In which cases is Hanyu Pinyin not phonetic?

[stapler]

For example, “o” will have different sounds:

• In 我, “o” sounds more like “au” in “Australia”.
• In 周末, “o” in “末” sounds more like “o” in “okay”.

It's funny that you mention these examples given that in my own English, neither the "au" in Australia nor the "o" in "okay" sound anything like the pinyin 'o' in 我 or 末!

 

The take away lesson? I don't think any writing system is going to capture differences in vowels across a spectrum of a language - which is definitely the case with English, and somewhat the case with pinyin.

[imron]

And what about those Mandarin accents (e.g. parts of the north) that pronounce 'w' more like a 'v' when it is the start of the syllable (e.g. wo sounds a bit like vo).  You definitely don't have duo or bo then sounding like dvo and bvo.

 

Even more interestingly, where I used to live in Hebei, the local accent would produce the 'o' final in bo similarly to 'e' final in 'te'.

 

剥 was one of those words I learnt in context from speaking (when peeling fruit to be exact) and I remember spending ages trying to find the character before realising that 'be' doesn't exist and I should have been looking under 'bo'.

[jh17710]

10/27/15 by Demonic_Duck: I'd say zhuyin fuhao is roughly as phonetic as pinyin (i.e. mostly phonetic, but not entirely).

A good example of non-phoneticity is ㄩㄥ (yong). [end quote]

I think both of zhuyin fuhao and pinyin are well-defined phonetic symbols but for some characters the standard spellings provided by most dictionaries are wrong. Fortunately, the mistake you mentioned about was corrected by pinyin but the mistakes related to the "yan" and "yuan" were carried on by pinyin. The actual pronunciations for "yan" and "yuan" should be "yen" and "yuen" but both of zhuyin fuhao and pinyin made mistakes in all dictionaries. Since dictionaries always require update, the editors can just correct them in their new editions, so that I think the mistake you mentioned about does not make zhuyin fuhao not phonetic.

[jh17710]

10/27/15 by BanZhiYun: About finals' categorisation, 按韵母的结构特点（韵头，韵腹，韵尾）和发音情况，一般把韵母分为三类：单韵母，复韵母，鼻韵母。In 剥夺, 剥 (bo) is composed only of 韵腹 (o), while 夺 (duo) is composed of 韵头(u) and 韵腹 (o)，therefore their sound is definitely not the same. But 夺 (duo, -uo, is still a final) it's just that it's 结构 is different from 剥's 结构。剥 (bo) is basically 单韵母, 夺 (duo) is a 复韵母。 Then about rhyming in Chinese, it's not only about it's finals, but also about the tones and it's very different with Ancient Chinese and Modern Chinese. Their pronunciations are completely different. Mandarin doesn't include the 入声, so reading 古代诗歌 in Mandarin, often doesn't rhyme, even if it's the same final. [end quote]

What pinyin should do when it started was to change the "initials" and "finals" adopted by zhuyin fuhoa to "vowels", "consonants" and "semi-vowels". That would make pinyin matching the common way in phonetics. I mean, the "an" and "ang" are totally redundant and it actually caused the mistakes of "yan" and "yuan" with a wrong vowel.

Another related problem is the "ai, ei, ao and ou". All the four vowels are single vowels, not diphthong nor gliding neither. The correct way to pronounce the four vowels in Chinese are to pronounce the single vowel right in between the listed two vowels, respectively. You may try it for yourself.

Like you said, language changes, my opinions listed above are based on the current situation as I see it.

[jh17710]

10/29/15 by Roddy: This is very interesting and I am now starting to doubt myself. Also found this, but don't have time to read it properly.

http://m.doc88.com/p...5510991805.html

So Realmayo, if you listen to that link I posted earlier, or find a few relevant pronunciations in Pleco? [end quote]

We need to find out the major reasons for the "bwo, pwo, mwo and fwo" was simplified to "bo, po, mo and fo" while the "dwo, two, now and lwo" remained the same. I will give three reasons:

1. To make the spelling of phonetic symbols shorter for "bo. po, mo and fo".

2. There is no "bou" in Chinese language at all and there is just one popular "fo" so that "bo and fo" would not cause trouble for "bou and fou". Since this simplification may cause some communication troubles for separating "po and mo" from "pou and mou", the designers of pinyin asked teachers to emphasize that the missing "w" in "bo, po, mo and fo" should be reminded to their students and be pronounced with "w". (However, in the real world there are quite many people taking the advantage of "bo" and pronounce it without "w" and people do have some trouble to separate "po" and "pou" now. To me, this is the un-avoidable side effect of this simplification. What do you think?)

3. Why didn't they simplify the "dwo, two, now and lwo"? Because there is no "do, to and no" in Chinese pronunciation and there is only one popular "lo" which can be pronounced as "lwo".

looks like Pleco is following the old regulation and adopting "bwo, pwo, mwo and fwo" in their samples. To me, people should mark "po and mo" as "pwo and mwo" so that in the future the pronunciation for "pou and mou" can be separated from "po and mo" clearly; but, just let "bo and fo" keep their formats so that the Chinese language can keep its history as is. The fact of "how popular a particular pronunciation is as of today" is not easy to tell, but, "bo dwo" is happening pretty frequently in the real world and "bo mo" in 塑料薄膜 is in the website of Pleco, which is promoting "bwo mwo". What is your comment to my suggestion?

[Lu]

This is not relevant to the discussion but I hope it is helpful.

 

There is no quote button, but you can quote like this:

[ quote ] here goes the text you want to quote [ / quote ]

Just take out the spaces.

[yvesc]

@roddy

 

 

This is very interesting and I am now starting to doubt myself.

 

 

Don't .  

I sometimes hear [bo] with very little or no glide; quite different from the distinct glide, [buo] (common).

In the same way, you can hear [yuan] with a more distinct a, different from [yuen] (common).

It seems that's more from speakers from the North.

Might be that their pronunciation has remained more near what the standard was taken to be at the time pinyin was elaborated. 

 

 

 

[yvesc]

@Olle

I don't think this is the same situation, though. [ɤː] isn't any of of the sounds we are talking about here.

 

possibly this is exactly what we are talking about. pinyin /o/ unrounded after a non-labialized consonant, realized as [ɤː]

[Friday]

The take away lesson? I don't think any writing system is going to capture differences in vowels across a spectrum of a language - which is definitely the case with English, and somewhat the case with pinyin.

 

But there is not really one language called English. English is different for every speaker. Chinese has perhaps an even greater range of variations, and I know you can meet people in one neighborhood who can't understand people a few blocks over, in some regions.

 

But the Chinese also have created something, which we don't have in English, called "Standard Chinese". Is "Standard Chinese"  not a planned, artificial language? I am surprised to find no mention of this in Wikipedia, so perhaps I'm misunderstanding what "Standard Chinese" is. I imagine it as something that is not actually anyone's L1. There is no variation in this, because, unlike English, "Standard Chinese" is one language. you could almost say it is as specific as "Python 3.5.0", and print all of its features in a book and say anything that varies from that is not "Standard Chinese".

[Hofmann]

More like two recent forks.

[jh17710]

Friday,

You said that '"Standard Chinese" is one language ... and anything that varies from that is not "Standard Chinese".' I think it is a clear statement for your idea about "But there is not really one language called English." I like your example for the "one language" to be as specific as "Python 3.5.0".

Now, let's follow this line of thought, the "Python 3.5.0", to compare Python with Chinese and English. First of all, Python does define all its grammar regulations for each of its morpheme and print them out whenever it is time to update while Pinyin did its last one very long time ago for the phonetic regulations of Chinese and for the English phonetic regulations there were four sets of IPA for English set up by some workers of the IPA group before the Chinese government moved away from IPA to Pinyin.

Yes, I agree that IPA is more solid and clear as a tool of learning the pronunciation of languages and Pinyin might not be a smart move, but my point is that in the first comparison we have no real result regarding "specification" due to no phonetic issue in Python and no morpheme specification for either Chinese or English. The morpheme definition is always changing in real language and the phonetic regulation is just to help the function of defined morpheme. I think you may say that there are four "Standard English" in one language called English and you may also say that varies from that four is not "Standard English".

I do believe that Chinese government should publish a "Standard Chinese Dictionary with Sample Sentences 2016" and then, a new version every five or ten years. At that time, Chinese will be more like Python.

[Michaelyus]

I think the choice of -o vs -uo is partially orthographically motivated, related to the -e/-o allophony that was picked up in post #25.

 

It is well-known that Pinyin -e functions as an allophone of -o- if you treat glides as consonant-based. Hence Zhuyin Fuhao's ㄛ, equivalent to Pinyin -o and related to 可, gave rise to ㄜ the equivalent to -e. 

 

The thing with the labials b-, p-, m- and f- was that there was never the split between -e and -uo that the other initials possessed (the one modern exception, me 么, was joined by all the other modern "mo" such as 陌 and transcribed in Wade-Giles as "mê" in Matthews' 1943 Chinese-English dictionary). Hence ㄅㄛ (bo), ㄆㄛ (po), ㄇㄛ (mo), ㄈㄛ (fo) were acceptable, whereas e.g. for ㄉ d- there had to be a distinction between ㄉㄜ (de) and ㄉㄨㄛ (duo); the extra ㄨ -u- helps to strengthen the distinction orthographically.