"in" Versus "ing" Sound

[valikor]

I'm trying to improve my pronunciation at the moment, and realized that I sometimes cannot differentiate between "in" and "ing" sounds. For example, 拼 and 乒 .

I listened to the recordings on nciku about a dozen times. They sound identical to my ear.

http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E6%8B%BC/1311438

http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E4%B9%92/1311483

I asked two native speakers. One of them said that 乒 is drawn out slightly longer. The second person said they are 差不多。

Not sure what to make of this. Does anyone else have trouble differentiating the two? What about the nciku recordings? Or in general?

How can I improve this?

Thanks!

David

[anonymoose]

I can hear the difference on the nciku recordings, although admittedly the sound quality is not particularly good and the difference is not very clear. I don't know what your native language is, but if you can hear the difference between -in and -ing in English, then you should be able to hear the difference in Chinese as it's not vastly different.

Having said that, you should also be aware that many Chinese people do not distinguish these sounds, particularly in the Shanghai region (and possibly others), as a result of dialectal influences. I would guess that's the reason the native speaker you asked said they were the same. In fact, Shanghainese people often mix up -n and -ng when writing pinyin, and in some character input systems, -n and -ng are not differentiated for this reason.

[skylee]

I had the same problem when I was in university learning Putonghua. Luckily my roommate was from the Mainland (Mongolia, of all places) and spoke Mandarin as mother tongue. I asked her to repeat pin/ping to me many times until I could hear the difference. And she was very helpful.

PS - re the nciku recordings. I think the man's pronunciation is clearer.

[Don_Horhe]

Although I can hear the difference between the two finals, the recordings from nciku are absolutely horrible and sound way to similar - I almost want to say that somebody was lazy and just used the same recording for both. The one's here are a tad bit better: http://lost-theory.org/chinese/phonetics/

[renzhe]

People from Jiangsu often merge the two, and it also goes for some other regions.

In the north, the difference is very apparent, -ing sounds a bit like -ieng.

[Shi Tong]

Hello.. I was just going to say the same as Don_ Horne.. sound like they've used the same recording for both.

Yes, basically the difference is the same as in English- you said "pin" without a G sound or glottlestopped g at the end of the word, and when you pronouce it with (ping), you pronounce it with.

It really is as simple as that, and is the same kind of diffurential as the English versions. That said, a lot of regions do not really always differenciate between them clearly enough- another one to add to this list is Taiwan, where a lot of people drop the -g. You can also add England to that too, since some English do this with their English- miss the -g. It's simply lazy.. but people will not misunderstand you.

If your mother tongue doesn't include the two finals (-n and -ng) then it's harder to learn.

Good luck!

[Hofmann]

I had the same problem when I was in university learning Putonghua. Luckily my roommate was from the Mainland (Mongolia, of all places) and spoke Mandarin as mother tongue. I asked her to repeat pin/ping to me many times until I could hear the difference. And she was very helpful.

Didn't you speak Cantonese before? I would think that the vowel difference in Cantonese in what evolves to "pin" and "ping" in Mandarin is enough to differentiate them with few exceptions.

as in English- you said "pin" without a G sound or glottlestopped g at the end of the word

Not in English or Standard Mandarin. You're probably talking about velar nasal.

[Don_Horhe]

I came across another site where the recordings are even better - http://www.newconceptmandarin.com/support/Intro_Pinyin.asp#pytable

The difference between -n and -ng is clear enough to notice, but IMHO the woman on the recordings tends to over-palatalize a bit when pronouncing syllables with the -ing ending.

As to where the distinction is not made, I think that pretty much everywhere south of Shandong and Henan (not sure about Anhui and Sichuan, never met people from there) you'll hear this happen. Which, in turn, leads to hypercorrecting, especially amongst younger people, and 今天 for example ends up sounding like jīngtiān.

I've been to Yunnan and Guangxi, is it only me or people there sometimes pronounce -ng as something like -mg? I swear I've heard them say pemgyou, fashemg (no f-h mixing in Yunnan) and zomgdian for 朋友,花生 and 中甸 (the old name of 香格里拉) respectively.

[wedge]

I came across another site where the recordings are even better - http://www.newconceptmandarin.com/support/Intro_Pinyin.asp#pytable

I'm listening to some of these examples. It sounds to my Mid-Atlantic American ears like she is pronouncing "ping" like "pee-ung" and "jing" like "jee-ung". I have never heard anything like this before. Is this what you mean over-palatalize? Is this common in any region of China?

[anonymoose]

I'm listening to some of these examples. It sounds to my Mid-Atlantic American ears like she is pronouncing "ping" like "pee-ung" and "jing" like "jee-ung". I have never heard anything like this before. Is this what you mean over-palatalize? Is this common in any region of China?

She sounds like a native speaker to me, probably from the north somewhere, perhaps northeast, although I can't be sure.

Interestingly, the sound of the final seems to be influenced by the initial. If you listen to "bing", she prounounces it in the same way as "ping", whereas "ling" is quite different (and probably closer to what you were expecting).

[BertR]

Another example:

http://lost-theory.org/chinese/phonetics/sounds/jing1.wav'>http://lost-theory.org/chinese/phonetics/sounds/jing1.wav

http://lost-theory.org/chinese/phonetics/sounds/jin1.wav'>http://lost-theory.org/chinese/phonetics/sounds/jin1.wav

These examples come from: http://lost-theory.org/chinese/phonetics/

[Shi Tong]

Actually, anther thing to remember is that "in"'s and "ing"'s are pronounced differently from the beginning of the sound as well as the end (at the i- part, not just the -n or the -ng).

EX: Ping Pang, (with the Pang section sounding actually more like Pung), compare with pin pan (where pan does not exist, so scratch that sound).

Rang, Ran (Rang has a phonetic sound more like Rung and Ran sounds more like a phonetic sound of Ran).

So the hardest ones are Ping, Bing, Pin and the like, but you just have to remember that there is no g or there is a g sound at the end of the words... (not a hard pronounced g, but a silent one, like in English), and your tongue should end up between your teeth with pin, and with ping, the middle/ back part of your tongue should touch the top of your palate.

Right Hoffman? (You seem to know more than anyone else here about the terms to be used when pronouncing sounds!! )

[anonymoose]

(where pan does not exist, so scratch that sound)

What do you mean by that?

判 盘 盼 攀 畔 are a few characters pronounced pan.

[Hofmann]

Right Hoffman?

I don't know what you guys are talking about and I'm too sleepy to try and find out.

[Shi Tong]

What do you mean by that?

判 盘 盼 攀 畔 are a few characters pronounced pan.

*sigh* must have been:

Posted Yesterday, 11:34 PM

As Hoffman said-- too late and too thick at that time of night. Sorry.

(盘子) being the most obviously used -- I use it every single day of my life-- style pan2 word.

Well, Pan2 and pang2 as pronunciations differ where pan is pronounced much more phonetically linked with the way you would read this in English (pan) and pang2 is pronounced more like you would read pung2.

[renzhe]

Well, Pan2 and pang2 as pronunciations differ where pan is pronounced much more phonetically linked with the way you would read this in English (pan)

But...

盘 is not pronounced as English "pan".

But the phenomenon is obvious when comparing xian with xiang, for example.

-in and -ing are tricky in that there is absolutely no difference other than the very end.

[Hofmann]

So...I found out you guys are still talking about the difference between the finals "in" and "ing."

The difference is the nasal consonants at the end. "in" has an alveolar nasal and "ing" has a velar nasal. Yes, some people say something like [iɤŋ] for "ing," but the standard and the underlying form is [iŋ].

[Shi Tong]

盘 is not pronounced as English "pan"

Depends where you're from renzhe, I say "pan" in English almost exactly the same as I pronounce "pan2" in Chinese. Problem is that I'm from South London and I'm speaking with a Taiwan based accent.. so... probably different for you ;)

[renzhe]

I did take that into consideration (I lived in England for a number of years), and I maintain that it is still different.

Mr. Hofmann would call it near open front unrounded vowel and open front unrounded vowel

Pinyin "pan" sounds like English "pun", not "pan". If you said you were Scottish, I'd believe you, though.

[Shi Tong]

hehehe.. ;)

Yeah, granted, it's slightly different, I was just trying to give an easy example of something which is very similar.