無印 Muji

[skylee]

Muji is a famous "brandless" Japanese brand. The brandname in Kanji/ Chinese characters is 無印良品 aka 無印.

 

I walked past a Muji today, and couldn't help wondering how people pronounce 無印 in Mandarin. I have read (here or elsewhere I can't remember) that some people pronounce the pinyin "wu" and "yin" without the "w" and "y".  Some say that those are the correct pronunciations.  And I have heard such pronunciations in songs.  And my impression, which may be wrong, is that this is how they are pronounced in Taiwan, though I have heard such pronunciations in songs of Mainland singers (like Wang Fei).

 

I learnt to speak Mandarin in University and then in training classes at work.  All the teachers I had were from the Mainland, and none of them pronounced them without the "w" and "y" as far as I can remember, unless I had bad ears.

 

So I guess my questions are -

 

a. Do you drop the "w" and "y"?

b. Do the people around you drop the "w" and "y"?

c. Is dropping the "w" and "y" a standard (in either Taiwan or Mainland)?  Or is it a regional thing (like perhaps in Taiwan)? 

d. Does how people pronounce these two syllables have to do with the design of their pronunciation tools (zhuyin fuhao vs hanyu pinyin)? Or the position of the syllables?

 

To clarify, I would pronounce 無印 as "wu yin" (w as in wool and y as in yarn), and I wonder if there are people who pronounce it "oo in".

 

I hope these are not stupid questions.

[prateeksha]

Skylee, I am not a native speaker, but when I tried speaking 无印, it most definitely sounds like "oo in".

[davoosh]

I think "wu, yi, yu" are generally pronounced as pure vowels (u, i, ü) without the glide element (without the 'w' or 'y') at least on the Mainland.

 

'Yin' and 'ying' are also usually pronounced without the 'y'.

 

(I actually think pronouncing the w/y in these cases would sound 'less standard'.)

[lintsaihai]

Correct is ㄨˊㄧㄣˋ

[陳德聰]

I was under the impression that if the pinyin is "wu", "yi" or "yu" that these are just the ways of avoiding writing what the actual sounds are, i.e. [ i ] [ u ] [ y ] meaning I agree with #3 but from my knowledge this only happens as an initial. Intervocalically or word-medially the presence of the glide is probably common (though varied).

Edit: So that would mean when I pronunce it quickly it sounds closer to "oo yin".

I think that it's important not to use "w" as in "wool" or "y" as in "yarn", since we have no idea of knowing how you pronounce those two words either. If I pronounce wool and yarn, they both have very very very clear glides. "Wu" and "yi" do not.

 

Though one issue comes up when you see "ying" since some people seem to have acquired these sounds as a combination of "yi"+"eng" rather than as just "ing", which I would then expect to hear more of a glide in the transition from to "schwa" (yes I know it's not a schwa but I don't have an ipa font on my work computer).

[Guest realmayo]

Interesting. So, 他们武汉人 you wouldn't have the 武 with any 'w' at all?

If it was: 他是武汉人 then it's hard not to pronounce something like a 'w' because you're moving from the vowel of 是.

 

To be honest, in both cases I expect to hear a 'w'. If you ask where someone's from and he just says 武汉, I hear something of a 'w'. That could be my poor listening or a result of where I've heard most of my Chinese.

 

I'm not saying it's as strong as w in wool, sure, but I definitely hear something.

 

Actually, this topic has plenty of discussion: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/36998-pinyin-pronunciation-and-potential-problems/page-3

 

... where renzhe tells us that:

Y and W are glides which are pronounced by some native speakers, but not by others. They are completely optional, and completely correct either way.

creamyhorror says:

This is not related to whether you pronounce a 'w' at the front or not. A "throaty" 'u' is correct in all cases. skylee and I were just saying that a 'w' shape can certainly be formed in front of the 'u'.

and lots more 'w' goodness.

 

On a side note, the 無印 store on Oxford Street in London sells felt-tip pens with the 'tip' like a small calligraphy brush, which are devastatingly cool to write with and have probably been old news everywhere for years but it was the first time I'd seen something like that and I really enjoy writing with mine.

[anonymoose]

Being from the UK, and often having to answer the question of where I'm from, I paid particular attention to the pronunciation of 英 from early on. Even though theory says that the y sound is not pronounced in yīng, if one listens carefully to native speakers, there is definitely a light y. I'm not great in phonetics, and cannot say whether this is a distinct sound or whether it is just a byproduct of mouth posiition for the pronunciation of ing, but when I hear 英, it would be somewhere between ing and a full-on English ying.

 

As for 无, I would pronounce it without a distinct w sound. As for 印, the same would apply as for 英 as described above.

 

But then I'm not a native speaker of Chinese.

[msittig]

I feel like a native speaker with good knowledge of pinyin as it's taught formally would be able to give good input here. Watching my daughter learn pinyin in primary 1 this year has been a nice refresher on the Chinese phonemes, initials, finals, houbiyin, etc; and I suspect those would all be relevant to this question.

 

For example, a footnote on Wikipedia's "pinyin" entry says:

 

> the letters w and y are not included in the table of initials in the official pinyin system. They are an orthographic convention for the medials i, u and ü when no initial is present. When i, u or ü are finals and no initial is present, they are spelled yi, wu, and yu, respectively.

 

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

[gato]

I agree with msittig and Wikipedia

[Guest realmayo]

I agree with renzhe!

 

Questions of prescriptivism versus descriptivism aside, do you agree with Wikipedia when on the same page it says:

 

... y and w are added to fully vocalic i, u, and ü when these occur without an initial consonant, so that they are written yi, wu, and yu. Some Mandarin speakers do pronounce a [j] or [w] sound at the beginning of such words—that is, yi or [ji], wu or [wu], yu [y] or [ɥy],—so this is an intuitive convention.

 

Anonymoose, it's funny, I'm from the UK to so 英国 was my go-to 'how do I say ying' word and I don't think I make a 'y' for that, and I can only remember native speakers doing so for emphasis (which involved drawing out the sound before the 'ng' part of 'ying' kicks in), but I certainly do a bit of a 'y' for 雨。

[陳德聰]

This is an interesting topic to me. When English speakers claim that they do a slight "y" before the "ing" in 英国, I'm not sure if they are aware of what their mouths are actually doing. If you pronounced it according to what the typical English speaker would do with vowel initials, I would expect to hear a glottal stop before the ing, i.e. [ʔiŋ] or what I postulated above as [iəŋ], or something closer to [iʲŋ] etc.

Either way, when pronouncing 英国 by itself, I personally have a glide sound between the initial vowel and the "ng", but there is definitely not a glide before the [ i ].

Edit: I uploaded a file of me trying to imitate [ʔiŋ] [jiŋ] and [iəŋ], but I've had a bit to drink so it's a bit silly sounding. Either way, I think that what people here as a "y" sound... phonetically doesn't really count as a "y" sound and is just the transition you hear between an vowel and another sound.

iŋ jiŋ iəŋ.mp3

[Guest realmayo]

I guess it's not surprising that pinyin isn't a good enough guide here. Seems that the phonology books can't decide. Some say high vowels [i u y] as initials end up starting with [j w ɥ].

 

A third thread on these forums, here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/36874-pronounciation-of-pinyin-yu/, has this:

 

I initially thought that the "y" was not pronounced but then I listened to a few newscasts and heard the "y".

 

It's a glide which happens naturally with some speakers when they start a word with a vowel. You will hear it with some speakers, and not with others, or they might use it in different circumstances.

 

This is called G-spreading (G as in glide, as Renzhe says) and means that the glide spreads to the onset (the first slot),which is empty in this case. As far as I know, ti's not settled wether or not this should happen for all syllables in Chinese or. Duanmu (2007) says that "on possibility is that every syllable has an onset, so that a high vowel [such as the one you ask about] is always preceeded by G [glide]. For example [in] is in fact [∅in], which has an empty onset ∅, and it becomes [jin] under G-spreading." He also says that another possibility is that this isn't the case and that [jin] isn't required at all.

 

Also, try saying "can you see east?" and "can you see yeast?": if context has already been established, I think yeast/east are pronounced near-identical, if not identical, in normal speech.

 

Just a question though, for the people who don't go for any glide, would you really pronounce 武汉, said on it's own, as oo-han? 陳德聰?

[renzhe]

Wiki is right in that there is no "y" or "w" initial. "ying" is "-ing" without an initial, and the "y" is a writing convention to make the resulting spellings easier to parse.

I hate playing a hobby linguist, but these are simply "glides", something which naturally occurs in speech (in most languages!) because the consonant "y" and the vowel "i" are so closely related. Like realmayo noted, it is probably more common in the middle of an utterance, when you are making a transition from some other phoneme, and a glottal stop would sound awkward. It's not an "either-or" thing, everybody will pronounce these glides in some situation, I guess the difference is when and where.

Latin did not have a letter for "j" or "y", it used "i" for both the vowel and the consonant. Similarly, it used the consonant "v" for both "v" and "u". Julius Caesar was "Ivlivs Caesar". It was too close for them to bother distinguishing

[Guest realmayo]

Still struggling to imagine someone saying 武汉 or 无法 from a standing start without any 'w': you would have to round your lips and then start making the 'u' sound. If you start producing the sound as the lips are rounding, I don't think you can not make some kind of 'w'.

 

Further to my post about 英, perhaps the fact that I don't hear myself making any 'y' is because I'm pronouncing the 'i' in a lazy way, without stretching my lips flat. Like with 'w', although a stretching rather than a rounding, it's that lip movement which seems to cause the gliding sound. Does that sound right?

 

Edit: actually, I think what I wrote is wrong, without the throat changing too, as:

 

Its manner of articulation is approximant, which means it is produced by narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation, but not enough to produce a turbulent airstream.

[Demonic_Duck]

I think my own pronunciation, which I try to base as closely as I can on people I meet and talk to (I live in Beijing), would be with a very light, barely-noticeable "w" and "y" sound. Possibly heavier on the "y" than the "w".

 

It would sound a little bit weird to me if the "w" and "y" were pronounced fully, as in English.

[imron]

Bear in mind as well that thrown in to all of this you'll have regional variation, so some places will be more w and y, and other places will be more u and i.

[tooironic]

In Standard Mandarin, wúyìn is neither pronounced as "oo in", nor "woo yin", it's somewhere in between. There is no strong emphasis on the beginning of the word (the consonant), but the sound is still there, albeit faintly. As always though, there are many regional variations.

[陳德聰]

@realmayo,

 

I just tried saying 武汉 several times... I have no initial glide... In fact I find it physically difficult to produce one before the vowel u in isolation.

I think that this "oo" business is really not an effective way to describe the sound. The u vowel in Mandarin is always produced with a much greater amount of lip rounding than that of English, which is likely where English speakers are getting this idea of a "w" being present, since the place of articulation of a w is labio-velar (lips + velum). Mandarin u is a high back rounded vowel (pronounced with the body of the tongue approaching the velum and lips simultaneously rounding). The same can be said for [ i ] vs. [j] ("y").

I was under the impression that Mandarin was a language without underlying glides, and that any glides arise as results of phonological context rather than being in the lexicon... If you are saying 我没去过武汉, then I would not be surprised if you had a glide before the u in 武汉, but this would be because of the phonological context. If you said 武汉，我不怎么想去, I would be surprised to hear a pronounced [w], and would consider it part of a non-standard accent. In both cases, I personally have little if any glide in either case, and have been scouring Praat to find it.

I already explained above why "ying" gets a glide for some speakers, but again it boils down to phonology. These words are not pronounced in isolation with glides.

[Guest realmayo]

Thanks 陳德聰, clearly it's different for different people. Several people have a slight 'w' or 'y', you and others don't (in isolation).

I quite like the San Duanmu theory of an onset-glide but clearly don't have anywhere near enough knowledge to take a proper opinion about whether he's right or wrong. 

I do think it's worth considering the "narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation" which for me is present in these cases & which wikipedia would diagnose as consistent with a semi-vowel.

 

Anyway, all interesting stuff and something to listen out for in future.

[陳德聰]

Just to clarify, I was saying that Mandarin /u/ and [w] are pronounced with the same place of articulation (both with narrowing of the vocal tract), but English /u/ and [w] don't have the same amount of lip rounding (English has less).

* / / denoting a phoneme
** [ ] being the IPA representation of an actual sound