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[Daniel Tsui44]

6 hours ago, Apollys said:

English doesn't have tones.  To say an English syllable is pronounced with a specific Mandarin tone is nonsense.

Thanks for the information. I'll keep it in mind.

[Publius]

Yeah, tone neutralization (essentially the losing of tone) is just one type of reduced pronunciation that happens a lot in more casual/rapid speech.

 

Consider the pronunciation of the English word 'believe'. It's /bɪˈliːv/ in dictionary. But at least in AmE, there's a tendency to reduce all vowels in unstressed syllables to a schwa /ə/, thus 'believe' becoming /bəˈliːv/. And it can be reduced further, the schwa may disappear: 'I believe' -> /aɪ bli:v/.

 

Same thing here in Chinese. It's stressful to sing all the time, even for Chinese people. Corners are cut. Tones lose their distinct value. Syllables get blurred or fused.

 

You must have learned 这 has a colloquial pronunciation zhei4, which is far more common than zhe4, right? The most plausible explanation is that it's derived from 这一 where 一 not only lost its tone, it lost its identity as a separate syllable. We don't teach that pronunciation in schools but children pick it up anyway.

[lips]

For me, regardless of what the dictionary say, in AmE the correct pronunciation of the first syllable of "believe" is with a schwa /ə/.