s/sh distinction in Chinese learning material

[anonymoose]

I worked for over a year in Dalian, and I don't recall anyone not distinguishing the s and sh sounds. When I came to Shanghai, I noticed that many people do not distinguish s and sh, but even then, I wouldn't say it's the majority, and definitely not amongst educated young people anyway.

[Silent]

I don't see why this is an issue that you need to disagree with, especially if you didn't live here at the time.

I clearly stated long time ago (+10 years) or not motivated. If you feel the need to counter that with nonsense I don't see how I could not disagree. It's a simple fact that even in the 80's a lot was possible if you really wanted and were willing to put in the effort and money. That you, or someone else does feel it's not feasable doesn't mean it's not possible. Sure you had to be highly motivated to send a letter to a Chinese newspaper and start a language exchange by sending tapes up and down etc.

[jkhsu]

I clearly stated long time ago (+10 years) or not motivated. If you feel the need to counter that with nonsense I don't see how I could not disagree.

I don't think your "+10 years or not motivated" statement was the issue. The issue is you quoted my statement (read your post #16) about the difficulty of getting native listening material in the USA around 1988-89 and then mentioned that people could just go to chinatown and listen to the people, subscribe to satellite tv, take a trip to China or get a Chinese au pair, etc.

Do you even realize how ridiculous some of those options sound? It's not like you're telling me, hey, you could have rented a Chinese movie at your nearby Blockbusters. If you said that I might have given you a thumbs up. (The problem is most of those movies are in Cantonese.)

And now you mention writing to a Chinese newspaper to start a language exchange by sending tapes in 1988? So assume someone lives in a small town in Wyoming and just started learning Chinese at the time. How are they going to do this?

If you just want to say that given enough money and effort, one can find native listening material, sure I'll agree with you on that. Next time someone asks me how they can get access to native listening material without using the Internet, I'll just tell them to hire a Chinese maid or buy a ticket to China.

[jkhsu]

When I came to Shanghai, I noticed that many people do not distinguish s and sh

I've noticed this also but with older folks who mainly speak Shanghainese. Most of the younger, college educated Shanghainese distinguish s and sh. However, this is not the case with Taiwanese people I've met in the USA. Even the college educated ones will not distinguish s and sh.

Another one is c and ch. A lot of people say 吃饭 with "ci fan"

[xiaocai]

Surely this is just how Sichuan dialect deals with tones?

Not really, northern Sichuan dialects have different values for all four tones to standard Mandarin. Not to mention southern varieties which have preserved 入声.

Many southerners speak a soft 卷舌音 to differentiate z/c/s and zh/ch/sh. It is not as clear as the hard type you learnt in class as they sound more subtle, but if you get them to pronounce them one right after each other slowly you will notice the change.

[Guest realmayo]

Sorry xiaocai, I wasn't clear, I just meant that I assumed "switching the third and fourth tone" would be particular to one dialect, while, say, switching the second, third and fourth tones, would be particular to another dialect. Is this switching the third and fourth tone a mistake common across lots of speakers of non-perfect putonghua?

[xiaocai]

I see. Surprisingly, my impression is that most Chinese people who speak no so perfect Mandarin will rarely get tones wrong. They may sometimes mispronounce third tone as fourth or the other way around, but not really systematically. I think the biggest problem is when it comes to 入声字 such as 一, 不 and 入, etc. This may be due to dialectic influence, as apparently Mandarin has a fairly random distribution of 入声字 compared to many other dialects.

[Guest realmayo]

Yeah me too, I've not heard people trying to speak mandarin but getting the tones consistently wrong, even though these are the same people who will never once pronounce a "sh" or a "zh" or a "ch". I think it's because there is one-to-one mapping of tones from standard Chinese to dialect. The beatiful Wuhanese dialect, for instance, turns words that are 2nd tone in putonghua into the 3rd tone, 3rd tones into 4th tones, and 4th tones into 2nd tones. So you can predict a lot of sentences in dialect, even if you've not heard the dialect version before.

[Silent]

The issue is you quoted my statement (read your post #16) about the difficulty of getting native listening material in the USA around 1988-89 and then mentioned that people could just go to chinatown and listen to the people, subscribe to satellite tv, take a trip to China or get a Chinese au pair, etc.

You didn't make a statement about difficulty, you wrote "you'd only have these options" suggesting an exhaustive list. There were not just two options, there were infinite possibilities for those who had the creativity to come up with them and wanted to put in the effort. It does not mean it's unreasonable to not use those opportunities. It just means there is a choice.

But as this is off topic I leave it with this.

[jkhsu]

You didn't make a statement about difficulty, you wrote "you'd only have these options" suggesting an exhaustive list.

Alright, I will agree with you that my statement could be worded better. So I'll change it to this: "Below are a few options to get native Chinese listening material in the USA at that time."

There were not just two options, there were infinite possibilities for those who had the creativity to come up with them and wanted to put in the effort.

I have no problem if you want to prove this statement and give some reasonable options. But to put up a blanket statement insinuating that those who weren't able to access native listening material at the time were somehow less creative and lazy is just not cool. A typical beginner Chinese language student in the USA who didn't have cash to blow and who didn't live next to a Chinatown at the time probably couldn't use any of the options you gave. A plane ticket to China at the time could cost as much as an entire semester of tuition depending on the type of school the student attended.

I'm done with this off topic discussion as well.

[Suzanne Brickman]

I've seen the same s/sh blur in southern China with roughly the same fraction or % of the population speaking without this distinction.

Learning standard Mandarin first is, of course, desirable, but feels wholly impractical for the Chinese learner in China! It will be interesting to see how this gap will be bridged. For those constantly interacting with native Chinese speakers, a few brief moments of explanation does the trick. But, for those who usually spend most of their time in courses or textbooks, they I agree that it should be addressed.

If you find a program or text that DOES address this, let me know--that would be a great resource!