Mix "n" with "l" or "f" with "h" in non-standard Mandarin

[renshanrenhai]

I have come across a lot of people from southern China who never pronounce pinyin "l","n","f"and "h" correctly. For examples, when they put "牛奶" （niu2 nai3）you will hear "流lai3" （liu2 lai3）；when they say "婚姻" (hun1 yin1) , you will hear "分姻" （fen1 yin 1）and "小蝴蝶" （xiao3 hu2 die2） sounds like “小服蝶” (xiao3 fu2 die2).

In the case of "牛奶"，i know most of the people from that place will pronounce "n" like "l" and it seems there is no pronunciation of "n" in their dialect. (?Ｉ am not sure.)　Before long i heard someone say "I am from Guangxi Lanning (南宁Nan ning)"

Do you have such kind of experiences ?

Where do those people come from ?

[anonymoose]

Yes. The ones that I remember are a Hani guy from Xishuangbanna who used "f" instead of "h", and a girl from Nanjing who used "l" instead of "n". I could never understand why she called herself a blue whale person.

[rezaf]

I had a friend from 潮州 who had problem with "n"

[xiaocai]

There is a joke about a southern Sichuan guy who wants to rent a room with many chang1 fu4 (supposedly 窗户) in Beijing...

Oh, and I have got the impression that one of the tips for faking a stereotypical Fujian accent is to pronounce 好舒服 as hao3 su1 hu2.

[liuzhou]

The h-f and n-l confusion is common in Hunan province I spent a couple of years in Huaihua, in Hunan and when I arrived was asked what I thought of "Fu lan, Fuai fua" which baffled me. When I left Hunan I had to re-teach myself not to say things like that.

The h-f and n-l confusion occurs in other languages too. In linguistics it is referred to as 'consonant shift'.

[Takeshi]

I have heard both of those happen in Guangzhou. Though they are relatively rarer than the more common sh/ch/zh -> s/c/z shift which is almost ubiquitous. Not sure if those people were natives or not.

[Hesham119]

haha yes I had such an experience with a girl who was from si chuan

she kept telling me this phrase " 你们那边的 Lan2 shen1 有点黑" I didnt understand she kept repeating it the same way until I asked her to type it then she typed " 你们那边的男生有点黑 "

[Hofmann]

Generally, if they do not have certain sounds in the varieties that they already speak, or they have the sounds but they are not phonemically differentiated, they might not pronounce them correctly when learning Mandarin, or they might substitute similar sounds for them.

I have observed a Min Nan speaker (don't know what dialect). It seems that in his variety /l/ corresponds to Mandarin /n/, and /n/ corresponds to Mandarin /l/. This might possibly create confusion also. There was another Min Nan speaker whose variety lacks /f/ (The first one's variety has what can be [f] or [ɸ] depending on the vowel following it.), and she says many Min Nan speakers cannot pronounce Mandarin words that begin with /f/.

[renshanrenhai]

The h-f and n-l confusion occurs in other languages too. In linguistics it is referred to as 'consonant shift'.

Thanks for your point, i'm enlighten by that.

[rezaf]

@Sally: I forgot to mention Shanghainese people. In Shanghai "R" is pronounced something like "L"

[anonymoose]

I forgot to mention Shanghainese people. In Shanghai "R" is pronounced something like "L"

Can you give an example?

[renshanrenhai]

@Sally: I forgot to mention Shanghainese people. In Shanghai "R" is pronounced something like "L"

@ rezaf : Do we? I never realize this, maybe native speaker never realize their own confusion in pronunciation.

So can you give me some very detailed examples to check up if i have this problem?

[rezaf]

I'm not saying that all Shanghainese do that as different Shanghainese people have different levels of fluency in Putonghua's pronunciation but as you know Shanghainese doesn't have "r" and this can cause problems for some people. I remember an ayi who always called my name(瑞） "lui" or maybe "lei". Also some of our teachers（the old ones) sometimes pronounce things a little bit wrong like: 染色,容易，肉，。。。

Also listen to http://v.youku.com/v...E3MjgwODYw.html

at 1:20 and 1:40 his pronunciation of 肉 is close to "lou"

[Lu]

I once had a language partner from Nanjing (Lanjing). He was learning Dutch. In Dutch, 6月 is 'juni' and 7月 is 'juli'. I did not succeed in teaching him the difference between the two. Henanese mix up n and l as well, which was funny when me and a classmate, 荷兰人, went to 河南. And Hunanese apparently turn h into f and l into n, so they say they're from Fulan.

A Taiwanese (Minnan) riddle: what's hua3yi4? 法律, as it turns out. You can hear the f -> h thing in, for example, Frank Hsieh's Mandarin, and the ü to i thing is also often heard in Taiwan. I suppose the same goes for Minnan speakers in Fujian.

I've heard l, r and y confused as well. A Taiwanese once told me his name as something with 'long'. I tried to write it down: is it 龙? 隆? As it turned out, it was 荣.

Really, most of what I know about linguistics is from how I hear Chinese people from different areas exchange certain sounds for others :-)