Variations in Pronouncing 因为

[Guest IVYtony]

I think Yin1 Wei2 is 95% right.

[djwebb2004]

IvyTony, you posted on another thread to say you thought that hao3 de hen3 was dialect, and now you are in this thread posting to say that you think yin1wei2 is 95% right. Some people don't learn anything because they don't like to admit they are ever wrong. The most anyone could say is that the Chinese language authorities have determined that yin1wei4 is the correct form - and the 2002 Xiandai Hanyu Cidian does contains revisions of the tones that were published in the 1955 edition, but no revision to yinwei. So if you want to say yin1wei2 that's fine, especially in an area where Chinese people locally say it like that. But to post messages to the group telling others it is the correct form is deliberately misleading.

[xiaocai]

I can hardly figure out which one i would prefer in daily conversation, maybe both. In fact, I've never noticed that.

[39degN]

I guess I usually use yin1 wei4 or yin1 wei5(stress 因) ... tho i didnt pay attention to this either. In my mind, the generations at their age of 40-50s usually say yin1 wei2. haha, i mean no offence tho. my guess is that that's standard pronunciation during their school years.

[aristotle1990]

I hadn't read from a page of pinyin in a while, but last night I happened to be tutoring someone in Chinese and we were on this passage in his textbook that included "yin1 wei4." I was kinda taken aback -- I was 99% sure it was yin1 wei2 or yin1 wei5. My first instinct was literally to tell him that it was incorrect, and that the correct pronunciation was yin1 wei2, but I caught myself and just told him yin1 wei2 was a variant pronunciation. Ended up googling afterwards and came across this page. It does seem that yin1 wei4 is the etymologically correct reading but I can't remember hearing it pronounced like that in Beijing.

 

It's possible to see how yin1 wei2 developed, though -- people start pronouncing yin1 wei4 as yin1 wei5, because Chinese, and then the neutral tone can lapse into / get confused with the second (especially because 为 is often pronounced wei2).

[roddy]

I'm not going to type it all out, but if you have access to the Guifan on Pleco or elsewhere it has one of those handy little notes about the different pronunciations of 为

[iand]

All I see is

注意 ㊀㊁跟“为了”的用法不同。“因为”表示原因; “为了”表示目的。

見由於的提示。

[lechuan]

Interesting related excerpt from "A Billion Voices: China's Search for a Common Language", by David Moser, when discussing fines levied on media professionals for non-standard pronunciations:

 

 

Hosts and announcers from outside Beijing must hone their speech to expunge local dialect traces, but professionals born and raised in Beijing have their own problems, due to the fact that Putonghua, though based on the Beijing dialect, is not identical to it. Language habits are hard to break, and sometimes the most common words are difficult to change. For example, Beijing hosts have complained to me about slips involving the word for 'because'. In their native Beijing dialect, the word is pronounced yīnwéi, whereas in Putonghua the correct pronunciation is yīnwèi, with a falling fourth tone wèi on the second syllable. It is virtually impossible for such professionals to avoid occasionally lapsing into their mother-tongue pronunciation, and the resulting error brings a slap on the wrist.