Correct pronunciation of 去

[Christa]

Hi everyone

 

When I first learned Chinese, I was told that the correct pronunciation of 去 was qǜ and not qù. Now someone has told me that in actual fact the opposite is the case and that I've been pronouncing it wrong all these years..

 

So, what I want to know is, which pronunciation is correct and is there perhaps some regional variation regarding this?

 

Thanks,

 

Christina

[Lu]

Which dictionaries and other related sources have you checked already? Who told you you were in the wrong (was it someone who actually knows a lot about this, or a random first-year student)?

[mouse]

In pinyin orthography, ü is written as u after j, q, or x. That's because you can't help but pronounce it so after those initials. 

[mouse]

Here's the IPA, if that helps:

 

ju = /tɕy/

qu = /tɕʰy/

xu = /ɕy/

 

chu = /ʈʂʰu/

zhu = /ʈʂu/

[Christa]

50 minutes ago, Lu said:

Which dictionaries and other related sources have you checked already? Who told you you were in the wrong (was it someone who actually knows a lot about this, or a random first-year student)?

 

A Mainland Chinese Mandarin teacher.

 

Unfortunately, I can't read IPA.

 

So, would you say that 去 is correctly pronounced as something like the English word "chew" (qù) or like the Chinese word for green (綠) but with a "CH" rather than a "L" sound at the beginning?

[Christa]

Ah, I've worked out the route of the problem. It's a matter of pinyin conventions. This occurred in an email exchange that included some pinyin and I was told that qǜ was incorrect. I now realise that what the teacher meant was that that it was incorrect to write it this way in pinyin - although the pronunciation is in fact qǜ.

 

That's still weird though.

 

Why aren't you allowed to write qǜ, even though it's pronounced that way?

[imron]

Mouse has the correct answer.  去 is made up of the initial 'q' and the final 'ü' but when 'ü' is combined with j, q or x, the umlauts are dropped because there is no chance of ambiguity (there are no 'u' finals that follow j, q, or x, it is all 'ü's.

 

This is not the case for n and l however where you can have both u or ü finals following the initial, e.g. 努 nǔ vs 女 nǚ  and 路 lù vs 绿 lǜ so need to use the umlauts to disambiguate.

 

37 minutes ago, Christa said:

or like the Chinese word for green (綠) but with a "CH" rather than a "L" sound at the beginning?

It is like the Chinese word for green but with a 'Q' rather than an 'L' sound at the beginning. 

[Christa]

Thanks Imron, and everyone else.

 

Who came up with that convention? I thought I was going out of my mind.

 

"Surely it's pronounced 'qǜ' I though to myself - or I've been wasting my time with this language for a decade!"

 

This makes me wonder about other pinyin conventions...

[mouse]

 

35 minutes ago, Christa said:

Unfortunately, I can't read IPA.

 

You don't need to, you just need to notice the differences. In this case you can see that in IPA 觸 and 住 would both have the final /u/ and in IPA 巨, 去 and 序 would all have the final /y/. 綠 also has the final /y/.

 

1 minute ago, Christa said:

This makes me wonder about other pinyin conventions...

 

Yes, you have to be careful.

[Lu]

I'm surprised that you never learned proper pinyin. Most students start with that. It's not a bad idea to look up the rules, there are not that many. Pinyin.info is a useful site to start.

I'm pretty sure you can find a lot of information on the invention of pinyin on Google. But do come back here if that doesn't work.

[imron]

10 minutes ago, Lu said:

I'm surprised that you never learned proper pinyin

To be fair, this is not something that is always taught clearly and can be tricky to pick up when you are new to pinyin.

37 minutes ago, Christa said:

Who came up with that convention?

This guy probably.

[Christa]

16 hours ago, Lu said:

I'm surprised that you never learned proper pinyin.

 

It's just because of the way I learned Chinese. I was in an environment where I was immersed and learned to speak the language fairly well from having to do so. Then I went away and subsequently tried to study it more formally. A lot of things like going to courses where pinyin was taught then felt painfully basic. This is why my questions probably seem frequently a little strange and of various levels. I can speak Chinese but am sometimes faced with the fact that some of what I say is highly regional or I can use certain aspects of grammar but don't understand what the rule is behind them and so am confused when they sometimes don't work.

 

16 hours ago, imron said:

This guy probably.

 

Mr Youguang, you cause me despair with some of your choices...