Non-Chinese speakers not hearing word endings?

[xiaojiang216]

Hi everyone,

I have noticed this quite a bit lately when talking to people who do not speak Chinese. When pronouncing a word in Chinese for them to repeat, they cannot seem to initially detect the ending consonant. I'm not sure if I'm articulating this clearly, so here are a few examples:

When teaching them how to say a phrase such as 再见, they hear

zai jie

instead of

zai jian

.

For 武汉, they hear

Wuha

and not

Wuhan

.

After repeating the words to myself later on, I realized that sometimes I do not annunciate the word ending. Rather, the ending sound is kind of made in the back of the throat instead of placing the tongue behind the teeth to annunciate that 'n' sound.

When I hear that they are not detecting the ending consonant, I annunciate it more (placing the tongue behind the teeth) and they usually get it. I've never seemed to have this problem when speaking to native Chinese speakers. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm thinking this is a common pronunciation rather than my own mistake (for once) - similar to how I seldomly annunciate the 't's in words like "written" and "mitten".

Thanks!

[easMonstret]

With many chinese speaker the final -n (sometimes even -ng) just comes out as a nasalization of the preceding vowel. It is not something 'wrong', not even unique to Chinese. Similar things happen in Frensh and Portugues (Spanish even?). Where are you from?

[xiaojiang216]

Indeed, it does feel like a nasalization. I've experienced this when speaking with several non-native speakers, which initially made me question the accuracy of my pronunciation.

However, I haven't had any problems being understood by native speakers. I'm American, but thinking about this some more, I have probably heard native speakers speak this way as well and may have picked up the "habit" while studying in Beijing(?).

Interesting though that it happens often when speaking with non-native speakers. Or is it not surprising?

[imron]

If you are pronouncing the 'n' from the back of your throat then strictly speaking you're not pronouncing it in a correct way as defined by standard Mandarin. The correct way is to have the tongue behind the top of front teeth when making the 'n' sound.

Native speakers will generally be able to tell from context what you mean because it's not the most important sound in the syllable. On top of that, they will also be unlikely to correct you if you are making a mistake, so don't take 'native speakers understand me' to mean 'I am speaking correctly'.

Also, although there are native speakers who don't differentiate clearly between 'n' and 'ng', often it's because they don't pronounce 'ng' correctly, rathen than because they don't pronounce 'n' correctly, e.g. they say xueshen instead of xuesheng.

[xiaojiang216]

Perhaps I will post an audio file shortly to illustrate what I mean. Thanks!

[xiaojiang216]

Here's a quick recording. Thanks to roddy's thread showing me how to do this!

wuhan.wav

[imron]

In that recording, I think the first Wǔhàn sounds correct, and the second one sounds incorrect (almost like you are saying Wǔhài).

[tooironic]

Am I going crazy or do both sound totally fine? If anything the second one sounds more natural. The first one sounds like someone correcting someone who has misunderstood what city was being referred to.

[imron]

If anything the second one sounds more natural.

To me it sounds a little off. I'd be interested in hearing a comparison recording of Wǔhàn/Wǔhài.

[heifeng]

I couldn't really hear the 'n' that strongly to be honest. HOWEVER, I am wondering if it is also a bit of an influence of the 4th tone not being very strong...sort of floating away & not coming to a complete stop at the 前鼻音-N sound position, as pointed out in Imron's post #4.

Also in terms of the reading of 2 character words, since in BOTH of your examples you showed 4th tone characters as the 2nd character, you may want to take a look at this （(二)双音节词的轻重音格式：

中·重) . Basically, your 2nd syllable should not float away unless it is a 轻声 (which is soft & can change the sound of the 2nd syllable a bit) & many 2- character words in fact have a more stressed reading in 2nd syllable. Soooo if it is a 4th tone 2nd character it might need to be more definite & that is why the 'n' sound is getting lost.

However, again to address the not so clear final sound readings, note that in some regions (such as Taiwan if you watch Taiwan news & compare with Mainland news it will be very clear) you will notice 2-character words in which the 2nd syllable is not read with a 轻声where in mainland a 轻声 would DEFINITELY be used and this makes the final syllable much clearer & more emphasized (it seems to me at least) by mandarin speakers from certain regions. (Although often there is a problem w/ n & ng differentiation in Taiwan, ie the pen-you pronunciation...). So perhaps also the 'hearing' of the n is also depending on those listening to & what they perceive is an acceptable final sound pronunciation/emphasis.

Anyway these are just my 2 quick theories.

disclaimer...brb to proofread

[陳德聰]

I often hear my professors pronouncing -an endings similar to the way you do in the recording in #6. I am accustomed to nasalized endings rather than fully overt nasal consonants, but I do sometimes get thrown off during lecture when what I hear sounds just a little too close to -ai.

I never enjoyed my phonetics classes very much, but I suspect that when lowering the velum to nasalize vowels as an alternative to fully pronouncing ending consonants, some people may have a lingual response, raising a bit perhaps to create something that sounds closer to the high vowel ? Pure speculation as to the why, but I am pretty certain that sometimes native speakers do indeed produce an ending sound that, at least to English speakers, probably sounds very much like -ai.

[roddy]

Yeah, if you hadn't told me what you were saying I could have heard that as hai.Which is maybe fair enough if that's how you want to speak, but people can only repeat what you say.

[陳德聰]

I'd be interested in hearing a comparison recording of Wǔhàn/Wǔhài.

I think that the comparison would make the nasalization very clear, and there would be a strong and noticeable contrast, but +1 on wanting to hear.

Also, just found this about tongue height changing during nasalization processes. The -ai issue is perhaps just a byproduct of the nasalization process that most native speakers would consider allophonic, since nasal endings are marked enough that an alternation like [an]~([ãĩ])~[ã] is possible.

[creamyhorror]

As heifeng mentioned, I think this mostly occurs for n/ng endings in the 4th tone. From my pov it seems to be a common mainland/Northern pronunciation, and I actually find myself doing it when speaking to mainland speakers: I leave my 'n' sound "open" by not touching my tongue to my palate. I picked it up from hearing them use it.

So it's not surprising to me that some foreigners wouldn't hear the n/ng endings - because they aren't really there...

[xiaojiang216]

In that recording, I think the first Wǔhàn sounds correct, and the second one sounds incorrect (almost like you are saying Wǔhài).

Indeed, the first pronunciation is annunciated, whereas the second is abbreviated, if not "lazy". I will upload a han/hai recording, as well as a few other examples I thought of.

From my pov it seems to be a common mainland/Northern pronunciation, and I actually find myself doing it when speaking to mainland speakers: I leave my 'n' sound "open" by not touching my tongue to my palate. I picked it up from hearing them use it.

This is similar to my experience as well. Has anyone else in Beijing noticed this? Perhaps the other examples I'm including will make things clearer. If it's not an abbreviated, "lazy" Northern pronunciation, then perhaps it's a product of my own laziness as a New Englander (it certainly sounds like it in the last reading of the last recording! I realize it should never be read that way, but it's just an example!).

han_hai.wav

jidan_gaoshan.wav

gaochubushenghan.wav

[roddy]

See, that's why you need a nice heavy -r sound at the end - so everyone knows you left off an 'n'.

If it's just a matter of how you talk, that's fine. If you're teaching people to talk though, I'd say you want to get as close to standard as you can - by all means tell them about different accents and explain how you talk differently in different contexts. But I'd say students should get taught to standard, and then they can make their own decisions later on about how to diverge from that.

[imron]

This is similar to my experience as well. Has anyone else in Beijing noticed this?

Most of my time in China was spent in the north (Beijing and Hebei), and don't think pronouncing the 'n' like that is a common northern thing (earlier in fact I was actually going to suggest that maybe it was a southern thing ).

See for example the host of 锵锵三人行, a northerner, in this clip which contains several 'n' syllables in the first 15 seconds or so.

One thing it does sound like you're trying to get is a sharper 'a' sound (sorry don't know how to describe it better but compare for example the difference in 'a' sounds between your first and second 'han's in the han-hai clip) which is quite commonly heard, however you should be able to get by having a wider/flatter mouth (almost like making a fake smile) when making the 'a' but still making sure your tongue ends up at the front of the mouth on the 'n' sound (not sure if that makes sense, if not I'll try to see if I can explain it more clearly).

[陳德聰]

Recordings in #15 thoroughly frightened me.

I just played your egg mountain clip for my boyfriend and he thought it was me speaking, but one curious note is that he is from the South (Guizhou) and initially said "it just sounds the same" in response to the endings.

For what it's worth, I am pretty sure I almost exclusively drop the -n ending on -an words in favour of a nasal vowel, and your first "han" sounded super unnatural to me.

[xiaojiang216]

Imron - I see what you're saying and think you're right. It must be a strange habit I picked up from somewhere. Regarding the clip from 锵锵三人行, do you think he pronounces "奇案" at 0:15 slightly differently from the preceding 叹 in 惊叹 and 件 in 事件?

[imron]

In 件 it's definitely different because it's a different final -ian vs -an. 惊叹 vs 奇案, there is a slight difference due mostly I think to a different preceding sound (actually probably more to do with a different preceding tone), however I can still hear the 'n' in both of them.