Pinyin /c/ pronounced as /t/ ?

[HashiriKata]

I think I sometimes hear Chinese native speakers pronounce the sound /c/ as /t/ (or a sound very similar to /t/), such as /tiàocáo/ (跳槽) becoming /tiàotáo/. Is this shift from c to t common? Or is it a feature of any particular dialect?

(You can try listening to the word 跳槽 in www.nciku.com, you'll see what I mean. What's of interest here is the human voices here read cáo as táo, whereas the machine/synthesized voice reads /cáo/ as /cáo/.)

[anonymoose]

I'm not sure what the standard international 音标 is for the pinyin c sound is, but I suspect it is something like ts. Both of the recordings on nciku.com for 跳槽 read it as tiàocáo, except that the relative strength of the t in ts is stronger in the human voice, making it sound somewhat like a pinyin t, but I can still hear it as pinyin c.

[calibre2001]

I understand what you mean 'cause I've noticed something similar when northern chinese speak in relatively slurred mandarin with dialect words thrown in.

I've listened to the nciku example and it sounds like tiàocáo/tiàozhao(找） to me.

[leeyah]

You're right in noticing the nuance which makes "c" in 跳槽 sound like a strongly aspirated "t" (which anonymoose called the relative strength of the "t" and which is marked by IPA as "t" followed by a small "h" in its top right corner). In standard Mandarin pronunciation pinyin "c" indeed comes out as "ts" in he English word "its", but with strong exhalation, hence the similarity to the equally aspirated initial "t" . As an illustration, before pinyin was invented, Qingdao Beer was traditionally (and is still) spelled as "Tsingtao Beer", due to the German spelling of Mandarin aspirated "qing" as "tsing".

Mandarin Chinese Phonetics by Patrick Hassel Zein offers a solid theoretical explanation and also gives further hints on the pronunciation of pinyin:

Initial sounds>>Dental sibilants>>c >>Pronounced as the Pinyin letters "t" + "s". Similar to Pinyin "z", but with strong exhalation! Comparable with the "tsh"-sound in "it's heavy".

Edited September 22, 2009 at 11:22 AM by leeyah

[Meng Lelan]

I tried that link and is it my computer? not connnecting...

[xiaocai]

You're right in noticing the nuance which makes "c" in 跳槽 sound like a strongly aspirated "t" (which anonymoose called the relative strength of the "t" and which is marked by IPA as "t" followed by a small "h" in its top right corner). In standard Mandarin pronunciation pinyin "c" indeed comes out as "ts" in he English word "its", but with strong exhalation, hence the similarity to the equally aspirated initial "t" . As an illustration, before pinyin was invented, Qingdao Beer was traditionally (and is still) spelled as "Tsingtao Beer", due to the German spelling of Mandarin aspirated "qing" as "tsing".

Maybe I didn't really get what you meant but "c" and "q" are 2 different consonants in mandarin.

[leeyah]

Meng Lelan, I believe the link is fixed. (Swedish IP, should be no problems)

Xiaocai, yes, of course they are two different consonants/sounds, but they may still sound similar to the ears of a non-native speaker, for example - a German (an illustration>> in German tschüß is the one & only sound closest to Mandarin "q", therefore "ts" was used in spelling as the closest-sounding to "qi"). Anyway, in the past, these were spelled exactly the same, as "ts", and I guess perhaps (some) German learners may still be spelling Chinese words using this method, to make learning pinyin pronunciation easier, i.e. closer to "German ear".

[xiaocai]

Alright, I don't know if this will sound to harsh or not but I don't see much relevance between your example of "Qingdao Beer" and the question brought out by HashiriKata, since "c" and "q" are two different consonants. I think I get what you mean now but I also believe there are be better ways to illustrate it without complicating the matter.

[HashiriKata]

Just some clarification: When I say "pinyin /c/", I of course mean the affricate /ts/. So what I was asking was that I sometimes hear native speakers pronounce this /ts/ just like the regular /t/ and this has made me wonder if others have experienced something similar.

(And my question is of a more general nature than just based on the example from nciku that I gave.)

[anonymoose]

When I say "pinyin /c/", I of course mean the affricate /ts/. So what I was asking was that I sometimes hear native speakers pronounce this /ts/ just like the regular /t/ and this has made me wonder if others have experienced something similar.

As I mentioned before, if the t in the ts sound is pronounced relatively strongly, then it can sound somewhat similar to a pure t, but in my experience, I have not heard any mandarin speakers pronouncing pinyin c as an outright t.

[xiaocai]

Seems like I haven't really contributed anything to the OP after all...

The clip in www.nciku.com sounds more like "c" to me. I think the strong aspirating sound might be partly due to low sampling rate as well. If someone pronounce "c" as "t" in real life, then to me definitely the person will an accent. But I don't think I can tell what dialect he/she speaks, though. Since "ts" sound exists in almost all chinese dialects, I rarely find any chinese having difficulty pronouncing it correctly.

[leeyah]

I imagine it would be more difficult for a native speaker to verbally explain the nuances of what to him is a natural process of speech. Things like these are rather the stuff that keep linguist freaks' minds busy...

[HashiriKata]

Thank you all for replying!

Seems like I haven't really contributed anything to the OP after all...

你说错了吧! This OP appreciates your contributions (and not just in this thread).

[renzhe]

As I mentioned before, if the t in the ts sound is pronounced relatively strongly, then it can sound somewhat similar to a pure t, but in my experience, I have not heard any mandarin speakers pronouncing pinyin c as an outright t.

I think it's wrong to think of "c" as a combination of "t" and "s".

"c" is often transcribed as "ts" in English, because English doesn't have the "c" sound. Somewhere in the transition between "t" and "s" in "cats", the "c" sound occurs briefly, but when pronouncing the Chinese "c", it doesn't start with a "t" and end with "s", it's just "c". If that makes sense

There is no "t" in "c". It's an artefact of the English transcription. "c" is one sound which sounds exactly the same as a Slavic "c", and not like the English pronunciation of the word "Tzar".

[carlo]

HK, I think this happens a lot in fast speech, and it's probably just the way a certain sound gets "reduced" when the speaker doesn't have enough time to articulate it fully.

The interesting thing is that different languages do this in different ways. For example, English has "weak forms" of short words (such as unstressed "a", "and" etc) and English speakers tend, as a rule, to reduce vowels first by moving toward the mid-centre (schwas). Chinese vowels, and the underlying tones, on the other hand, are somehow more "stable" than in English, don't get bent out of shape as much, while consonants are "reduced" first. The c in tiaocao phonetically is (dental plosive + fricative + aspiration): when speaker doesn't have the time to do all of this, the "fricative" part gets cut out first.

On the other hand, the aspiration doesn't get omitted as easily, IMHO (in Beijing speech, at least). You're more likely to hear tiao4(h)ao2, even, rather than tiao4zao2 (which sounds like something else entirely).

Cannot back this up with data, but I think it's more or less what is going on.

[calibre2001]

Good point. I swear 然後 is pronounced 'nahou when they speak faster while 這樣becomes 醬

[Guoke]

I don't see anything wrong with the pronunciation of 槽 on nciku. It could be your speakers.

[trien27]

xiaocai, you are wrong in saying you haven't contributed because:

槽:

On nciku.com, there's two voices:

The first one = female voice = c / ts

The second one = male voice = t

In Wade-Giles before Pinyin was introduced, anyone would be using Ts' instead of Q while learning Chinese, whether you're German or not.

Tsingtao Beer is still Tsingtao, not Qingdao just like the newspaper here in the USA is Sing Tao [which according to phonetics / IPA should be Hsing Tao via Wade-Giles, but somehow they got rid of the initial H, and made it start with an S], not Xing dao.

Source: http://www.singtaousa.com/

Edited September 23, 2009 at 02:44 AM by trien27
additional information

[trien27]

and not like the English pronunciation of the word "Tzar".

It's never Tzar. It's always been Tsar or Czar.

[trien27]

"c" is often transcribed as "ts" in English, because English doesn't have the "c" sound.

Wrong: Before Pinyin, it was "ts" or some other combination via Wade-Giles or other systems of romanization.

It was after the invention of Pinyin, that "ts" became "c".