The Inconsistencies of Pinyin (with aid)

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

I have seen various people, as well as talked with various people, who have been been able to grasp proper Mandarin pronunciation through pinyin. From what I've seen some students have "been learning it for years" but still pronounced -ui and "yan" as is spelt, and -un "as the Cantonese -eun". Seen some discussions here and there, as well as Westerners who are taking up Mandarin. As such, I have written this guide specfically for a person I've talked with, as he is beginning to learn Mandarin. This article is not meant to criticize pinyin, but rather, to help him, as well as any Mandarin beginner to learn Mandarin pronunciation more efficiently and effectively. I know I'm contradicting several things here like conventional analysis as well as saying pinyin isn't perfectly consistent on its representation of sounds, so I am expecting hate, but again, I have written this for someone I know, and I am sharing cause I hope this will be of help to beginners (or students who have been learning it for some time but are still confused on the contractions and such). It mostly deals with the representation of a sound with different letters or a letter representing several sounds, and hopes to get rid of people's confusion. That is all. I do not really hope for comments though.

 

http://tcchinese.tumblr.com/post/94802399415/list-of-inconsistencies-with-pinyin-with-aid

[Lu]

I disagree that pinyin is inconsistent. There are not that many rules, those rules are very clear, and once you've learned them, Mandarin is 100% written as it is spoken. I don't know any other language that does that, perhaps excluding Esperanto. If you want nightmarish inconsistencies, try English.

The problem, in my opinion, is not with pinyin, but with learners reading it as if it were English (or Dutch, French, whatever). It's not English, and that is a feature, not a bug. A learner needs to find a teacher (or, if that isn't possible, a pronunciation guide with lots of examples) who tells them how to correctly pronounce the various pinyin combinations.

The only problem I still have with pinyin is that I can never remember where the word boundaries are supposed to go. It's 'kànshū' but 'kàn diànyǐng' but 'kànguo shū' etc. Fortunately that's usually not a big deal; unfortunately it's never been important for me to really learn it because it's usually not a big deal.

[Yang Chuanzhang]

I do not really hope for comments though

 

A forum might not be the best place to share your post then

 

Lu, maybe you already know this website, but pinyin.info has lots of information on the orthography of pinyin, including one section on word boundaries: http://pinyin.info/readings/zyg/rules.html#x4.1

[Lu]

Yang Chuanzhang: thanks, fortunately I know that website and I keep looking up the rules every time I'm not sure (which is often these days, checking others' pinyin for a job).

[Shelley]

Interesting, word boundaries to me are one of the clearest parts of pinyin. I believe there is a "rule" for this too.

 

I learn pronunciation mostly by imitation. This does come with the problem of who you imitate may not be perfect but it is like this what ever language you learn.

 

I agree that pinyin must not be read as English or what ever the learners native language is. Once this is understood it does become clear.

 

I am not "hating" your efforts Hwong_DisKiem, I applaud your efforts, but It seems like an over complication.

 

I was some what bewildered, but this is probably my lack of understanding when it comes to phonetics and the symbols used.

[Yang Chuanzhang]

I agree that pinyin must not be read as English or what ever the learners native language is. Once this is understood it does become clear.

 

Surprisingly many people struggle with this, though. Especially people who learn Chinese as their first foreign language. I agree that it's not really a problem with pinyin, but I do think that some teachers don't stress enough the fact that pinyin shares its writing system but not its pronunciation with European languages.

[陳德聰]

I find this intriguing, because while I agree that there are inconsistencies when you apply an English syllable construction frame to pinyin instead of viewing it as initials and finals, I tend to lean more towards what Lu said in #2.

 

That being said, there are tonnes of orthographies that are simple as can be. Spanish orthography is pretty "say-it-as-you-read-it", and Japanese romaji is "say-it-exactly-as-you-read-it". Korean hangeul is pretty much on par with pinyin as far as I'm concerned... But I digress.

 

I think Glossika used to have a youtube video where he essentially showed his own pinyin system that used the e with the hat on top but it appears his channel was taken down.

[Hwong_DsiKiem]

@ first post, you know very well I am not talking about those

 

Of course, Pinyin is consistent in that nothing ever overlaps and that there is no ambiguity, but that would be just playing on words now. You know well I'm not referring to that. I will not be returning to this thread most likely as I'm expecting this.

 

As for why I'm posting it here, it's just meant to be an aid for beginners. I know contractions has its benefits (some people say that writing "-iou" is unnecessary because it takes "too many letters" when shorter clusters can get the same meaning across, but how many people who come up with Romanizations would do that? If it weren't for Wade-Giles, chances are the creator of pinyin wouldn't even keep -iu, but that's another thing. It doesn't stop students from pronouncing /jan/, /ui/, etc though, whatever you may say about its rules.)

 

Also, what are you disagreeing, when I'm merely pointing out that, to beginners, "iu", "un", etc, should be pronounced /iɤʊ/, /wən/ etc instead of /iu/, /un/, etc (just listing the abbreviations, though this word isn't accurate, as "ü" > "u" and the empty "i" aren't strictly abbreviations, and should be better termed "inconsistency")?

[OneEye]

People pronounce things incorrectly because they're not using their ears. You don't learn pronunciation through your eyes, but through your ears, and through training your tongue to accurately produce what your ears are hearing.  Pinyin is very consistent, and if you learn and use it correctly, it's an accurate guide. So people's pronunciation problems are not due to any shortcoming of pinyin. It's the learner's fault (and perhaps the teacher's) for not paying attention.

[Lu]

when I'm merely pointing out that, to beginners, "iu", "un", etc, should be pronounced /iɤʊ/, /wən/ etc instead of /iu/, /un/, etc

Beginners need to learn how to pronouce the various pinyin syllables, I completely agree with that. And I agree that it's not a bad idea to explain to them specifically how pinyin differs from English reading and which syllables they should pay special attention to because they are easy to get wrong. What I do disagree with is that this is pinyin's fault instead of the learner's.

[imron]

People are basically agreeing on the same thing.

 

Commenters: Learners have trouble failing to recognise certain aspects of pinyin that might be confusing.

OP: Learners have trouble failing to recognise certain aspects of pinyin that might be confusing and so I wrote a guide to help with that.

 

Only difference is OP blames pinyin and others blame the learners.  I generally agree with the latter, but can definitely sympathise with the former.

[li3wei1]

Pinyin was not designed for adults learning Chinese as a second language, nor was it designed specifically for speakers of English, or any other language. It was designed (at least in part) to be a bridge between Chinese and the enormous amounts of technology based on the roman alphabet.(typewriters and printing presses at the time, but it is still extremely useful today). It was also supposed to provide a standard pronunciation that could be taught in schools - to children learning it as part of their mother tongue.

 

You can hardly expect that it's somehow going to make sense to speakers of English (or any other roman alphabet-based language) without a bit of a struggle, any more than an English-speaker can expect to look at Italian for the first time and pronounce it correctly.

[Yorin]

 

I agree that it's not really a problem with pinyin, but I do think that some teachers don't stress enough the fact that pinyin shares its writing system but not its pronunciation with European languages.

 

European languages don't even share the pronounciation with each other. So this is not a problem of Pinyin vs. any European language. Everybody who can speak more than one language based on the latin alphabet should be familiar with this and not have any unrealistic expectations about what Pinyin can or can't do.

[Yang Chuanzhang]

European languages don't even share the pronounciation with each other. So this is not a problem of Pinyin vs. any European language. Everybody who can speak more than one language based on the latin alphabet should be familiar with this and not have any unrealistic expectations about what Pinyin can or can't do.

 

I agree. In my experience, it's mostly people who are learning Chinese as their first foreign language, who struggle with this.