Difference in Mandarin Accents

[XiaoXi]

I'm kind of confused here. First of all, I think the transcription of any word is supposed to be based on its pronunciation, not the other way around.

Exactly! Which is why its written 'shi' and not 'si' so saying 是 as 'si' is wrong. Its fine if that's your accent but its 'too' wrong to be taught to a Chinese learner that way.

I'm also not entirely sure what you mean by changing the "real" si words to some other form of romanisation.

Well if you're pronouncing 是 as 'si' then it doesn't work too well if the romanisation for 四 is also 'si' now does it?

If native speakers pronounce the word the same, why would you want to have a different romanisation? Does that not defeat the idea of having a system to record the way words are pronounced?

It certainly does if you pronounce them all the same! Luckily standard mandarin is not like that. Pinyin is supposed to help with learning Chinese. It doesn't help too well if someone is saying 'zeng' to you and you write that down as 'zeng' but they were in fact saying 'zheng'.

[xiaocai]

i think most chinese teachers put too much emphasis on encouraging their students to speak with the traditional beijing accent. the vast majority of china speaks with a non-beijing accent, so saying 是 as "si“ really isn't a big deal. if anything, a majority of the chinese that you talk to will be more familiar with this brand of pronunciation.

Yes it will be a very big deal if you are a primary or secondary school student, and I think it is very important to get the pronunciation right from the very beginning when you start to learn a language. I will be very upset that if any Chinese teacher does not correct you if you keep pronouncing 是 as "si".

[XiaoXi]

Yes it will be a very big deal if you are a primary or secondary school student, and I think it is very important to get the pronunciation right from the very beginning when you start to learn a language. I will be very upset that if any Chinese teacher does not correct you if you keep pronouncing 是 as "si".

I think in Taiwan they correct you if you DON'T pronounce 是 as 'si'. Seriously though, they surely don't correct you, that's how they teach you to pronounce it which is not good at all.

[flywhc]

People in South China use additional tones to differentiate 四si and 十shi. They have 9 to 12 tones instead of 4 tones, and different regions have different tones!

Sometimes people had to use English for confirmation "四块？十块！四块？ten yuan!" . In fact people use gesture more. However South China has different gesture to represent numbers from North China too!

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_number_gestures only shows North China way.)

It is essential to pronounce zhi chi shi and zi ci si in their correct way otherwise may cause misunderstanding. It is not hard for most European.

Usually the exaggerated "r" in Beijing accents doesn't lead to misunderstanding but it may cause misunderstanding if don't pronounce it (Like Pekingese do).

My Cantonese girlfriend asked me in a restaurant Wo3Yao4Chi1Bao1Pi2 我要吃包皮, which mean "I want to eat foreskin" I was shocked then LMAO.

She actually intended to say "Wo3Yao4Chi1Bao1Zi*Pi2er" 我要吃包子皮, I want to eat (flour) skin of Steam Bun. 子should be the Neutral tone (轻声) but not silent. 皮should be pronounced with slightly rolling tongue.

[renzhe]

I think in Taiwan they correct you if you DON'T pronounce 是 as 'si'. .... that's how they teach you to pronounce it

Why do you say that? Did you learn in Taiwan?

I would be very surprised if this were the case. It's more likely that you're extrapolating from perceived dialect-influenced local pronunciation. However, many people in Taiwan actually pronounce the two differently, even if the difference is not as pronounced as in the north.

[xiaocai]

I think in Taiwan they correct you if you DON'T pronounce 是 as 'si'. Seriously though, they surely don't correct you, that's how they teach you to pronounce it which is not good at all.

Well I have only met a few people from Taiwan and all of them happened to have no problem differentiating "shi" and "si". Maybe they were lucky enough to have had good mandarin teachers back then but certainly I would not agree to generalise your observation on this issue.

[XiaoXi]

Why do you say that? Did you learn in Taiwan?

No I didn't learn in Taiwan. I saw some Youtube videos of westerners who had learned to speak Chinese in Taiwan and they had the same pronunciation problems. Even one guy was being tested on his Chinese at his school and the teachers and himself all pronounced 'sh' sounds as 's'. If they're not taught like that I'd be very happy of course. Maybe someone who's learnt or is learning there can enlighten how they pronounce things.

I would be very surprised if this were the case. It's more likely that you're extrapolating from perceived dialect-influenced local pronunciation. However, many people in Taiwan actually pronounce the two differently, even if the difference is not as pronounced as in the north.

Since just about everyone speaks like that it would be hard to teach anyone differently. It would be hard to keep telling them to pronounce the 'sh' when they don't themselves.

Well I have only met a few people from Taiwan and all of them happened to have no problem differentiating "shi" and "si". Maybe they were lucky enough to have had good mandarin teachers back then but certainly I would not agree to generalise your observation on this issue.

Yes there may be some that say their 'sh' no problem but that conflict with wushijiao's earlier comment about de facto standards in other Chinese speaking countries about how to pronounce words. Either its right to say it 'sh' in Taiwan or its right to say it 's'. Anyway, most of them say it 's'. I don't think you're gonna bother to argue about that.

[Guest realmayo]

I don't see how this is such a big deal. Yes, it's not technically correct 'Mandarin' to pronounce 是 as si, but it's very common across large swathes of China. If a foreigner studies at a university in the south and spends time chatting to Chinese people outside of class, then he will be influenced by the accent, regardless of how busy his actual teachers' tongues are.

The reason I don't think it's so important is because as foreign learners we (at least in the mainland) start with pinyin. So we know that a word should be sh / zh / ch. Even though I sometimes don't roll the tongue at all with these sounds, I know that I 'should', and it's not exactly hard to make a teeny effort to do so.

We're not in the same situation as plenty of native speakers, who don't seem aware of any difference, and therefore find it hard to shed this feature of their accent.

Consider the UK: in the south, people pronounce "a" differently to the north in words like "bath". But it's no big deal.

[xiaocai]

@ XiaoXi:

Have you ever watched Taiwan news before? Many of the anchors speak with a quite standard Taiwan Guoyu accent.

I haven't been to Taiwan before and from your previous posts I would assume that you haven't as well. I will not argue about what is the real situation in Taiwan but let's hold back words like "everyone" or "most of" if both of us had only watched a few videos on youtube, okay?

Edited October 27, 2009 at 08:16 AM by xiaocai

[renzhe]

No I didn't learn in Taiwan. I saw some Youtube videos of westerners who had learned to speak Chinese in Taiwan and they had the same pronunciation problems

I saw a youtube video once of a European who learned English in Texas, and he said "y'all".

[atitarev]

If the pronunciation problems don't bother Chinese themselves and they are understood, we shouldn't worry that much about sh/s ch/c zh/z type of differences.

These are very common and Southerners are understood by Northerners and the other way around. It's worth exposing and learn to understand different accents, try to speak the standard accent.

Chinese themselves may have more issues if you mix up tones, not if you speak with a regional accent, although sometimes tones can be different as well.

[morningdew]

Too much emphasis is placed on "standard" pronunciation. The most important thing is to clearly pronounce all pinyin sounds, especially when strung together in a sentence.

NOTIFICATION TO ALL BEGINNER STUDENTS: Forget the tones! Just get all the pinyin sounds down and you'll be good to go. Shi si xu shu ju zhu they are close enough in sound that Chinese people will surely understand you. Don't make it a bigger deal than it needs to be.

[atitarev]

I don't think you are quite, although the Chinese people get used to FOREIGN accents as well. In my opinion, they understand better speakers of other varieties of Mandarin than foreigners speaking toneless Mandarin.

A simple example is 四十 and 十四. From a Westerner's point of view, it's essential to get si and shi right, for Chinese it's tones. Even if you sísì instead of síshì, it's invariably 十四, not 四十. 药房 and 药方 differ in tones and there can be many other examples.

Even our teachers often can't follow our students' toneless Mandarin without seeing the text! On the other hand, Cantonese speakers with horrible initials but more or less correct tones are understood, leaving Australians wondering what was actually uttered.

As for the standard Mandarin, it's definitely preferred over non-standard, no need to shout With the standard Mandarin, you can not only follow your neighbours' speech but TV, radio and any other material in Putonghua.

[roddy]

NOTIFICATION TO ALL INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS: Ha ha, now you're in trouble.

That sounds a bit like something I would have said quite some years back. Stupid young me.

[Daan]

Exactly! Which is why its written 'shi' and not 'si' so saying 是 as 'si' is wrong. Its fine if that's your accent but its 'too' wrong to be taught to a Chinese learner that way.

I think the point you are trying to make here is that standard Mandarin, as defined by the government and used at the HSK, requires you to pronounce 是 with a retroflex initial, and that students should therefore be taught this. A case can of course be made for that. But it's crucial that this is not based on the Pinyin transcription of this initial as sh-. It's the other way around, rather. Had the government decided not to use the retroflex initial in its official definition of standard Mandarin, Pinyin would have reflected this, and 是 would have been transcribed as si4 in every single textbook.

Well if you're pronouncing 是 as 'si' then it doesn't work too well if the romanisation for 四 is also 'si' now does it?

I don't see what the problem is. Assuming 是 and 四 are pronounced exactly the same, why would you want to have a different romanisation for it? We're talking about the same sound coming out of your mouth, so why transcribe it differently?

It certainly does if you pronounce them all the same! Luckily standard mandarin is not like that. Pinyin is supposed to help with learning Chinese. It doesn't help too well if someone is saying 'zeng' to you and you write that down as 'zeng' but they were in fact saying 'zheng'.

Are you not fooling yourself then? If a native speaker says zeng4 without a retroflex initial, why would you not write it down as such? I'm not saying you should not try and adhere to standard Mandarin pronunciation rules, but it seems to me you might have missed the point of pinyin: to transcribe sounds, which is what a transcription system is for. No more, no less. Why make it more complicated?

Finally, as to this:

I think in Taiwan they correct you if you DON'T pronounce 是 as 'si'. .... that's how they teach you to pronounce it

I can assure you you would get in trouble for pronouncing 是 as si4, at my university at least. The retroflex is definitely supposed to be there, even though it might not be as strong as the one in Beijing

[xianhua]

Assuming 是 and 四 are pronounced exactly the same, why would you want to have a different romanisation for it?

I can only speak from my PRC Pinyin simplified-set keyboard but typing 'si' instead of 'shi' may lead to some nasty surprises. i.e 死 instead of 是.

Edited October 27, 2009 at 07:34 AM by xianhua

[Don_Horhe]

From the Wikipedia article on Pinyin:

The system is now used in mainland China (and Hong Kong, Macau, and parts of Taiwan) to teach Mandarin Chinese to schoolchildren and internationally to teach Mandarin as a second language. ...It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Mandarin pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults.

Pinyin is used to teach people what the standard pronunciation IS, rather than transcribe what people actually say. Just because some (OK, many) people pronounce their retroflex initials as their alveolar counterparts doesn't mean that it is correct and that it should be written as 'si' instead of 'shi', just as somebody from the UK who might say 'fink' instead of 'think' would still write 'think' and transcribe it as such.

[Daan]

Yes, I know that, and of course I also know typing si4 rather than shi4 will lead to some nasty surprises on most IMEs that have fuzzy input disabled. But that has nothing to do with pinyin in itself. Pronouncing 是 as si4 is not incorrect because of pinyin. It's technically fine to write it down as si4 in pinyin - there are no rules within pinyin that wouldn't let you do so. It's a combination of sounds that exists within this system. But since it's not standard, you wouldn't do so.

It's like 什麽: officially this is supposed to pronounced shen2me, but there are plenty of native speakers who say she2me instead. Why insist on teaching people to pronounce it as shen2me? Surely even standard Mandarin is not immune to language change?

[Guest realmayo]

I can only speak from my PRC Pinyin simplified-set keyboard

I don't think people alter the way they speak just to make writing things down easier. Otherwise English speakers would pronounce "their" and "there" differently.

[xiaocai]

@ Daan:

I think the definition of pinyin needs to be clarified here. Pinyin is the romanisation system used in mainland for standard mandarin. Pronouncing 是 as "si" in is not consider as standard in mainland China and therefore you can't write like this in pinyin. Probably you can do this with some other romanisation systems but definitely not with pinyin. Of course you can add in what ever accent you like in your speech but it will not be represented in pinyin.