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Is 一 pronounced as 'yi' or 'yao'?


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Posted

The most simple character in Chinese, 一, is it pronounced as 'yi' traditionally or is there a new pronunciation which I think is 'yao' if I've heard it correctly?

Is 'yao' a new pronounciation because 'yi' sounds funny if you say it too many times, like in phone numbers? Imagine pronouncing a large number like 'yi yi yi yi yi yi yi.....'?

Posted

Very briefely:

"一" has the two pronunciations.

"yao" is used when saying a number (telephone, room, bus line...) and in the other cases, "yi" is used.

And the two are both used nowadays with their specifics emplois. (as you said it, it is not very convenient to understand or prunonce "yiyiyi..." and the good understanding of numbers often have a strong importance.

Posted

I've always understood that 一 is pronounced yao in telephone numbers / number of hotels / trains / buses and so on to avoid confusion with 七

Roddy

Posted

When you talk about the incident happened on Sept 11th 2001, you say "Jiu Yi Yi", not "Jiu Yao Yao".

Posted

Just to note that yao is not used in Taiwan at all (except that someone once told me it had some sort of military connotation)

Isn't there something for 0 (ling) as well? Like 'dong' or sth? I thought I once heard this from a telephone operator in China, but I may well have imagined it!

Posted
When you talk about the incident happened on Sept 11th 2001, you say "Jiu Yi Yi", not "Jiu Yao Yao".

maybe that's HK saying, but in mainland, it's jiu yao yao,not jiu yi yi, sounds so strange.

Isn't there something for 0 (ling) as well? Like 'dong' or sth? I thought I once heard this from a telephone operator in China' date=' but I may well have imagined it![/quote']

yeah, but that's an old saying in military phone conversations.

from my experience, most of the time Yao is used in gambling. lol

yeah! we do say "yao bing3" "yao ji1(cock)" in majiang playing, but we also say "yi wan4" and "yao wan4" either, i can't find any regulations there.

Posted

For the word "One", Cantonese has just one pronounciation.

In fact, a long time ago when I first heard how Putonghua speaker labeled the youngest sibling as "Lao Yao", it sounded so funny to me.

Posted
When you talk about the incident happened on Sept 11th 2001' date=' you say "Jiu Yi Yi", not "Jiu Yao Yao".[/quote']

maybe that's HK saying, but in mainland, it's jiu yao yao,not jiu yi yi, sounds so strange.

During Sept 2001 I was attending an advance Putonghua class and one of the classmates gave a presentation on the incident. Our teacher, who had come from Beijing, told us so. Maybe she was wrong, and so I was wrong.

Posted
Just to note that yao is not used in Taiwan at all (except that someone once told me it had some sort of military connotation)

Okies guys, thx for da clarification. But in Taiwan, I'm not expected to be understood if I say 'jiu yao yao' yeh?

Posted
When you talk about the incident happened on Sept 11th 2001' date=' you say "Jiu Yi Yi"' date=' not "Jiu Yao Yao".[/quote'']

maybe that's HK saying, but in mainland, it's jiu yao yao,not jiu yi yi, sounds so strange.

During Sept 2001 I was attending an advance Putonghua class and one of the classmates gave a presentation on the incident. Our teacher, who had come from Beijing, told us so. Maybe she was wrong, and so I was wrong.

hehe, i'm sorry for my direct post, :) but i didnt mean to offense you and all the pals here, about your teacher, my guess is, perhaps she has not living in china for a time... that's all right! it's a new event and a new saying after all... just like i even couldnt completely understand malaysia's chinese newspaper, it happens. lol

Posted
Cometrue I may be old but I am not military!

i'm sorry smithsgj, but i dont mean that, i m sure u learned this saying from some movies or books, or it's common pronunciation in taiwan, but i just wanna tell the truth in mainland, or in north mainland, that's all, take it easy, buddy!

Okies guys, thx for da clarification. But in Taiwan, I'm not expected to be understood if I say 'jiu yao yao' yeh?

hey! take it easy!

Posted

Cometrue I know you don't mean that. I was just teasing and I'm not offended at all.

But I don't understand why you tell Amdir_F to take it easy. All he did was ask a question! To which the answer is: the Taiwanese won't have a clue what you're talking about. Yao is not used (except in gambling and military phone calls maybe).

You know that counting thing on the maths thread? Well, in China, if you're counting and you don't want to say "er-shi-yi", do you say "er-yi" or "er-yao"? Just curious.

Anyway cometrue what's the old word for 0 (dong)? Do you know what character it is?

Posted

just to avoid confusion when saying numbers/digits with a lot of 'ones'. like 911171111, if yi is used then the listen might get confused, its like yi~~~ all the way. so when multiple 'ones' are read/spoken, and used as digits, its probably yao. but a single 'one', and used for counting, its usually yi.

Posted

911 must be jiu yao yao. Don't believe it? Pay attention to the cctv news emcee's pronunciation.

yi or yao? It's a custom. Most of the time it's pronounced 'yi'. I only say yao when counting numbers one by one, say telling others phone number or address. 911 also applies this rule :)

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