明白 tones

[aristotle1990]

Most dictionaries claim 明白 is pronounced míngbai. But in practice, Chinese people usually pronounce it as míngbài, especially in sentences like 我不明白, which is almost uniformly pronounced as wǒ bù míngbài. I have been told by a Chinese person that this is for emphasis (是轻声，只不过有时候是强调是不是真的明白，所以听起来是第四声), but you can emphasize 明白 with a neutral tone too -- try saying wǒ bù míngbai (which is, again, not the way Chinese people say it).

I can't really find any information on the net about this -- can anyone explain? Is it just convention? If so, why don't dictionaries list míngbài? You'd think for such a common word...:wall:wall

[roddy]

Have a read of this - you wouldn't be the first to hear to 2nd-neutral pair as 2nd-4th.

[Shi Tong]

aristotle, IMO it IS pronounced as míngbai and I've heard it many a time.

[aristotle1990]

No, but...think about how you pronounce 朋友. Now pronounce 我做朋友. Now 我不明白. There is a clear difference there. If you pronounce wǒ bù míngbai as you would wǒ zuò péngyou, it just sounds wrong, at least to my ears. The 白 really sounds like a fourth tone there. The stress is on the 白, and it usually sounds falling.

Roddy, the stuff you linked to was helpful. But I'm still not clear on why the neutral tone should sound falling in this case while it doesn't in, for example, 我做朋友, which has the same tones as 我不明白. In 我明白了, it also usually sounds like a 2nd-4th pair, in contrast to 我没有朋友了.

aristotle, IMO it IS pronounced as míngbai and I've heard it many a time.

I think I've heard míngbai too, but not as wǒ bù míngbai (where míngbai sounds like péngyou or xíngli). Edited April 17, 2010 at 04:02 PM by aristotle1990

[roddy]

To be honest I think you're just hearing something that isn't there - once you get it into your head it's hard to get rid of. There are no doubt examples of me doing the same thing in the archives. It's possible the hard 'b' at the start has something to do with it - makes it sound more forceful and . . . .fourthy. Stick some audio clips up if you want to see what people think (although take them from actual sources, rather than getting anyone you've told about this to record something).

[crazillo]

Also, while tones are important, their usage with pinyin only helps us. There is some basic rules like the change of the third tone when it is followed by a different tone after etc. (满足), but there's an intonation apart from tones, if that statement makes sense at all. A 真的吗？will sound differently when you just want to confirm something or when you can't really believe what you have just heard.

[renzhe]

I agree with roddy here.

Fifth tone is notoriously deceptive. After a rising tone, it has a middle-pitch (3 on the scale of 1-5), so you perceive it as a fall after the end of the previous syllable. It is still unstressed, though. 白 can never be pronounced with a fourth tone. Either second or neutral.

Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_phonology#Neutral_tone.

[aristotle1990]

To be honest I think you're just hearing something that isn't there - once you get it into your head it's hard to get rid of.

I have definitely considered this possibility, but I still think there's something else going on here, like how 洁癖 is colloquially pronounced jiépì (I am 100% certain on this one) rather than jiépǐ (or how 鳗鱼 is pronounced mànyú, or how...bottom line is, I think there are plenty of words whose pronunciations differ from the dictionary's, just because over time they've acquired the "wrong" tones -- this is a natural part of language change). Take this post on Sinoglot -- sounds like míngbài to me (transcribed as míngbài too).

Another post on Sinoglot where the míngbài is actually pretty strong -- skip to 1:00.

Dashan sounds like he says it too at 1:05. (Hilarious clip, by the way -- definitely watch the whole thing if you haven't!)

I'll see if I can get a Chinese person to record something for me.

[chrix]

well, all these recordings are not by native speakers....

you could try to record native speakers (if possible in a loss-less format) and then analyse the fundamental frequency with a tool like praat.

when devising the sentence, you should also think about including a word that is uncontroversially 2-4 and then compare their contours. Also, make sure that they are roughly stressed the same way.

[calibre2001]

Question: How come 明白 is ming2bye whereas 白色 is pye2se4. It's the b and p difference that i'm refering to here rather than tone change. Thanks.

[chrix]

It could be the preceding nasal whose voicedness might be carried over to the following segment. (Usually in Mandarin plosives and fricatives are not voiced!)

[doraemon]

The 明 is definitely 2nd tone but I think the 白 is neutral which means it can sometimes sound like it's on the 4th tone when spoken quickly...

[aristotle1990]

I had a Chinese person say:

我不联系

我不明白

我做朋友

Here are the results, slow and fast. I think 我不联系 and 我不明白 are indistinguishable. Also, 我做朋友 is way closer to those two than I thought it would be.

slow.wav

fast.wav

[xiaocai]

The tone of 系, 白 and 友 sound all the same to me. And I have to say her pronunciation is good, better than mine, apart from that the 朋 is not quite "textbook-standard".

[roddy]

Removed a few posts about how many tones Chinese has, comments via pm please . . .

[xiaocai]

Deleted. Being stupid again.

[Guest realmayo]

Here's a thought. Imagine there's a two-character Chinese word for "well-known defeat", written 名败, pronouned ming2bai4. Try saying this. Doesn't it sound different to 明白？

For 明白, the tone goes up with the 明, then has to come down to somewhere more neutral. So it's not suprising that the tone does fall a little bit -- it has to get down from the top of the second tone. But it isn't as sharp a fall as a 4th tone, and doesn't keep falling like a 4th tone would.

I'm not good with tones but I can clearly hear the on the slower recording that the 白 is not a 4th tone.

[aristotle1990]

Okay, guys; as per chrix's suggestion, I got plaat to do a spectrogram, and here's what we get.

Seems to me that the tones on 联系 and 明白 are pretty similar, especially when you consider that the slope on 白 looks about as steep as that on the second 不 (it's not as long or as steep as the 系, but it's long and steep in proportion to that 不, which is what you should compare it with). 友 falls as steeply as 朋 rises...interesting...

Anyway, I agree that the 白 is not a strong fourth tone, but it's certainly not neutral here as 朋友's 友 is (not in this case, possibly because of the 我做 -- I should have gotten her to record a standalone 朋友).

What I really need to get, to prove all you guys wrong (), is someone saying 朋友, 明白, 我有朋友了 and 我（不）明白了. Stay tuned.

Edited April 18, 2010 at 02:12 PM by aristotle1990

[rivercao]

My post was removed by supervisor...ok whatever, as I said, I believe the nuetral tone is originally from Beijing tone, people in southern China still pronounce 4 tones in words and phrases, so I advice learners don't confuse themselves on it, I have a good friend from HK and one from Canton, they never use neutral tone.

I listed some most commonly used nuetral-tone-word and they were removed as well. I'm not going to repeat posting, my opinion is leave it, and move on.

[anonymoose]

it's not as long or as steep as the 系, but it's long and steep in proportion to that 不, which is what you should compare it with

不 plays a different role in the sentence from the 白 in 明白. In fact, apart from tone sandhi, the tone value of 不 can vary quite a lot depending on where the emphasis in the sentence is. If the 不 is being stressed, the forth tone nature of it will probably be even clearer than other forth tone syllables in the sentence. On the other hand, if 不 is not being stressed, it may tend to a neutral tone. Think about, for example, when people say 不知道 - it often comes out as something like b'r'dao.