入聲 in Cantonese

[外国赤佬]

I can hear the glottal stop, but not the -p, -t, -k endings. My friend, a native speaker, said that they're pretty much not pronounced nowadays. Is this true? Why are they included in all the pronunciation guides then?

[Hofmann]

You hear glottal stops (which shouldn't be there) and no unreleased bilabial, alveolar, and velar plosives (which should be there). There are many possibilities as to what's going on, including

• You're misidentifying sounds, which might be one or many that you might not be able to differentiate.
  
• The speaker is not speaking anything close to Standard Cantonese.
  

[外国赤佬]

The thing is, I've been to Hong Kong personally, also listened to many recordings, but I still don't hear the 尾音. E.g. when they say 樂樂 I hear it as "lo lo", not "lok lok". My friend says the -k ending is there, but it's very very short and quiet and many foreigners can't hear it. Is this what's happening?

[skylee]

E.g. when they say 樂樂 I hear it as "lo lo", not "lok lok".

Really? This is weird. Perhaps you need to listen more carefully.

[Takeshi]

Basically, the stops are unreleased, so they don't sound like a final consonant in English where there is clear articulation. It's like if you want to say a -k, but keep your tongue stuck to the top of your mouth's roof without letting it come down. I find it more difficult to hear the difference of these sounds.

As for glottal stops, I think it might be possible in some sort of fast or relaxed speech, especially if the following syllable promotes it; I probably speak with glottal stops every now and then and nobody has trouble understanding me. I wouldn't know if Chinese people do this or not.

Another thing that complicates it is that -t and -k seem to be in random alternation, again especially if the following syllable promotes it. I know lots of Chinese people do this, though it might technically be considered wrong.

I can generally tell the difference between -p and -t/-k, but my understanding of which words are supposed to be -t and which words are supposed to be -k is not perfect. I figure it's not the end of the world if you are like this.

[skylee]

No it is not the end of the world. It's just a bit annoying. We occasonally hear the weather girl say 默(-k)雲 instead of 密(-t)雲. Or things like this. Not a very big deal.

[外国赤佬]

Basically, the stops are unreleased, so they don't sound like a final consonant in English where there is clear articulation. It's like if you want to say a -k, but keep your tongue stuck to the top of your mouth's roof without letting it come down.

Thanks, this is helpful. I think I got it now.

Was the 入聲 like this in Middle Chinese as well? Shanghainese also has 入聲, but there are no final consonants anymore, native speakers explain it like you suck the air back in, instead of letting it out (basically glottal stop?).

[Hofmann]

Was the 入聲 like this in Middle Chinese as well?

Yes. I don't know why but I would guess that it's because 入聲 analogues in modern languages, including Korean and Vietnamese, are most often unreleased. The only other cases I know of are omission (Mandarin) and becoming another syllable (Japanese).

[外国赤佬]

What would you say about this then:

http://en.wikipedia....inese#Phonetics

Unlike most varieties of Mandarin, Jin has preserved a final glottal stop, which is the remnant of a final stop consonant (/p/, /t/ or /k/). This is in common with Early Mandarin of the Yuan Dynasty (c. 14th century AD) and with a number of modern southern varieties of Chinese. In Middle Chinese, syllables closed with a stop consonant had no tone; Chinese linguists, however, prefer to categorize such syllables as belonging to a separate tone class, traditionally called the "entering tone". Syllables closed with a glottal stop in Jin are still toneless, or alternatively, Jin can be said to still maintain the entering tone. (In standard Mandarin Chinese, syllables formerly ending with a glottal stop have been reassigned to one of the other tone classes in a seemingly random fashion.)

I believe it's the same situation in Wu.

[Michaelyus]

入聲 is preserved as a glottal stop in many southern Mandarin dialects, in most of the Wu family, and in the Min family as well.

閩南語 (including 台語) has four 入聲 endings: the three from Middle Chinese and the glottal stop (some of which appear to correspond to further changes to the Middle Chinese system, especially in the colloquial as opposed to the literary readings; some of which appear to be non-Sinitic in origin); in 廈門閩南語 and 台語 the glottal stop has different tone sandhi behaviour to the -p, -t, -k group.

閩東語 has completely merged its 入聲 endings to a glottal stop, but there is distinction in tone sandhi again (as well as in initial assimilation) between what was historically -k and what historically was a glottal stop: how these correspond to Middle Chinese is a bit of mystery, as the -p, -t, -k have been reassigned to both -k and -h. The glottal stop is usually dropped in the middle of a sandhi unit anyway.

Then there's 溫州話, where 入聲 is maintained as separate tones but without a glottal stop; it is 上聲 that has the glottal stop. Apparently carried over from Old Chinese...

[mcgau]

native speakers explain it like you suck the air back in, instead of letting it out (basically glottal stop?).

I would say so. And as a native speaker of Cantonese, I think Takeshi made a most comprehensive explanation on it so far.

Try to compare Gwo(过) and Gwok (国) here:

http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/search.php?q=%F6e

http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/search.php?q=%B0%EA