Initial "r" sound

[Andre R]

What is actually considered to be the "standard" inital r?

I mainly hear three different types of r: A slightly rolled r, which sounds a lot like the one in my native language (Portuguese); an r that sounds a lot like the American r in "run", and an r with sounds more like a romance "g", being placed much the same as zh ch sh.

 

I made a recording for a native friend exemplifying 人 with the three r sounds and, surprisingly, she said the slightly rolled initial r sounded completely native.

But two things leave me apprehensive about this; first, she's from Wenzhou, which isn't exactly known for their standard pronunciation. 

Secondly, although this rolled r is very comfortable for me and for words like 人 and 认识, I can't imagine pronouncing 热 or 日本 with this r.

 

In fact, 热 and 日本 only add to the confusion. I most often hear 热 pronounced with that very american (or brazilian portuguese, in case anyone here speaks it) r sound, while I hear 日本 pronounced with that retroflex quasi-g r sound.

 

I am still in the very early stages of learning, so I'm trying to drill my pronounciation as best as possible so I don't develop bad habits and incomprehensible pronounciation (as I did in English), but this initial r is proving quite the challenge.

[Demonic_Duck]

Standard is halfway between that "American r" and the "romance g". The initial sounds in 热 and 日 are the same. Though I think I've occasionally heard it very slightly rolled, this is non-standard, and any more than very slightly would simply be incorrect.

 

There is also a further variation you didn't mention, which is when it sounds like /z/ (I heard this a few times in Hangzhou, I guess it's a characteristic of certain Southern regions).

[renzhe]

Each standard will allow for a certain amount of leeway.

European Portuguese "r", as pronounced in e.g. "tiro" comes very close to it, much closer than "American r" or the "g in mirage". In my experience, Portuguese "r" (NOT "rr") sounds far less jarring than the other two.

To make it near-perfect, you just need to slacken it a little bit towards the "g". Roll the tongue a little bit more, and make the contact softer to get a bit of the Portuguese "j" sound, but not too much.

Of course, this stuff is impossible to describe or explain in text, and somebody is bound to disagree.

[Andre R]

I recorded myself, exemplifying with 人 again, for you guys.

Here's the link: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0vC5yZj2MpM

 

The first one is the r like in "tiro" (European Portuguese), the second r is the american style r and the third... is what happens when I tried to voice it in the same position as "sh". I don't think any of these sounds close to being correct, the last one sounding the worst to me.

This is very frustrating. My progress has come to a halt these past few days because I've come to the realization that I can't perform an essential task (pronouncing a consonant) and I can't get it no matter how hard I try

[Tamu]

Hi Andre.

 

I'm just a learner as well, not a native speaker. Here's what I thought:

 

- I agree with renzhe that European-Portuguese "r" gets you closer. In your recording, that version sounds better.

- Depending on the word, the North-American English "r" can also work. In your recording, it's probably ok in this case.

- The 3rd version sounds like "sh" to me. Maybe others hear it differently.

 

I laughed when I saw you wrote 日本. I had the same experience . You can get away with a lot of sounds for "r" and regional accents really differ (e.g., where I am, most people say "lè" for 热), but 日 is harder to cheat on and definitely the word that forced me to work on getting the standard Mandarin sound correct.

 

I'd suggest studying how retroflexes are produced, listen to recordings, practice a lot yourself. It takes a while practicing on your own at first. Then when you think you're ready, work with a native speaker to get something that sounds acceptable. When I really started focusing on improving pronunciation, I found this post by John Pasden to be a good starting point in that process.

 

Aside from the "r", though... if you're trying to say 人, then the biggest problem is that your tone is off. It's supposed to rise. It could be issues with the recording, but it sounds like all 3 versions you say are pretty low and flat with what sounds like a small rise at the end after you've finished the vowel and are on the "n". Native speakers should give you their opinion if they categorize it as 2nd tone, but to me the rise is too little, too late and might cause comprehension issues depending on the word and context. In terms of tone, your "sh" version is ironically the best, probably because you spend a lot of time concentrating on the "sh", so you start the vowel later and the upward rise in tone is louder and longer.

 

All aspects of pronunciation are important. But tones are really, really important. Getting your tones understandable really helps your pronunciation. No matter how much we hear about tones, speakers of non-tonal languages still always underestimate how important the tones are. Vowels and consonants are what we have. We're so conditioned from our own language and any foreign languages we've studied to focus on vowels and consonants that it's hard to really believe on a deep level that tones are just as important, or in a lot of cases, even more important.

 

Good luck!!

[roddy]

Hi Andre, and welcome to the site. 

 

 

I wanted to comment on this: "This is very frustrating. My progress has come to a halt these past few days because I've come to the realization that I can't perform an essential task (pronouncing a consonant) and I can't get it no matter how hard I try"

 

Obviously you want to be improving your pronunciation, but don't let a temporary block halt any other progress. Get it as good as you can in a reasonable amount of time (getting frustrated? Then you've spent enough time on it for now), plan to come back to it in a few days or weeks, and accept that steady and incremental progress on a number of different tracks simultaneously is going to be more rewarding. 

 

Stuck on 'r' - fine, set it aside and do some listening. Hit a brick wall with listening - fine, pull out a graded reader. 

 

You shouldn't just be giving up as soon as something gets difficult, but when you're throwing your hands up in the air in despair, its probably time to walk away and come back fresher another day. 

[Elizabeth_rb]

The way I was taught was the same as the way to produce 'ch', 'sh' and 'zh' in that you must curl your tongue up to the roof of your mouth, just behind your teeth and try to say something like 'rur'.  You'll find that you simply can't make a pronounced, rolled, European style 'r' this way, but you will get the 'l'-ish 'r' needed for Mandarin.  Textbooks that show mouth and tongue positions for Mandarin sounds always show these 4 with the tongue curled up.

 

If you remember to use this tongue position also for 'ch', 'sh' and 'zh', you'll find you can't possibly say 'ee' after them either, so it's quite helpful.  It takes a bit of getting used to, but it comes more naturally with practice.

 

Well, I hope it helped you, anyway.

[Demonic_Duck]

Disagree with Tamu that the tone is off, the tones of all three sound fine to me.

 

To me, the first sounds non-standard, and the second simply sounds wrong. The third sounds pretty much standard, at least to my untrained ear.

 

What Elizabeth_rb says above sounds like an accurate description of how to produce the sound in the most standard way.

[renzhe]

If it's any consolation, it took me years to get my Portuguese pronunciation roughly right, so don't get discouraged. I agree with roddy that some things take time, and you're not doing poorly at all.

My suggestion would be to contrast the Portuguese words "beira" and "beija". Notice that "r" and "j" use a similar tongue position, then try to produce a "mixture" of the two, somewhere inbetween "r" and "j".

The standard Chinese "r" is located somewhere along this continuum. The rest will come with lots of listening to native speakers. This sound does not exist in most European languages (it exists, for example in Czech: ř) so you have to develop an ear for it, and you need to practice saying it.

[Demonic_Duck]

(it exists, for example in Czech: ř)

As I understand it, though, Czech "ř" is rolled. Chinese pinyin "r" is, of course, not (with possible aforementioned caveat of certain nonstandard dialects pronouncing it with a light "tap").

 

According to Wikipedia, the standard Chinese pinyin "r" can be either /ɻ/ or /ʐ/ (I believe I've heard the former more commonly in Beijing). The latter is just like Russian "ж".

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_phonology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroflex_approximant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_sibilant

[renzhe]

As I understand it, though, Czech "ř" is rolled.

No, Czech regular "r" is rolled, whereas ř is a fricative. In fact, that description perfectly summarises how I hear pinyin "r" except pinyin "r" is voiced.

I a native speaker of Croatian, and I will cut off my hand if I ever hear anyone pronounce pinyin "r" the same way I pronounce "ž" (IPA /ʐ/). In about 15 years of learning Chinese, I have never heard "r" pronounced like that. I guess that with some speakers it might approach it, but it always sounds distinctly different to my ears. I've always found the claim that pinyin "r" was /ʐ/ confusing.

I guess it boils down to IPA also being an approximation. Perhaps we're splitting hairs, don't know.

[Michaelyus]

There's a paper available on this very topic (the extent to which Mandarin's retroflex consonants are retroflex), from someone at the Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague.

[renzhe]

Interesting that he doesn't see it as "ř" either

[Demonic_Duck]

No, Czech regular "r" is rolled, whereas ř is a fricative.

 

Sure, it's a fricative, but doesn't it also count as rolled? I always assumed "trill" was synonymous with "rolled r". But yeah, it's clearly distinct from the "normal" rolled r (Spanish, Italian, Russian etc. and I guess Czech's own "r" as well). Certainly, if you listen to the sound recording on the article you linked to, it sounds very different to Mandarin "r" (presumably because of that trill). Similarly, if you listen to the pronunciation aid sound file in the article for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%C3%ADn_Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k'>Antonín Dvořák, you'll hear that trill very distinctly.

[renzhe]

I agree that there's no rolling or trill in Mandarin "r". I was just thinking about how it is between an alveolar flap (Portuguese r) and a postalveolar fricative (Portuguese ge).

Then again, I'm not a phoneticist, just an opinionated amateur who is a bit anally retentive about pronunciation

In the end, there seems to be a vast number of different ways to write Mandarin "r", and even linguists don't really agree on it.

[MeiMay]

I really wanted to write something helpful about pronouncing the r sound in Mandarin but I had to give up... I don't know how to write about something so complicated 哈哈. All I can say is that I think the fact that Pinyin chose to use 'r' to describe the sound is really unhelpful. It seems to me like anyone who takes a mental hint from the letter 'r' is probably never going to be able to pronounce the sound right. If your first language is English, your starting point for pronouncing 人 should probably be 'zen'. Then move your tongue further back. Then relax your tongue and make it into a Mandarin sound instead of a weird English sound 哈哈哈 okay, that wasn't really helpful I don't think there is any language with the Mandarin sound 'r'. i don't know renzhe's language and i can't listen to any audio right now but i will try to look up that sound later. it will be interesting to hear how similar it is. I just know how to pronounce it but i have no idea how to describe it. It was hard to even come up with this little. I think if you try to pronounce it like any other sound in any other language it will be wrong. You just have to learn it (if that's possible after childhood).

DemonicDuck: just like Russian "ж". I know that Russian sound, I don't think that's the right idea either. If you pronounced it exactly like that it would sound weird.

elizabeth: i think that is probably a good way to get close to the right sound or find the right sound. 人吃人，是十人，日出，如此 practice?

[hedwards]

This is why I prefer to use drawings when I teach people how to pronounce words for classes. To my mind the tongue shape between the English R and the Chinese R are very different. The tip of the tongue is in about the same place, but the middle of the tongue is where the difference seems to lie.

 

I'm not really sure how well I'm doing with it, so I'm not going to draw out how I pronounce it, but the main difference seems to be in the middle of the tongue. To my ear, it seems more like an sh sound that's pronounced with tip of the tongue further back just behind the ridge there.

 

Anyways, thanks for the links, I'll have to read over those thoroughly.