Tones question

[EnergyReaper]

On 3/13/2022 at 8:26 AM, markhavemann said:

I will add that in Sichuan dialect here, the "ei" often does change to a "e" sound (at least I think that's what I'm hearing) and it's very obvious when it does

It's the same in my hometown dialect which is similar to 长沙 dialect, and "beijing"(北京) changes to "bejing", and "baicai"(白菜) changes to "becai".

[889]

Just playback in your mind the different ways you hear 喂. Some people you clearly hear that final i, others you don't.

[Guest realmayo]

On 3/13/2022 at 2:15 AM, EnergyReaper said:

beijing"(北京) changes to "bejing", and "baicai"(白菜) changes to "becai

bejing or bejin? ? I think this ei -> e is quite common in central China. When it comes to another diphthong, "liu", does your 六 turn to "lou" ?

[EnergyReaper]

On 3/13/2022 at 4:02 PM, realmayo said:

does your 六 turn to "lou" ?

yes, it's true.

[Guest realmayo]

Cool! How about "ui" -> "ei" as in 对 -> 得,  "dui" to "dei" ? I believe that's true of much of Sichuan and Hubei.

[OneEye]

Re: vowels and frequencies, I think you've basically figured it out in your post on formants, but I typed this up before I saw that, so I figured I'd share it anyway and maybe it'll help.

 

Sounds are very complex. There's much more to a sound than one simple frequency.

 

When you make a sound with your voice (or pluck a guitar string, or play a note on the trombone), there's a fundamental frequency (the "note" we basically hear), and there are also many higher frequencies called harmonics. The fundamental is the note our ear perceives most immediately. The other harmonics are much less readily distinguishable, but they do "shape" the sound that our ears perceive. A trained ear can pick out the most prominent harmonics, but most people usually won't notice them.

 

Changing the shape of your vocal tract—mouth, tongue, teeth, lips—will result in certain harmonics getting filtered out or emphasized. These filtered or emphasized frequencies are called "formants." 

 

For a very clear demonstration of fundamental frequency vs. harmonics (aka overtones) and how the mouth can filter or emphasize these harmonics (formants), listen to an overtone singer (aka "throat singer" or "polyphonic singer"). They've mastered techniques that bring one specific harmonic to the forefront at a time, by manipulating the shape of their mouth. It sounds to our ears like two notes are being sung at once, but that's impossible because it would require two sets of vocal folds. What's really going on from a physics standpoint is that they're singing one pitch, but emphasizing and de-emphasizing specific harmonics. This video gives an excellent demonstration and explanation.

 

When your mouth moves from an [a] (as in 阿 ā) to an (as in 一 yī) but the pitch of your voice stays the same, what's happening is that the fundamental frequency remains the same, but the harmonic frequencies that are emphasized in the sound (the formants) have changed due to the shape of your mouth. With a wide open, low vowel* like [a], the resonant frequencies that get emphasized will tend to be lower (that is, relatively closer to the fundamental frequency), while with a high vowel* like , they're higher. 

 

So when you put them together and pronounce a diphthong like 哀 āi, the pitch (that is, the fundamental frequency) stays the same, while the formants change. Our ears perceive the pitch as being level because the fundamental frequency hasn't changed, and they perceive a change in vowel quality because of the change in harmonics.

 

Even this explanation is over-simplified, but hopefully it clears some things up!

 

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* Note that "high" and "low" when talking about vowel quality doesn't actually refer to pitch, but tongue position. When you say [a], your tongue is low in your mouth, so it's a low vowel. When you say , it's high in the mouth, so it's a high vowel.

[Guest realmayo]

On 3/14/2022 at 3:27 AM, OneEye said:

so I figured I'd share it anyway

Thank you, very helpful. The throat-singing example is cool!

 

I assume that my hearing "i" as 'higher' than "e" was because of hearing F2's higher frequency for "i" than for "e".

 

Although I recently read that typical English speakers will naturally and normally lower their pitch when producing low vowel (i.e. tongue-low-in-the-mouth vowels).

 

I recorded myself imitating a fire engine by saying wee-door wee-door wee-door, and the natural, comfortable way to do this did indeed show a pitch change (blue line is pitch, F1 and F2 shown in red):

 

 

I then re-recorded myself saying making the same sounds but concentrating on keeping the pitch level and I could achieve that very easily, but it made me feel like I was speaking in Chinese, i.e. that I was making an effort to control pitch!

 

I wonder whether this natural tendency of English speakers to modify pitch depending on vowel height causes problems at the start of learning a tonal language.

 

[anonymoose]

On 3/12/2022 at 2:12 PM, realmayo said:

"i" is a higher frequency sound than "e"

 

What is the basis for saying that 'i' has a higher frequency than 'e'? In the sound clip that you posted, the 'i' sound sounds a semi-tone lower than the 'e' sound.

[Guest realmayo]

On 3/16/2022 at 11:21 PM, anonymoose said:

What is the basis

None. Or rather, I thought it was higher, I heard it as higher, because I was confusing F2 with fundamental frequency (and I simplistically assumed that if waves travel through a narrower gap, they will emerge at a higher frequency).

F2 is indeed clearly higher, but not fundamental frequency (although in practise it perhaps often can be for native English speakers) as I wrote in the post immediately prior to yours.

 

On 3/16/2022 at 11:21 PM, anonymoose said:

In the sound clip that you posted, the 'i' sound sounds a semi-tone lower than the 'e' sound.

 

Interestingly, the software says they are at pretty much identical pitches:

 

[Guest realmayo]

Quote

10.6.6. Tone and vowel height
It is well known that high vowels are inherently higher in pitch than low vowels.

- The Phonology of Standard Chinese, San Duanmu

 

Argh! Is he wrong??

[alantin]

@EnergyReaper
On the topic of diphthong, I'm really curious about what DO you hear when someone says "ei" in Chinese?

As I understand, diphthong is a sound of one vowel turning to another in the same syllable and those previous videos I could hear that extremely clearly.

What you said suggests, you hear one of them but not the other. Which one do you hear?