Pronouncing ü sound.

[Jeremy Andrews]

I've been practicing this sound for a couple days, and this is as close as I can get.

Umlaut.wma

I feel like it's a little off. I think I'm getting the end of the sound right, but the initial part sounds different from the audio samples I've listened to, despite following directions for mouth movement and such.

What do I seem to be doing wrong?

[Demonic_Duck]

That sounds to me like you're making the "ы" sound in Russian, which I always had trouble with myself.

 

What you want to do for pinyin "ü" is keep your tongue position the same as for pinyin "i", and move your lips the same position as for pinyin "u".

 

Pinyin "i": basically the same as the "ea" in "mean".

Pinyin "u": somewhat like the "oo" in "moon", but with the tongue further back and the lips forming a smaller opening (most English speakers don't have a problem with this sound though, so if you're happy that it sounds the same as the recording you're going by, you've probably got it well enough).

 

It's good that you're focusing on this type of issue early on, I've heard far too many intermediate speakers pronouncing "xue" sounds as "shui", or "quan" sounds as "chuan" (and then not being corrected by the teacher, who knows what they're trying to say and wants to move on with the class).

[Jeremy Andrews]

Is this any closer? It just sounds like a distorted long E to me when I'm saying it, but when I hear it repeated back... it seems like it might be right.

Umlaut2.wma

[Demonic_Duck]

Hmm, it sounds to me like you're halfway there, but you're not making your lips narrow enough, which could be because your pinyin "u" is too close to that "oo" in "moon" sound.

 

This is 沐浴露 mùyùlù (shower gel). The first and third syllables contain the "u" sound, the middle syllable contains the "ü" sound.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1zN6yCKrn78

[Jeremy Andrews]

Thanks, Demonic Duck.

This one sounds a lot closer to me, at least it's considerably less like a long E sound. I have to fight my own lip/tongue reflexes a lot, muscle memory REALLY gets in the way of trying to make new sounds.

Umlaut3.wma

[陳德聰]

Your tongue is a bit out of position and you're not rounding your lips enough. If you give your native language, it will be easier to cater tips to you.

Step one, make a super rounded fish-lips and produce an "oo" as in "cows go mOOOOOOOOO".

Step two, stop making fish-lips and produce an "ee" as in "cows as far as the eyes can sEEEEEEEE".

Step three, while making above "ee" sound, slowly round your lips into fish-lips without moving your tongue.

 

You should be able to hear the quality of the sound changing as your lips get more rounded. You may need to tense your lips a bit to get a stronger sound.

[Demonic_Duck]

Might also help if you give a recording of your pinyin "u" sound (the "cows go moo" sound 陈德聪 mentioned).

[Lugubert]

Try finding a Scandinavian/German/French person to help you. I think we all have an ü (or, for French, the u in for example sur) that will be acceptable.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I'm German, and I'd love to help, but the only good advice that I can give that an "ü" is actually an "i", pronounced with rounded lips. But everyone above already said that. There are historical reasons why it's pronounced and spelt in this way, and if you know the reasons it's logic, but for new learners it is tricky.
 

I find learners (of German) who approach ü like it's a variation of "u" never really get there, cause coming from "u" leads to an off position of tongue and lips.

 

Maybe it will help if you forget what you see written there in the pinyin, and think of "ü" being a variation of "i"?

[Jeremy Andrews]

Your tongue is a bit out of position and you're not rounding your lips enough. If you give your native language, it will be easier to cater tips to you.

My native language is American English. I grew up in Dallas, Texas.

 

Step one, make a super rounded fish-lips and produce an "oo" as in "cows go mOOOOOOOOO".

Step two, stop making fish-lips and produce an "ee" as in "cows as far as the eyes can sEEEEEEEE".

Step three, while making above "ee" sound, slowly round your lips into fish-lips without moving your tongue.

You should be able to hear the quality of the sound changing as your lips get more rounded. You may need to tense your lips a bit to get a stronger sound.

I've been trying to do that, but it's not working out. My lips naturally round themselves when I make an "oo" sound, and they bunch up when I try to round them when making an "ee" sound. Also, it feels like my lower jaw is so narrow that my tongue can't actually fit into the position used for "ee" with my lips rounded, and thus the tongue is displaced.

Well, I guess no one can really help me, I just have to keep working and practicing and hoping I "get it" eventually. I'm grateful Mandarin doesn't have that many sounds to learn, I'm terrible at this kind of thing. There's a possibility it will take me a year to get this...

I find it so difficult to fight my mouth's reflexes and muscle memory that even when I know exactly what to do, it's almost impossible. That sloppy piece of hardware called a "tongue" in my mouth seems to get in my way all the time, and it won't work in a logical way... there are so many things I could have accomplished if I didn't have to depend on it.

[Ruben von Zwack]

No, cheer up! You are actually pretty good and not nearly as untalented as you make it sound now! You got some wonderful "ö"s there for example, so if you ever fancy learning German, Danish or Dutch...   This difficulty you have there is normal for everyone who doesn't have an "ü" in their mother tongue. It's hard to produce new sounds as an adult, and even harder when you don't have a teacher there to help you! (and even a lot of teachers aren't perfectly helpful either, it seems). So don't beat yourself up. Stress is bad for learning. Especially to produce new sounds, you need that child-like naivity and playfulness, just the opposite of pressure and of striving for success.

[tooironic]

You might find these two sound clips helpful:

 

綠 (lǜ) at forvo.com

 

玉 (yù) at forvo.com

[Jeremy Andrews]

Okay, from this point on... it will be a bit harder to refine the sound further, because now it sounds correct to me. I tried practicing pinyin "yi" and "yu" a little bit before trying this one, but here it is.

Umlaut6.wma

I'm not going to give up, though. Anything truly worth doing takes a lot of time to learn.

[Ruben von Zwack]

Perfect ü to my German ears   How did you so suddenly get it? Was it tooironic's sound links?

 

(edit: on second and closer hearing, I still hear too much ö in the third one - but I'm being very critical now)

[Jeremy Andrews]

Perfect ü to my German ears How did you so suddenly get it? Was it tooironic's sound links?

Well, it was three things. First of all, the realization that I needed to use the pinyin "yi" and "yu" sounds as the base rather than the similar English equivalents, and practiced those a bit. Secondly, you telling me that the sound I was making before was ö in German, and confirming that it really IS more like an "i" helped me figure out what I was doing somehow.

The reason I previously estimated a year was because I actually did spend a year on the Spanish "R" sound without even getting close, and because when I learned to speak at age 2, I couldn't pronounce the English "R," and needed until I was 5 to get it.

Compared to those sounds, this one was pretty easy. I found that when trying to learn new sounds, I end up making sounds that come from non-English Germanic languages along the way, long before approaching the sound in the target language. It seems that when the target sound exists in a Germanic language, I can often learn the sound in a week or a month rather than a year.

I do think I'll still need more practice to get the sound ingrained, though. Now that I've gotten it once, I want to make sure I hold onto it.

EDIT: Oh, I may have lost it again, I can't repeat that recording exactly. But I did get this:

Umlaut8.wma

Is this still right? It sounds very similar to before, my Mom thinks it's the same sound. She thinks I'm just saying it faster and I'm not used to the sound.

[Meng Lelan]

 That sloppy piece of hardware called a "tongue" in my mouth seems to get in my way all the time, and it won't work in a logical way

 

 

 

Lol that's how I feel all the time even though I've been doing this for decades. 

[Demonic_Duck]

Your #8 and #6 (where did #7 go?) sound the same to me, no need to worry.

 

It's worth mentioning that pinyin "ü" is exactly the same sound as in pinyin "yu", which could more precisely be spelt "yü" (however, the standard is to omit the umlaut). It's not half-way between "yu" and "yi". You could say "yu" is halfway between "wu" and "yi", though.

 

This may be of use:

http://talkbank.org/pinyin/Fake_Initials.php

[Jeremy Andrews]

It's worth mentioning that pinyin "ü" is exactly the same sound as in pinyin "yu", which could more precisely be spelt "yü" (however, the standard is to omit the umlaut). It's not half-way between "yu" and "yi". You could say "yu" is halfway between "wu" and "yi", though.

Actually, I was listening to "wu" and "yi," but I accidentally wrote "yu" because I got confused. Sorry! What I was going for was the lip shape of "wu," and the tongue position of "yi," and the resulting sound was supposed to be "yu."

Yeah, as far as I can tell, 8 and 6 sound like the recordings of "yu" I've been hearing. It may be as close as I can get without tons of practice, if it's not the right sound. 7 got deleted because my Mom started talking to me in the middle of that recording.

[Demonic_Duck]

I think it's certainly close enough that you'd be understood (admittedly I'm not a native speaker, though).

 

I'd suggest you try moving on to combinations of initial consonants and this sound next, i.e. lü, nü, xu, ju, qu. Then you could try slightly more complex combinations using the same sound - lüe, yuan, qun, xuan etc.

[Jeremy Andrews]

<double post, please remove>

Edited December 23, 2013 at 04:41 AM by Jeremy Andrews