Changing Sounds in Chinese Pronunciation

[roddy]

After reading the contributions to this topic I came across a book called 普通话语音常识 for Y12.10, so I bought it to see what enlightenment it might bring us.

It's got an interesting (well, for some) chapter on changing sounds (音变). I think it goes a bit beyond what we were dicussing in the topic above, so I figured I might as well start a new one. It lists 3 situations under which sounds are not pronounced as you might expect.

1) This ones quite simple. 阿 can be pronounced ya, wa, na, etc, according to what comes before. Sometimes you'll see the character changed to reflect this.

2) -儿 coming at the end of things. Apparently this happens A) to show a warm, positive attitude to something, that you like something ( 小孩儿, 好玩儿, 慢慢儿走). B) when something is small - 小鸟儿, 一会儿) and C) to distinguish between nouns and verbs with the same pronunciation / character - (干活儿)　and D) to distinguish meaning - 一块儿　means together, 一块　means one piece. There's also a paragraph explaining when the 'r' sound chokes off the end of the previous syllable and when it doesn't - I'll skip that for now.

3) Actually this third category is 'other types' which includes

A) loss of a sound causing two syllables to become one - zanmen becomes zam, zenme becomes zem, shenme becomes shem. This might explain why I sometimes mishear 'shenme?' as 'shi ma?', though that also could be due to my poor listening skills.

B) A voiced sound at the end of one syllable makes the first sound of the next become voiced where it usually would be unvoiced. Examples given are 我的，　能够. I think you'd need to be listening very carefully to spot this.

C) I can't quite understand the explanation for this one, but the examples show guan men becoming guam men, san ge becoming sang ge, etc.

Roddy[/i]

[Guest shaning]

"C) I can't quite understand the explanation for this one, but the examples show guan men becoming guam men, san ge becoming sang ge, etc."

Well, that one is easy: n->m/m (the place of articulation for the first nasal is assimilated to the place articulation of the following nasal - thus the alveolar one becomes labial becouse the following one is labial)

n->ng/g (g's place of articulation is velar, n's place of articulation is alveolar, so when these two come together, the n's gets assimilated and changes into velar i.e. ng (so-called 'engma')).

[smithsgj]

How is 根本 pronounced, in people's experience?

[Guest Anonymous]

How is 根本 pronounced, in people's experience?

gen1ben3

[smithsgj]

Kulong, sorry if it wasn't obvious, but I was talking about altered pronunciations (see thread title).

How about genmen (b is bilabial, so assimilates to preceding nasal)? Or gemmen, even?

[skylee]

I think when "genben" is used it is usually stressed and so the pronounciation tends to be clear.

[cometrue]

even its not stressed, it still pronounces "gen(1) ben(3)"

the genmen Or gemmen will make people confused.

[webmagnets]

I came across a book called 普通话语音常识 for Y12.10, so I bought it to see what enlightenment it might bring us.

There's also a paragraph explaining when the 'r' sound chokes off the end of the previous syllable and when it doesn't - I'll skip that for now.

Can you tell me a little about when the r sound chokes of the end of the previous syllable and when it doesn't.

thank you very much.

[roddy]

Off the top of my head, it's when the syllable ends with an 'n'. For example dian+er = diar, but niao + er = niaor. I'd guess it also happens with ng, but I can't think of any ng + er words just now.

Roddy

[HashiriKata]

Off the top of my head, it's when the syllable ends with an 'n'. For example dian+er = diar, but niao + er = niaor. I'd guess it also happens with ng, but I can't think of any ng + er words just now.

The i will also dissapear: yihui + er = yihur; nuhai + er = nuhar.

NB: Even when the final sound doesn't dissapear, its quality may be modified somewhat with the addition of er.

[HashiriKata]

C) I can't quite understand the explanation for this one, but the examples show guan men becoming guam men, san ge becoming sang ge, etc.

This is sound assimilation: while we haven't finished saying the current sound, we already get our pronouncing organs in the right shape for saying the next one, so the current sound got assimilated by what follows it. Therefore, we commonly hear henghao instead of henhao, shemme instead of shenme, tem pence instead of ten pence (= 10P), etc.

[Lugubert]

cometrue:

even its not stressed, it still pronounces "gen(1) ben(3)"

the genmen Or gemmen will make people confused.

My listening experience of Chinese is close to nil, but if Chinese works like other languages I know (shenme > shemme seems to confirm this), I would rather expect "gemben".

This phenomenon is regularly used in uni phonetics exam questions, like "write spoken "(word ending in n) (word begining with b)" in IPA symbols. Almost no people who have no formal traning in phonetics believe that they say [...m b...]. But they most certainly pronounce it that way!

[meowypurr]

My listening experience of Chinese is close to nil, but if Chinese works like other languages I know (shenme > shemme seems to confirm this), I would rather expect "gemben".

I would expect this too. It's like in Japanese, where n + p becomes m + b.

[querido]

This example discussed in another thread would be a case of assimilation, then:

转一

zhuàn yī >> (sounds like) zhuài(n) yī ("n" very subtle)

Apparently, the tongue and lips are almost ready to say yī when the "n" is produced. This "n" is very faint, and is articulated at a spot farther back on the tongue, as though the tongue were in position for a j/q/x consonant.

This "n" happens a lot...

[realmayo]

Interesting one Querido. I was thinking about this the other day after reading "America is" and realising that I'd usually say "America ris", I guess that's true for most people?

[renzhe]

I think it's typical for British pronunciation. A kind of a British erhua, if you will.

[roddy]

I suspect American's will do that just as much - it's not really a feature of any particular accent, it's just what our mouths do when moving quickly from the -a to the -i.

[renzhe]

I don't know, I hear the a -> ar thing more often with British speakers.

"Idear" for "idea" is a common one.

[heifeng]

Interesting one Querido. I was thinking about this the other day after reading "America is" and realising that I'd usually say "America ris", I guess that's true for most people?

I dunno, I think an actual 'American accent' would sound more like 'MER-ka Iz':mrgreen:

-----------------

Anyway, back to the topic at hand...I've notice quite of few locals say 聪明 almost skipping the ng part almost completely

[realmayo]

wow, wikipedia has impressed me again. can you guys read it in China?

basically, renzhe said:

I don't know, I hear the a -> ar thing more often with British speakers.

"Idear" for "idea" is a common one.

wikipedia says:

English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic (pronounced /ˈroʊtɪk/) and non-rhotic

In rhotic accents of English such as General American, vocalic r occurs in words like butter and church. In rhotic accents of Mandarin Chinese such as accents in Beijing, Tianjin, most of Hebei province, Eastern Inner Mongolia and the three Northeastern provinces, vocalic r occurs as a diminutive endings to nouns (er), past tense indicative (le) as well as the middle syllables of compound words consist of 3 or more syllables, e.g. restaurant 'Gou Bu Li' in Tianjin.

The linking R occurs in most (but not all) non-rhotic dialects of English. In dialects that possess linking R, if a word that ends with /ɹ/ precedes a word that begins with a vowel, /ɹ/ will be realized at the onset of the next word. Thus, for example, the R in here would not be pronounced in here they are (because it is followed by a consonant), but it would be pronounced in here I am. Likewise, the R at the end of far would only be pronounced if the next word begins with a vowel, as in far away or far off. In other words, in a non-rhotic dialect with linking R, [ɹ] is retained only if it is followed by a vowel, including across word boundaries.

Intrusive R

Some (but not all) dialects that possess linking R also possess intrusive R. In a dialect with intrusive R, an epenthetic [ɹ] is added after a word that ends in a non-high vowel or glide if the next word begins with a vowel, regardless of whether the first word historically ended with /ɹ/ or not. For example, intrusive R would appear in Asia[ɹ] and Africa or the idea[ɹ] of it: Asia and idea did not historically end in /ɹ/, but the [ɹ] is inserted epenthetically to prevent a hiatus. Intrusive R also occurs within words before certain suffixes, such as draw[ɹ]ing or withdraw[ɹ]al. This is now so common in England that by 1997 the linguist John C. Wells considered it objectively part of Received Pronunciation, but he noted that it was still stigmatized as an incorrect pronunciation,[1] as it is or was in some other standardized non-rhotic accents.

Examples of intrusive R

* "I saw® a film today, oh boy" (The Beatles, "A Day in the Life")

* "All of a sudden I saw® a new morning" (Bee Gees, "Saw a New Morning")

* "His face is a sad sight, vodka® and snake bite. (The Streets, "The Irony of It All")

* "The law® is the law!" (Nigel Terry as King Arthur in the 1981 film Excalibur)