Pronunciation of "w" and "r"

[陳德聰]

I think you need an English refresher before you try to talk about comprehension. The reason I brought up North America is that in the UK the word course means the entire program of study, not just one class. I wanted to clarify whether or not you were coming from a position of understanding after an entire program of study in Chinese phonetics, or after having taken one class. It turns out it's after having haphazardly absorbed a little bit from one class.

What's bizarre is that you think that words like 開口呼，齊齒呼，合口呼 and 撮口呼 "works only for 普通話", as if the concepts don't fit into general phonetics... They describe groups of finals that form natural classes in Mandarin, and the classes are based on the articulatory properties of the vowels involved. Anyone who has ever had any contact with Mandarin knows what initials and finals are, so I'm not sure why you think you're testing me here. Sigh. You get that the general principles of phonetics are the same everywhere, right? We don't just study the sounds that exist in English, we study the sounds that exist in human languages all over the world. It's absurd to propose that someone who is fluent in Chinese and has a degree in linguistics cannot read a linguistics paper and match the Chinese words to the concepts they have learned already.

You didn't even read the article and you're still trying to talk about it. You wanna pick at my punctuation but you copied 零聲母 as 零聲母母? Are you just trolling at this point?

[BanZhiYun]

@陈德聪 Go study more, thanks. Look at your post, it has a mistake there. Try using 四呼 on English, on Japanese, on Korean, I would love to see that. So, "What's bizarre is that you think that words like 開口呼，齊齒呼，合口呼 and 撮口呼 "works only for 普通話", as if the concepts don't fit into general phonetics... They describe groups of finals that form natural classes in Mandarin", first 普通话 = Mandarin, second, yes, you can use that only on Mandarin, it's a specific of Chinese Phonetics. Use it in English to categorize vowels, I'd love to see that. Sigh. Absolute fail of studies. I have a typo, does that make your life fullifiled?

[陳德聰]

So you simply didn't comprehend what I said, eh? I won't take it personally since it's just a language issue.

[BanZhiYun]

What exactly didn't I comprehend, that you don't know what 四呼 is, and that you can only use it on Mandarin? (what I said. You tried to negate it, but said the same in English. Conclusion? You didn't get that 普通话 = Mandarin, or  you just try to argue with me. So, which one is it?)

[陳德聰]

Can't comprehend what you can't comprehend, alas.

[BanZhiYun]

That's talking about you, in this whole entire thread. Anyway, Linguistics is a science that you seem to not have have any grasp on. There is little to no room about "I want it to be this way, so it is!", which is the way you act. So, I feel bad for anyone who comes in contact with you and your unprofessional attitude. Adios.

[BanZhiYun]

Concepts like 四呼 can only be used on Mandarin. Go try and use it on English, as I said. You seem to negate that, because you were owned. It's a finals classification. The definition? 根据介音的有无以及介音的种类，传统的汉语音韵学将韵母分为 开口，齐齿，合口和撮口“四呼”。 Glad to see you are absolutely clueless about that, and still pretending to understand it. First of all, it says "传统的汉语音韵学", so you can only use that on Mandarin. Go use it on English, I'd love to see that. So, you can not use that on any other languages, even if you've studied Linguistics. Because it's a characteristic of Chinese phonetics. So "can't comprehend what can't comprehend" is hilarious coming from you. So delusional. Sigh, "professional worker".

[BanZhiYun]

"You get that the general principles of phonetics are the same everywhere, right?" So you're saying 四呼 is a "general principles of phonetics". Lol. Wrong. It's a characteristic of Chinese phonetics. Are you sure you are aware of your definitions?

[BanZhiYun]

"It's absurd to propose that someone who is fluent in Chinese and has a degree in linguistics cannot read a linguistics paper and match the Chinese words to the concepts they have learned already." By all of your posts, I am very sceptical you can understand Chinese academic work on Phonetics. Especially because you haven't had 严格的汉语语音训练。Despite all of your "general linguistic" education, it is, still, "general". The specifics on Chinese, you seem to be unfamiliar with. 好比说, I study Chinese phonetics and go use it's concept on my native tongue. This is absurd. As your whole attitude.

[lips]

This is getting better by the minute.  

[BanZhiYun]

Lol, sorry for that, that we're "being entertaining". ;-\ I just can't stand people coming talking to me (he tried to be condescending to me after my very first reply here, lol) and that same person lacks knowledge. That can only happen on the Internet. xD

[陳德聰]

I'm not good at compassionately engaging with imbeciles, so that might be part of the problem here.

四呼 is not a general phonetics concept, and I never said that. Which is why I suspect you can't understand English as well as you might think you do. What I did say, was that they are a language-specific extension of general concepts, the concept of natural classes, which is nothing new or special, and definitely not a concept that only exists in Chinese phonetics. I mean I guess it's really a phonology concept, so maybe that's why you're struggling? I don't know anymore, it's like you don't get that there is so much out there beyond what you've covered in your course, that apparently goes way over your head.

Even within the 合口呼, the w~v alternation is limited to preceding certain finals.

I am literally cackling at 嚴格的漢語語音訓練, like cackling. 難道你受過嚴格的漢語語音訓練？那我也真是醉了！

I am pretty surprised this has been allowed to go on for so long, especially with your inability to keep all your spasms to one post, but perhaps it will be locked soon.

[BanZhiYun]

Of course there is much more, you are just generalizing too much, pretending you know it all. When you don't know the concrete things,  you know the general ones. (Exactly the opposite of mine; I know the concrete ones, don't know the general ones, and I am well aware of that)

You can cackle. Here's what I cackled @ today. We had the phonetics class, and I told my teacher about  you. She had an amazing laugh, saying: “那个人语音懂点是懂点，但至于汉语的语音无疑是一窍不通。" She likes to talk about foreigners like you, who have close to no knowledge on Chinese phonetics. So it's good to know that professors are laughing at you, and non-entiies like you, can laugh at me any day, any time. (Just like Geiko, he's also a non-entity.)

I hope it's locked too. And I hope it's time for you to get studying. I am on my way, so don't worry about me. If you're done with studying at half of your life, then that's too bad. Gl.

[陳德聰]

有種把她郵箱給我

[Lu]

I hope it isn't locked. I will follow this thread as well for more entertainment value, and I hope keeping all this up doesn't take up too much of Chen Decong's time & energy.

[陳德聰]

Live to entertain, Lu <3

Might be obvious I have had a couple days off this week ha! I will look for some more "Chinese Phonetics" academic papers in the morning and report back haha.

I do hope I live past 50 though, I think it would be an utter waste of my sass otherwise.

[BanZhiYun]

Reading them doesn't mean you comprehand even a percent of them. If you wanted to have any value, you should write more of them. Otherwise, it is a waste of time. As I said, chinese scholars are laughing too bad at you, and you are totally delusional to that. I am not anyone to change you. At least none of my teachers are laughing at me, lol. To Lu, you know how academics proceed,if you want to make a point, you write an academic paper. If you just translate stuff, without writing any academic papers, no one would care for your work academically. So I hope you have fun with your translations.

[Lu]

To Lu, you know how academics proceed, if you want to make a point, you write an academic paper. If you just translate stuff, without writing any academic papers, no one would care for your work academically. So I hope you have fun with your translations.

My clients care about my translations, and interested people who don't read Chinese well will be happy they can learn about a Chinese academic's ideas in a language they can understand. And I certainly have fun with my translations. Even this one was enjoyable in its own horrendous difficulty.

 

And let us know where we can read your academic articles!

[陳德聰]

Just finished reading a short survey of the w/v issue published in 語文學刊 a couple years ago, which addresses both dialect and regional influence, as well as gender differences, but only vaguely talks about age and education level as a sort of given. The author basically did stats on 普通話水平測試 results and observed some key things (I'm a bit skeptical about some of the actual numbers since there appear to be some weird discrepancies, but meh the gist seems interesting):

- in a 100 person sample, only 12 people exhibited no variant pronunciation, with negligible difference between genders

- in the same sample, variant pronunciations could actually be classified into fully realized labiodental fricative [v] (25%) and the labiodental approximant [ʋ] (63%), where the [v] pronunciation is considered non-standard (author suggests it comes from dialects)

- when focusing on mother tongue and dialect/regional influence, variant pronunciation frequency for participants whose mother tongue was Beijing Mandarin 北京官話 averaged out to 76%, whereas participants whose mother tongue was Northeastern Mandarin 東北官話, Jinyu 晉語 and Standard Chinese 普通話 all had pretty much the same rates of variant pronunciation at about 45%

- the study found that variant pronunciation was more likely with certain rimes than others, following the ranking wei > wen > wai > wa > wan > wang > weng > w > wo (comparable to a previous ranking from a different study) with wei and wen reaching about 70% rate of variant pronunciation

- variant pronunciation was negatively correlated with score on the test, with 一乙 scorers exhibiting rather low rates of variant pronunciation (they had variant pronunciations for w and wo 0% of the time compared to 25-30% on the same syllables by 三乙 scorers)

- variant pronunciation was more frequent when reading aloud and conversing than in citational speech (I felt like this one was kind of a duh conclusion)

英君. PSC中合口呼零声母唇齿化现象探究[J]. 語文學刊, 2011(9) <- that's a citation, btw.

Things that weren't covered, but were alluded to, are that the variant pronunciation is actually part of an ongoing language change and that presumably the new people entering the pool of speakers will increasingly use the variant.

PS. I'm still waiting on your prof's email address though, or just her name so I can check her out since I am petty.

[BanZhiYun]

@陈德聪 Oh, that sounds interesting, I should check it out. I haven't  gone that back reading all their articles. Thanks for sharing. Then about my teacher, you can look @ 北大中文系 and find her out by yourself. She's there and has a full on contact info.