"in" Versus "ing" Sound

[anonymoose]

Pinyin "pan" sounds like English "pun", not "pan".

I disagree. I think pinyin "pan" is a lot closer to English "pan" than "pun" (at least with a standard Southeast accent).

[renzhe]

I disagree. I think pinyin "pan" is a lot closer to English "pan" than "pun" (at least with a standard Southeast accent).

Hrm, I disregarded the different pronunciations of "pun" when I wrote that. Yet another reason not to use English for specifying pronunciation.

Would you say that the vowel in pinyin "pan" is an IPA "a" or "æ"? I certainly hear an "a".

What about "ban" or "gan" or "kan"?

[anonymoose]

I'm not really familiar with IPA, but as I said, I think the pinyin "pan" is very similar to the Southeast British "pan". As for "pun", I know that it's pronounced differently in different parts of the UK, but I don't think it would be pronounced anything like pinyin "pan" anywhere.

[renzhe]

At least the wikipedia article on pinyin shows the -an final to always be pronounced as [an] in IPA. I am treating -an separately from -ian here, which is pronounced differently.

Also important is to note that -ang is represented by [ɑŋ], so the vowel is pronounced slightly differently.

Interestingly, the IPA chart for English dialects lists [æ] as the most common pronunciation for "a" in "cat", "lad" and "bad" (which is where I would sort "pan", and which is supported by another list which lists "ban"), but it notes that the Oxford dictionary writes [a] for Received Pronunciation, which would indeed make it the same as the "a" in pinyin "pan". Apparently, there has been a shift towards [a] in the last 100 years in the UK. So there doesn't seem to be a standard even in the standard.

After some research and rethinking, I'll agree with you that "pun" is different. It is [ʌ], not [a].

Just goes to show that it's very difficult to discus this stuff online, without hearing each other...

[Don_Horhe]

Some dictionaries don't use IPA for transcription, though, the reason being that they want to use as few symbols not in the alphabet as possible.

[Shi Tong]

It's interesting about the length of the sound "a" in the middle of a word like pan/ ban/ can in British English though- they all tend to have quite a long a vowel sound, which appears, IMO, in 2nd tone in Chinese, but if in 4th tone, tends to get shortened- has anyone else noticed this?

BTW-

"a" in "cat", "lad" and "bad" (which is where I would sort "pan", and which is supported by another list which lists "ban"),

I'd say that these are all words which are pronounced with a different length of a sound- cat with short a, lad with a short a, bad with a longer a, pan and ban also with the longer.

Bad, Pan and Ban sounding more like Pan2 in Chinese (as in pan2zi).

Yes, it's hilarious talking about how we pronounce things on a forum.. someone aught to just record themselves saying these things and clear it all up.. I might have time tomorrow!! ;)

Oh, yes and pun has nothing to do with the pronunciation of pan in English- pun as in joke is an uh sound like putty, cut and mutt.

[renzhe]

Now you people are taking the mickey out of me.

Compare this:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pun (click on the sound icon)

with this:

http://www.quickmandarin.com/chinesepinyintable/ (click on pan4)

You're telling me that these have nothing to do with each other? "pun" is a bit more closed, but that's pretty damn similar. Compare to this:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pan

Yeah, that's a very Americanised version (pa-yan), and I agree that dialectal variety influences this a lot, but you get what I'm trying to say...

[Shi Tong]

Sorry renzhe, my computer just looked at me dumbfounded when I clicked on any of those samples, then when I asked it to download the plugin, it looked like this:

:blink:

Either way, here is my attachment, which shows you how I pronounce pan2zi, then pan (with southern English accent) and pun (with southern English accent).

panzipanpun.wma

[renzhe]

This is why it's very frustrating to link pronunciation to another language, given the range of dialects.

I see what you mean (though I do hear a difference between the first two), and if you could actually hear my samples, you'd know what I mean too.

Perhaps it would help to imagine the difference between English "can" and Chinese 看. There, the difference should be more apparent.

[Shi Tong]

renzhe.. yeah, I totally agree with you.

It is interesting how the English (Southern) sound for Can (which has quite a long a sound in the middle) differs so much from the Chinese Kan4- where the a in the middle is more truncated, and yet, as soon as you hit the first or second tone for kan2 or kan1 in Chinese, the a becomes elongated again.

Do you agree?

[Altair]

I believe the phonetics of English require that vowels be lengthened before voiced consonants (i.e., b, d, g, j, l, m, n, r, v, w, and y). As a result, "cat" has a vowel of short duration, and "cad" has vowel of long duration.

As for tones in Chinese, from what I have read and hear, they are characterized by four different features: initial pitches relative to the person's vocal range, pitch contours relative to each other, volume contours relative to each other, and duration relative to each other. All these are typical values that can vary somewhat according to context. 刊 is high，level, steady, medium-length. 谈 is mid, rising, increasing in volume, medium-length. 砍 is medium low, dipping/falling, soft-loud-soft, and long-/medium-length. 看书的看 is high/medium, dropping, loud-soft, short-length.

The two systems can both produce a long vowel in "kan," but it will be for different reasons.

[LiScing]

Interesting to see the English examples too:

teen - ˈtēn

tinker - ˈtiŋ-kər

tin - ˈtin

lean - ˈlēn

linguine - liŋ-ˈgwē-nē

lint - ˈlint

[Hofmann]

Awesome! So which one is ? And what does the macron mean? Actually, what are you talking about?

[LiScing]

Awesome! So which one is ? And what does the macron mean? Actually, what are you talking about?

I copied those examples from the Merriam Webster dictionary. The macron, commonly used in US dictionaries, indicates a "long" sound. For example, the pronunciation of the word "bee" in an American dictionary would be shown as bē while one using IPA would show the pronunciation as biː or bi.

Anyway for those English words there is clearly a difference in pronunciation in the first syllable of the words teen, tinker, and tin.

It seems in many regions of Asia, however, they have merged the sounds so that 鳞 and 铃, for example, have an identical sound.

[Hofmann]

I see. I have always thought they were the same length. Perhaps I will listen closely next time I talk to someone.

[Shi Tong]

I think it's hard to say since the accent varients in English (American as well as British) are rediculously far appart in some cases, making rules on vowel length vary too greatly.

For an example, recently in England, it looks as if "people" (on the BBC) have decided that the a in Castle should be short, not long, so lots of people are now switching to a short a, which sounds unnatural in a lot of cases.

Previously the Queens English would definately say that the a in castle is long.. so..

[LiScing]

I noticed Chinese has dual words to make it OK to mispronounce!

ICE CREAM

冰淇淋 bing qi lin

冰激凌 bing ji ling

VEGETABLES

蔬菜 shu cai

素菜 su cai

TO DRIP

霝 ling

淋 lin

TO DIE

死 si

逝 shi

The different versions do not always have exactly the same meaning but it sure is very close. For ice cream, the meanings are exactly the same.

Probably what happened was millions of people started mispronouncing, and over time a new word developed.