questions about "why"

[Ferno]

"what" is 什么 (shen2 me5)

but for "why" there is: 为什么 (wei4 shen3 me5).

>>why does the tone for "shen" change from 2 to 3?

To add to the confusion there is also another entry for "why":

为甚么 (wei4 shen2 me5) which uses tone 2 for "shen", just like 什么 (shen2 me5) "what".

>>when do you use the first "why" and the second "why"?

[Jose]

I don't know where you got the wei4shen3me pronunciation from. If you've read it in a book, it is probably a typo. As far as I know, it is always wèishénme (or wèishéme in Taiwanese dictionaries).

As for the characters for shénme, it is always 什么 in simplified Chinese. In traditional Chinese, both 什麼 and 甚麼 are used.

[bhchao]

As far as I know, it is always wèishénme (or wèishéme in Taiwanese dictionaries).

That sounds odd. I have always pronounced it as wei4 shen3 me5

[Ferno]

btw, GB2312 is Simplified and Big5 is Traditional

[elina]

In Beijing, we always say: wei4 shen2 me5 / 为什么

[Lu]

As I remember I learned it as wei4shen2me5. But when said fast, it might come out as wei4shen5me5.

Maybe if you say it with more emphasis, a bit desperate, like Why, oh why?! it becomes wei4shen3me5?

[chenpv]

but for "why" there is: 为什么 (wei4 shen3 me5).

Errr. I dont think we say it that way, especially in Putonghua.

when do you use the first "why" and the second "why"?

'甚麽' is used in Classical Chinese rather than Modern Chinese, to my knowledge. I think you can find examples in <老残游记>, there are a book of '甚麽's instead of '什么's in it.

[Ferno]

As I remember I learned it as wei4shen2me5. But when said fast' date=' it might come out as wei4shen5me5.

Maybe if you say it with more emphasis, a bit desperate, like Why, oh why?! it becomes wei4shen3me5?[/quote']

ahhh?! but emphasis/emotion "tones" are not supposed to interfere with word-distinguishing tones!

[kudra]

From the Written Standard Chinese Vol 1, Huang and Stimson. (1980)

Chap 2

什 shen2 (shem2 before -ma5)

么 -ma

什么 shem2ma /what/

Chap 6

为什么 wei4shemma /why/

2 comments:

1. Tone: I rarely if ever heard whe4shem2ma.

2. consonant(n/m): I have never heard 什 pronounced shen2 (with an n) in any context that I can think of.

But I'm no authority since I can't think of a use of shen(m) besides shem2ma and wei4shemma. Although, doesn't look like the mandarintools dictionary has shen (meaning what, i.e. in the context we are talking about) except occuring with shem2ma.

Also I could be out of date, or it could be a Taiwan guo2yu3 pronounciation being referenced in the Huang and Stimson series.

One thing I noticed with some speakers who grew up in Beijing probably in the 1940's, they pronounced hen2 hao3 as heng2 hao, kind of a lazy tongue placement. These were the instructors who did some of the audio tapes for the Huang and Stimson series.

[Ferno]

I never saw that "shem" thing before but I guess it's right if you think about it, it seems like shemma in fast speech. But maybe that's just slurring, if someone was speaking slowly and clearly they wouldn't deliberatly put a "m" instead of "n" in "shen" or mush the "she-" and "me" together to create "shemme", would they?

and you're saying that "shen" in "wei4shen2me" is neutral?

yes sometimes I'm not sure about the tones like in your "heng2 hao" example. The first time they will pronounce it perfectly, but then later on it gets harder to pick up in faster speech (in the tapes) and are kind of tricking yourself into interpreting the correct tone because the Narrarator already told you it earlier. In those cases I'm not sure if my laowai ears are just untrained or if some tones are being minimized in casual speech..

[kudra]

Actually with respect to 很好, I should have said that generally they do include the tone on 好. Consider heng2hao in the previous post a typo. I meant to write heng2hao3.

What I was getting at was not the tone, but the added "g" sound in 很 when said in 很好. heng2hao3. I remember this also in 很贵, which I often heard heng3gui4. I think you get the idea. Think about where your tongue is and you'll see why I refered to it as lazy tongue. I suppose linguists have a name for this, but since I'm not one .... I better quit while I'm ahead.

[HashiriKata]

I suppose linguists have a name for this, but since I'm not one ....

I am! And the name is "sound assimilation", and "heng2hao3" is the correct pronunciation due to this. The same thing can be heard in English: "10 points" is correctly pronounced as "tem points", and only non-native speakers pronounced it as "ten points".

(This is the fact, and facts can contradict perception; so I'm not going to argue if some native speakers are going to tell me they always pronounce the above items as "hen2hao3" or "ten points". )

[nipponman]

"tem points", and only non-native speakers pronounced it as "ten points".

Maybe its the ebonics, but I never say "tem points". (Hate to be that guy) I might say, "dem points" though.