low vs. 楼

[Little Rabbit]

Do you think those words have the same vowels?

 

Low vs. 楼。

so vs. 搜

爱 vs. I

累 vs. lay or late 

 

Thanks!

[imron]

No, for all of them.

[889]

One word, just one word: dipthong.

[陳德聰]

I find the two responses above interesting. All of the words, English and Chinese, listed contain diphthongs.

[889]

"All of the words, English and Chinese, listed contain diphthongs."

 

So? Late? I?

[陳德聰]

"All of the words, English and Chinese, listed contain diphthongs."

So? Late? I?

Perhaps you may want to refresh yourself on what a diphthong is.

[889]

Not as I pronounce them.

[michaelS]

That seems unlikely

[Demonic_Duck]

Low vs. 楼

 

Received pronunciation: very different

General American: similar

 

so vs. 搜

 

This case is identical to the one above.

 

RP: very different

GA: similar

 

爱 vs. I

 

RP: somewhat similar

GA: similar

 

累 vs. lay or late

 

RP: similar

GA: similar (however, /l/ at the start of a word is typically light in standard Mandarin and dark in GA)

 

Note: "similar" doesn't mean "identical".

[Little Rabbit]

@ Demonic_Duck

 

Can you let me know how slightly different they are between GA and Chinese. 

 

low /loʊ/   楼 /ləu/

So the diphthongs are slightly different, but I cannot hear the differences....

[Michaelyus]

 

 

楼 /ləu/

 

Eh????!???

 

As an Estuary English speaker and a southern Mandarin speaker, low vs. 楼 = very different; 爱 vs. I = rather similar [obviously there's the tone difference, but I think my /a/ in Mandarin is more fronted than my /a/ in English); 累 vs. lay = similar but distinguishable [my /e/ in English is much more open than in Mandarin).

[LinZhenPu]

If English is not your mother tongue, it may be more difficult to hear the difference between 'low' and 'lou'. Could I ask where you are from, where you are living now and what your mother tongue is? (Don't feel pressured to answer if you don't want to).

And there's the obvious problem that we can't be sure what the 'low' you are used to hearing sounds like. Could you make a recording?

 

For me, the 'ow' in 'low' is more of an 'oh' sound, while the 'ou' in 'lou' does not really have very similar sounding thing in English, at least not the variation of English that I am use to (southeast Australia). But it is partially comprised of the o sound (as in the o in 我 wo). Perhaps it is this sound that you need to train your ear to become accustomed to.

[Athena_zZ]

I would say they sound the same to someone who speaks Chinglish or Engnese lol.

But they are different. The following pairs are closer.

lay 嘞一

low 了唔

so 色唔

I 啊一

Generally I find when it comes to vowels, Chinese is closer to French.

[Little Rabbit]

I am learning American English. @linzhenpu

[歐博思]

I think they're all the same. I'm from the Midwestern U.S.

[eddyf]

They aren't exactly the same. But I also don't entirely agree with #13, if we're talking about American English. I think "low" is closer to 楼 than to 了唔 and "so" is closer to 搜 than to 色唔. Anyway, these pairs are so similar that the difference between them is comparable to the difference between regional variants of American English. (But there's probably nowhere in the US where they pronounce "low" and "so" to be exactly like the Mandarin syllables. That would be quite the coincidence.)

 

When you're learning pronunciation in a new language, you should just start with a clean slate, don't assume that any sound is identical to a language that you already know, and try to imitate what you hear as closely as possible. Trying to map sounds to a language you already know, especially vowels, is just not going to work that well.

[歐博思]

 

(But there's probably nowhere in the US where they pronounce "low" and "so" to be exactly like the Mandarin syllables. That would be quite the coincidence.)

 

I just double checked Pleco and stand by my assertion in #15 

[陳德聰]

I just double checked Pleco and stand by my assertion in #15

Yeah it's not really much of a coincidence... the US Midwest and Canada have similar accents and the diphthongs in low and so are pronounced/transcribed commonly as either [oʊ] or [ow], and Mandarin's "-ou" final is often pronounced/transcribed as [ou̯].

ou̯ and ow are effectively the same sound pairing, just with different underlying analysis.