does "niu" rhyme with mou in many places outside of beijing?

[poleag]

if i understand correctly, the -iu ending is a contraction of i+ou. when i listen to beijingers speak, pinyin syllables like niu and mou would rhyme (in the sense that they end in the same vowel sound)

but it seems to me that the majority of speakers pronounce -iu a little differently than i+ou. it's more more like i:u, as if they were pronouncing the pinyin literally as i+u.

what do you guys think? is the i+ou pronunciation for -iu in the minority of actual speech in china?

[creamyhorror]

I suspect that in a few places the 'i+u' pronunciation will be commonly heard. Many people certainly pronounce it that way in Singapore. 'i+ou' to us sounds very proper, maybe somewhat mainlandish.

But really, among the mainlanders I've spoken to (mostly students), I think they've mostly used 'i+ou'. They probably speak in a more standard style than the average.

[renzhe]

AFAIK, the "correct", canonical pronunciation is "iou", with an audible "o".

That said, there is a wide range among native speakers, and you can hear everything between -iu and -iou, with the "o" part being more or less pronounced.

If you listen to some 崔健 songs, you'll notice that he pronounces it close to "-iu" (almost no "o"), and he's a Beijinger.

[samitakamaki]

He's also an ethnic Korean.

[renzhe]

Yeah, I know. Born and bred in Beijing.

IMHO, it is useful to be aware that there is a standard pronunciation -- which is extremely strict in the case of Mandarin -- and actual spoken language used by native speakers, which tolerates much more variability.

Recently, I've been running into many of these examples, where I actually hear native speakers pronounce things the way I was taught not to. It has explained almost all the cases where transliteration seemed strange, including -iu. The "o" wasn't dropped out of laziness here, it was taken over from Wade-Giles, and based on a slightly different (but still native) pronunciation, same goes for -un and -ui. So they went for the shorter version.

Like I wrote in a different thread, I've heard native speakers from the north pronounce "-ui" and "-un" without the "e", and "-iu" without the "o". It's not the majority pronunciation, but it is real. For learners, I believe that it's best to be aware of the variability, but stick to the standard.

[Sam Reeves]

...I believe that it's best to be aware of the variability, but stick to the standard.

Exactly what ninja said.

It can vary from place to place, and person to person.

In general, this is the problem with picking up Chinese from the people around you, as opposed to having someone qualified in teaching you the standard pronunciation.

[Michaelyus]

There is also the tone-motivated vowel shift: in 平声, which are the first two tones in Mandarin, the -iu is pronounced as /iu/; in the other tones, it is pronounced as /joʊ/. Same thing goes for /wi/ and /weɪ/, both spelt -ui. Whether this is particularly standard or not is debatable; my sources suggest that it is found in the speech of standard Mandarin speakers. (Historical phonologist note: I have no idea how that corresponds to historically 入声 syllables either).

I would also bring out the caveat that it is perhaps more common to map -iu to /ioʊ/ for all syllables in singing, especially in the higher register.

From my experience, in Fujian the -iu final in a 'local' accent will generally be [iu], potentially [iːu]; so no rhyming with -ou. I have heard 'strong' Cantonese accents with -iu realised as [iou], even [jɐu~jɐʊ], which would rhyme with -ou, but as far as I recall it is inconsistent and potentially idiosyncratic (it would probably correspond with really strong influence from Cantonese).

[poleag]

renzhe: So some of the spelling quirks in pinyin might actually reflect real pronunciations. Very interesting. Just when I thought I knew everything there was to know about pinyin.

Michaelyus: Wow, tone-motivated vowel shift. I will listen out for that. The relationship between tones and non-tone sounds in Chinese never ceases to amaze me.

At first I thought this was about regional variability, but these other possibilities (i.e. formality, tonal influence) are more interesting.