not enough votes to conclude anything.

[lemontea]

I live in Foshan, a city next to Guangzhou

As for teenagers here, I feel that the first 6 pairs sound completely the same.

That is to say, there are only /ts/, /ts/-aspirated and /s/.

And if I ever try to use the palato-alveolar ones, my friends say that sounds wierd and alien.

The seventh pair is a matter of 'lazy pronunciation' (I don't know if it is the commonly-accepted term)

the first one has no initial, while the second one has a glottal stop initial

The 'mixing-up' phenomenon is most easily observed on (untrained) young people and non-native speakers.

For people older than 50 or so, the two words sound clearly different.

Mostly, we don't differentiate them now.

If you do want to know the difference, here is a little lecturing (from my Chinese linguistics textbook)

as we are told, the cantonse tones can be grouped into 平 上 去 入. this comes from the Ancient Chinese tone pattern (rising, falling, etc.)

here i will discuss only the first 3

and in each group they are further differentiated according to their PITCH : 阴(higher pitch) and 阳(lower pitch) this has something to do with the initial consonants in Ancient Chinese. Originally Chinese has voiced consonants but they have disappeared in most dialects, causing the VOICING distinction to be replaced by PITCH distinction

so we get 阴平 阳平 阴上 阳上 阴去 阳去

or, let me arrange them in another order:

阴平 阴上 阴去 阳平 阳上 阳去

that is Tone 1,2,3 and 4,5,6

and glottal stop appears in 阳 tones, that will be Tone 4,5,6

this is the case for almost every word you may come across

[lemontea]

as glottal stop (recognised as VOICED in ancient chinese) ONLY appear in lower tones -- 4,5,6

and words without an initial ONLY in higher tones --- 1,2,3

it does not matter even if people can't distinguish them because the difference in their TONE is specific enough for us to pick out the right word

poor glottal stop ..

many people now tend to omit every glottal stop (or they even DON'T know that it exists)

so you can just forget about it

[Hofmann]

In place of "glottal stop" did you mean "velar nasal?"

The tone rule isn't without exception. 啱。

[lemontea]

Oops.

I made a mistake there

it is velar nasal

sorry

yes. there are exceptions.

mainly colloquial words and words of unclear origins

the cantonese word you pointed out does not sound chinese, does it? ;)

[Yan Hoi]

Modern Cantonese speakers no longer differentiate between palato-alveolar [tɕ] [tɕʰ] [ɕ] and alveolar [ts] [tsʰ] anymore, which were distinct phonemes in Old Cantonese. [tɕ] [tɕʰ] [ɕ] in Old Cantonese correspond to the retroflex affricates in Mandarin [zh] [ch] [sh], while [ts] [tsʰ] correspond to [z] [c] and [j] [q] [x] in Mandarin.

Interestingly, even though the Standard Cantonese transcription has dropped the alveolo-palatal sibilants [tɕ] [tɕʰ] [ɕ], today many Cantonese speakers still use these as allophones of the [ts] [tsʰ] phonemes, especially before vowels and [y]. E.g. [ɕyt] for 雪 instead of [syt] and [tɕʰi] for 次 instead of [ci].

For all the other vowels, modern speakers will generally use [ts] [tsʰ] as initials.

The velar nasal [ŋ] initial is usually used for tones 4, 5 & 6, while the null initial is used tones 1, 2 & 3, with exceptions of course. (I use the glottal stop in place of the null initial.)

Some Cantonese speakers can't differentiate between the [l] and [n] initial, e.g. between 蘭 and 難, usually using [l] or an intermediate naso-lateral equivalent for all [l] and [n] initials.

Edited June 4, 2009 at 02:20 AM by Yan Hoi