pronunciation of pinyin k and g

[永鈞]

How do you distinguish the g and k sounds of pinyin? I have been learning for years and had assumed that these were some of the less alien sounds to an English speaker, but now I'm starting to think that I've been misled by the way they're romanised in Pinyin. I had assumed that pinyin g was pronounced like the sound in the english word 'good', ipa /g/, and that the k is like english 'king' ipa /k/

 

but i've just learnt that the ipa for pinyin g is in fact /k/, like the sound in english 'king' and that pinyin k is pronounced like /kʰ/ in ipa, which  I'm less familiar with. Apparently it sounds like the way k is pronounced in northern english and scottish accents such as in the final sound in the 'back'.

 

I'm also curious if this is affected by region. I live in Taiwan. As far as I can see from a quick google this particular sound is consistent between the mainland and taiwanese standards, but i have no idea how a colloquial taiwanese accent looks in ipa

 

I'm not so familiar with ipa and have only recently learned it to help with french. If someone has a better understanding of pronunciation than i do, could they please explaon it in layman terms. I have been speaking chinese for years and have been using these incorrect pronunciations. my bf and i speak nothing but chinese and he hasn't had difficulty understanding me say words like 告 or 靠 as far as i know, but this could just be because the context makes it obvious. and even if my chinese is still comprehensible i would rather sound at least a little bit less foreign than i now do haha

 

i am aware that there are similar distinctions between pinyin's 'b and p', and 'd and t' which also do not exactly match the way those sounds are in english, but i'm trying to take things one step at a time...

[Hofmann]

"King" starts with /kʰ/. /k/ is the k in "ski."

 

In general, add /s/ in front of a voiceless plosive in English to get an unaspirated version of it.

[889]

A simple way to determine whether or not you're sounding a plosive is to hold the back of your hand towards your mouth. You'll feel a strong puff of air with a plosive, but not otherwise. Compare king and ski. Or king bu king against 可以不可以.

[Publius]

IPA [g] (voiced, unaspirated) = English 'geese' = nonexistent in Chinese languages except Wu = Italian 'gloria'

IPA [gʰ] (voiced, aspirated) = nonexistent in English and Chinese but exists in languages such as Hindi

IPA [k] (voiceless, unaspirated) = English 'ski' (positional variant of 'k') = Chinese Pinyin 'gao' (distinctive) = Italian 'camera' (the default 'k' pronunciation)

IPA [kʰ] (voiceless, aspirated) = English 'key' (the default 'k' pronunciation) = Chinese Pinyin 'kao' (distinctive) = Italian 'clamore' (positional variant of 'k')

 

English speakers and Chinese speakers usually don't have trouble understanding each other because English voiced plosives happen to be unaspirated and voicless plosives happen to be aspirated by default (most English speakers aren't even aware of the existence of the unaspirated [k] sound until they start to learn, say, French).

 

When an English speaker is speaking, the Chinese listener can't really tell the difference between 'geese' and 'ski'. They are both unaspirated, so both are interpreted as Pinyin 'g' (IPA [k]). Because in Chinese, there is a two-way distinction: aspirated vs. unaspirated. Whether it's voiced or not is unimportant to understanding.

 

When a Chinese speaker try to pronounce the English 'g', what they actually produce is most likely [k] as in 'ski'. But since it's unaspirated and not preceded by 's', the English listener will automatically interpret it as voiced [g]. Because in English, [k] and [kʰ] are allophones in complementary distribution: 'k' after 's' becomes [k], otherwise just a plain [kʰ] which is aspirated. And there is no 'sg' combination in English.

 

Between English/Chinese speakers and speakers of Romance languages, the situation is quite different. In French for example, the voiceless plosives are unasiprated. French speakers can tell the difference between voiced unaspirated [g] and voiceless unaspirated [k] (which we Chinese can't) but they have great trouble with the voiceless aspirated [kʰ] (the plain English 'k'). When they try to say 靠, a Chinese listener may misunderstand it as 告. When they try to say 'coat', an English listener may misunderstand it as 'goat'.

 

[陳德聰]

It seems like OP’s main confusion is not understanding what aspirated stops are. In fact, “king” is pronounced in British and North American English varieties with a [kʰ] because all word-initial voiceless stops (/p/, /t/, /k/) are aspirated. If OP is an English speaker familiar with British English, then OP already produces the [kʰ] with no problem. If the reference to Scottish has anything to do with words like “loch” (lake), then we are talking about an entirely different sound.

 

What Publius provided is true, however I think for both your sanity and practicality’s sake, it is important to note that while pinyin ‘b’, ‘d’ and ‘g’ are phonetically voiceless in Mandarin ([p], [t], and [k]), English’s voiced unaspirated stops /b/, /d/ and /g/ can also be produced as phonetically voiceless, and as far as I know are very rarely, if ever, fully voiced.

 

So English speakers recognizing [p], [t] and [k] as /b/, /d/ and /g/ is not only because of context but also because sometimes that’s actually just how the so-called “voiced” stops are pronounced.

[永鈞]

I know essentially nothing at all about phonology, I just learned the phonetic alphabet for French pronunciation so that I could at least keep track of which sound is which, even if I can’t accurately describe the sound. 

I also have a really bad ear for these things lol

 

what publius said makes sense to me. It makes me think of when native speakers of mandarin use the sound of pinyin x for the first sound in the English word ‘she’, yet it basically sounds like they’re using the right sound because that distinction isn’t significant. The only thing here is that my ears can 100 per cent not pick up on the difference of the unaspirated /k/ and /g/ ha

[Lumbering Ox]

4 hours ago, Publius said:

When an English speaker is speaking, the Chinese listener can't really tell the difference between 'geese' and 'ski'.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I could tell the difference either. I only know Canadian English and a bit of Newfie.

[Publius]

13 hours ago, 永鈞 said:

The only thing here is that my ears can 100 per cent not pick up on the difference of the unaspirated /k/ and /g/ ha

 

10 hours ago, Lumbering Ox said:

Now that I think about it, I don't think I could tell the difference either. I only know Canadian English and a bit of Newfie.

 

That means basically we're using the same mechanism to differentiate sounds: unaspirated = g, aspirated = k. Only English 'g' is voiced while Chinese 'g' is unvoiced. But the ordinary people  don't know that. They just know 'g' is different from 'k' and that's enough. The defining feature is (the lack of) a puff of air.

 

I say just stick with your old ways, you'll be absolutely fine with Chinese.

 

But like us, you'll have some trouble with French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, etc., especially in listening. In these languages, what distinguish 'g' from 'k' is the voicing, i.e. the vibration of the vocal cord.

 

And things get crazier in Hindi. They have a full four-way distinction. Their alphabet begins with 'ka kha ga gha'. See if you can tell the difference. :-D

 

[Wippen (inactive)]

2 hours ago, Publius said:

what distinguish 'g' from 'k' is the voicing, i.e. the vibration of the vocal cord

I agree with this overall. However, Spanish, Italian and French have got a different "g"s. Consider the words

"Girona" in Spanish (and g in Malaga which is different from the English g) ; "Genova" in Italian,  "Gitanes" and "Guy" in French. The letter "g " is used to represent different sounds. 

Does your comparison still work?

[永鈞]

21 minutes ago, Tøsen said:

"Girona" in Spanish

 

This gets confusing, but I was asking about [g] as in the sound that is written with the International Phonetic Alphabet, not g as in the letter of the Roman alphabet that is used in different ways in different languages and often in different ways within one language. (That inconsistency is why it’s useful for a non linguist to have some familiarity with the IPA) 

 

so in IPA Gerona is  [xeˈɾona]

the English pronunciation of the same place name is written differently。

as you can se from my question, I’m not the best person to i traduce IPA ha ?

[Publius]

@TøsenNo, I'm only comparing the plosives, the so-called "hard g" and "hard c" in layman's terms, like Italian 'ghetto', French 'guerre', Spanish 'guitarra' vs. Italian 'che' French 'que', spanish 'que' (as you can see they use different orthographies to force a hard reading of g/c before a front vowel e/i). The "soft g" or "soft c" is a fricative/affricate, an entirely different sound and not my concern. I used 'g' 'k' to mean the sound, not the letter. K is not even in the Italian alphabet which only has 21 letters. Apologies if it lead to some misunderstanding.

[Wippen (inactive)]

@PubliusThanks for clarifying. Spanish in fact has three pronunciations of the "g". the strangest one for foreigners being the "g" in "Malaga".If a "g" occurs  between two vowels then it has that third pronunciation. It sounds nearly like a German "r". (Most foreigners probably do not even notice it)

[davoosh]

@Tøsen I don't think that's what Publius meant re 'g' having 3 pronunciations. 

 

More accurately: In Spanish orthography, <g> may represent 3 distinct sounds, represent by the IPA /g/~/ɣ/ and /x/. (<> indicates orthography, slashes // indicate IPA transcription)

 

Publius is talking about the individual phoneme /g/ though, not the orthographical letter. In Spanish /g/ has an allophone of /ɣ/ between vowels (i.e. what you call German 'r'). The /x/ ('kh') sound, although orthographically written with a <g> or <j>, isn't connected to the phoneme /g/, it just happens to share the same way of representing it in the orthography.

 

What distinguishes the phoneme /g/ from /k/ is indeed voicing.

 

I have always thought that people make it unnecessarily difficult for native English speakers when they start telling beginners that Pinyin <g> is actually IPA unaspirated /k/. I generally just pronounce Pinyin <b d g> as I do in English, and nobody has commented that it sounds too wrong or odd, and as 陳德聰 mentioned, English <b d g> are often closer to IPA plain unaspirated plosives /p t k/ i.e. near enough the same as the Chinese values.  In fact, I would wager that in Mandarin they do actually become fully voiced in some rapid speech.

 

 

 

 

[Wippen (inactive)]

1 hour ago, davoosh said:

don't think that's what Publius meant re 'g' having 3 pronunciations. 

Yes publius already clarified this 

My additional point was an amusing side remark that there were in fact three pronunciations associated with the letter in Spanish. I thought it was unusual. But interesting though it may be, not much to do with the topic under discussion.