Pronunciation of 說

[meatie]

According to dictionaries, the pronunciation of "說" is "shuo".  But I have heard (possibily incorrectly) a few native mandarin speakers dropped the "wu" sound in "shuo" and pronounced "說" as "sho".   Am I wrong?

[woshizhengde]

As a native speaker, I am sure that shuo is the correct pronunciation of 说. Are those people girls? Some girls in China now prefer not to pronounce the words exactly as they should be pronounced. Sometimes the pinyins are lightened and sound differently.

[Jennifer Chen]

Shuo is right pronunciation. But China is so big and there are so many kinds of dialects, the way they pronunce words are influenced by their dialects.

[Michaelyus]

This fairly recent paper (published 2014) explains that the labial glide deletion (i.e. deleting the /w/ sound from its position in the middle) is a feature of very non-standard "unrefined" yet local 本土 Taiwan Mandarin.

 

Generally labials (b-, p-, f-, m-)* and coronals (t-, d-, z-, c-, zh-, ch-) delete /w/ most frequently; with sibilants (s-, sh-) following, and velars (g-, k-, h-) being least likely to have /w/ glide deletion.

 

* [Note bo, po, mo, fo are all meant to be pronounced with a /w/ in the middle in standard 國語. They're even transcribed that way in Zhuyin]