Poll: shhhhhhh! "x" or "sh"

[jkhsu]

Here is a link that explains my point better than anything else I've found.

http://www.rubinghscience.org/language/pinyin1.html

Excerpts:

Note carefully here how Pinyin sh does emphatically not correspond with English ``sh''. 

The pronunciation of the retroflexed Pinyin sh [s<] can be arrived at by applying retroflexion, as described above, to the normal ``s'' .  That is, we start with normal ``s'', then -- all the time keeping the air stream of the ``sibilant'' or ``fricative'' ``s'' sound going -- we change the position of the tip of the tongue to the ``retroflex'' position as in ``English r''.  The result should be a sound different from normal ``s'' where the manner in which the difference is sounding different from normal ``s'' is somewhat like the way in which English ``sh'' [sy] as in ``ship'' is different from normal ``s'' .  Similarly to palatization, retroflexation of ``s'' adds a kind of ``rustling leaves'' quality to the sound.  But nevertheless Pinyin sh [s<] sounds distinctly different from the palatized ``s'' [sy] in that it does not clearly have an ``i'' quality mixed in as in the palatized ``s'', but instead sounds a bit ``stopped up'' or ``retracted''. 

Palatized ``s'' ( = [sy] ), pronounced like English ``sh'' in ``ship'', is witten in Pinyin as x.

[Guest realmayo]

Note carefully here how Pinyin sh does emphatically not correspond with English ``sh''.

Who said that it did? The question is which sounds closest.

Also I think linking to sound files is only going to muddy the waters ... the one rezaf linked to with some woman saying "sheep" sounds to me like she's saying "cheap" -- I don't think the sound quality is good enough to make it useful.

jkhsu, I think the page you link to has some incorrect information on it. Such as:

The palatized version of ``s'' is pronounced exactly as English ``sh'' in ``ship'' and is written in Pinyin as x.

[creamyhorror]

Welp, let's clarify a few things. Guess there's lots of life in this dead horse yet.

The pronunciation of the retroflexed Pinyin sh [s<] can be arrived at by applying retroflexion, as described above, to the normal ``s'' . That is, we start with normal ``s'', then -- all the time keeping the air stream of the ``sibilant'' or ``fricative'' ``s'' sound going -- we change the position of the tip of the tongue to the ``retroflex'' position as in ``English r''.

(Mandarin) retroflex sh does not generally involve actually curling the tongue backwards. It basically sounds like a thicker version of English 'sh'. Here's a supporting quote from a rather interesting paper, Are the Mandarin retroflex initial consonants really retroflex? Are the palatals really palatal?:

The tongue is slightly retracted. Although the three speakers are slightly different, in any case it is clear the tongue is not bent backwards. It was proved by the instrumental studies a long time ago (i.e. Ohnesorg & Švarný 1955). The articulation is made with the surface of the tip (or, as Lee & Zee or Ladefoged & Maddieson 1994 assume, even laminaly) - but definitely NOT with the underside of the tip! In spite of a considerable variability of pronunciation, no Chinese speaker articulates these sounds subapically (as Lee & Zee 1999 state). That is why the phoneticians mostly avoid the term retroflex completely, or at most speak of „so called retroflexes“ (e.g. Ladefoged & Wu 1984; of course they stress the adequate interpretation of the term).

Next, this quote from Rubingh's essay:

The palatized version of ``s'' is pronounced exactly as English ``sh'' in ``ship'' and is written in Pinyin as x.

As realmayo pointed out, this is pretty much wrong. Just about every linguistic source assigns different sound values to "ship" and xi.

Here's a quote from another paper (A Tale of Five Fricatives) showing that speakers of Mandarin actually overwhelmingly distinguish ɕ (xi) from ʃ (English 'sh'), but native speakers of Mandarin tend not to distinguish ʃ from ʂ (sh).

To summarize, we collected productions of Mandarin and English by native speakers, heritage speakers, and late learners of Mandarin and found that all or almost all distinguish Mandarin /ʂ/ vs. /ɕ/, as well as Mandarin /ɕ/ vs. English /ʃ/. However, only about half distinguish Mandarin /ʂ/ vs.

English /ʃ/ or Mandarin /s/ vs. English /s/, with the majority of heritage speakers falling into this group of “distinguishers” in both cases.

In other words, Mandarin speakers can immediately tell the difference between pinyin x and English 'sh', but many can't (or don't) draw a distinction between English 'sh' and pinyin sh. Which pretty much agrees with how most of us feel 'sh' and pinyin sh are more similar.

(This horse ain't dead yet!)

[rezaf]

Also I think linking to sound files is only going to muddy the waters ... the one rezaf linked to with some woman saying "sheep" sounds to me like she's saying "cheap" -- I don't think the sound quality is good enough to make it useful.

I think the quality is good enough but of course when the evidence is against what you think then bringing audio samples from dictionaries that millions of people have been using would be muddying the water.

[Guest realmayo]

fair enough ... although I think (I hope!) we're not disagreeing about "sh" and "ch" as well!

[rezaf]

Let's make a new poll.

[jkhsu]

(Mandarin) retroflex sh does not generally involve actually curling the tongue backwards. It basically sounds like a thicker version of English 'sh'. Here's a supporting quote from a rather interesting paper, Are the Mandarin retroflex initial consonants really retroflex? Are the palatals really palatal?:

The articulation is made with the surface of the tip (or, as Lee & Zee or Ladefoged & Maddieson 1994 assume, even laminaly) - but definitely NOT with the underside of the tip!

Agreed 100%. That's exactly correct. It is made with the surface of the tip, not the underside. That's exactly how I do it. (Sorry if somehow I didn't make that point clearly before.)

Edit: I do not agree with "It basically sounds like a thicker version of English 'sh'" which is creamyhorror's comment. I thought you had taken the quote directly from the paper. I agree with the paper but not your comment. Sorry, I read this too fast.

@creamyhorror, great find on A Tale of Five Fricatives. I'm giving you a thumbs up on that post. Here's the quote in there that paper:

On the other hand, only half the speaker pool distinguishes Mandarin /ʂ/ and English /ʃ/.

While nine speakers show a significant difference between the two fricatives on PAF and/or centroid,

the other nine do not. However, the nine that do distinguish them are not evenly distributed

across the three speaker groups; instead, the majority of these “distinguishers” are clustered in the

heritage speaker group, with the result that the majority of both native Mandarin speakers and late

Mandarin learners are not found to distinguish /ʂ/ vs. /ʃ/, whereas the majority of heritage speakers

are.

I agree with this actually. I think the results of this poll and my own research aligns with these findings. It's basically saying that people who really know the Mandarin "sh" and English "sh" sounds can definitely tell them apart. Remember I said I talked to heritage speakers and Mandarin natives who knew English? The study indicated they used 5 Mandarin natives but didn't mention their English level.

The other point I wanted to make is that I'm really talking about the making of the Mandarin "sh" and English "sh" sounds. If you make your Mandarin "sh" sound with the tip (top surface) of your tongue lightly touching the roof of your palate and then try to use this starting point to make an English "sh", your English "sh" would sound really off. Likewise, (to pronounce the Mandarin "sh") starting with how you would say "shore" or "ship" and not doing the retroflex (I should use retraction instead of retroflex I guess) and tip (top surface) of the tongue touching the roof of your palate would create the classic mistake made by English speakers. Alternatively, if you made the mistake of making your Mandarin "x" sound like your English "sh", you'd sound closer to a Shanghainese person substituting Shanghainese to say the Mandarin "x" sound (which they do a lot).

Look, the only reason I am even spending so much time here is just to make sure beginner Mandarin learners pronounce their Mandarin "sh" sounds correctly. If you have native Mandarin speakers tell you that your Mandarin "sh" sound is right on, I really don't care if you believe it sounds like an English "sh" or some other random sound in another language.

Finally, this discussion is hindering my Chinese studies because I'm spending all my time discussing this topic. If I'm ever in a debate I would want creamyhorror and rezaf on my team for sure. For now, I would much rather spend my time to learning more Chinese. Cheers.

[rezaf]

I still maintain that the reason rezaf's third one does not sound like English "sheep" is because of the vowel sound after the sh-, not because of the sh- itself.

@yonglin: I don't quite understand what you mean but to clear up any problems I edited that recording. I guess the major problem is that it is almost impossible to add a decent iː after ʂ, so in this recording I added the iːp part from the second one(the standard pronunciation) to the first one and the third one. This way all of them have the same vowel. So if the vowel is the same then you can clearly judge that in case the first one is closer to the second one then it means that ɕ(x) sounds closer to ʃ but of course if you think the third one sounds more like the English sheep then it means ʂ is closer to ʃ.

My Song 7.mp3

[LaoJian]

Hi guys,

Please check out this video, I think this is a good video to teach you Chinese Pinyin

3:45 - X, 4:35 - SH

you can get difference between 'x' (flat shape of your mouth) and 'sh' (vertical shape of your mouth)

[Chinadoog]

When I saw the poll, I immediately thought that SH is the correct answer. The English SH is much more similar to the chinese SH than the Chinese X sound.

And I find that after speaking so much Chinese, when I say some English words that start with SH I tend to curl my tongue a lot. Same with some other words like ''giraffe''... I can't not curl my tongue (like the gir in giraffe comes out like the 'zhi' sound), and I can't remember how I said those words before I started speaking Chinese. Anyone else notice this happening to them?

[rezaf]

When I saw the poll, I immediately thought that SH is the correct answer. The English SH is much more similar to the chinese SH than the Chinese X sound.

And I find that after speaking so much Chinese, when I say some English words that start with SH I tend to curl my tongue a lot.

and I can't remember how I said those words before

If your English Sh is not standard and you think that it sounds close to pinyin sh then it means that your standard English sh used to be far from pinyin sh.

[Guest realmayo]

... but not as far as pinyin x, kakakakaka (sh)

[adrianlondon]

I have a book ("IT 口语") which under pronunciation has:

sh as "sh" in "shirt"

x as "sh" in "shit"

[Hofmann]

Consider that textbooks aimed at nonspecialists don't really care to explain exactly how something is pronounced, but approximate for the sake of saving the learner some time while sacrificing some accuracy.

[anonymoose]

So are the "sh" in shirt and shit different?

[adrianlondon]

When I say it (such as describing someone's shirt I really don't like ...) the "sh" in shirt is said with the tongue curved further towards the back of my mouth.