I can't hear the T sound in jintian, only a P sound

[Pietro Pedrini]

I started learning mandarin this week, and so far I've been using the PopUp chinese podcasts to study, and in this specific podcast, "A Good Scrubbing", the first word is Jintian(I don't know how to type the tone marks) and after listening to it several times I still can't hear a T sound, only a P one.

 

the podcast: http://popupchinese.com/lessons/absolute-beginners/a-good-scrubbing

[Shelley]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

 

It can be difficult to hear the different sounds sometimes, it could be the way the speaker talks or the quality of the recording or even the quality of the reproduction equipment ie the speakers/headphones, amplifier etc that you use. It is most likely though to be that fact the you have just started and you need time to tune your ear to the sounds and rhythms of the language.

 

The link you provided doesn't work. It needs to copied from the address bar in your browser and pasted to enable it to be clicked and linked. Try again and then we can listen and see where your problem might be.

 

 

Edit from here

 

Well I cut and pasted your link and couldn't find where there is an audio track using Jintian, admittedly I didn't spend too long looking.

 

Well that was weird, what a strange topic for a lesson. Never was keen on these podcasts, never liked the presenters.

 

So try and see if you can pinpoint the exact place you are having trouble and post a link to that, it might help.  

 

 

Edited August 7, 2018 at 10:46 PM by Shelley
second attempt

[BearXiong]

This sort of thing does occasionally happen. Just last week I was doing some transcription type of exercise and there was the word lao3po that came up in the audio but I couldn't hear the p sound at all, only after checking the the transcript did I realise what the word was. I then went through carefully listening to that part of the dialogue 30 or so times (Audacity is good for this), repeating lao3po everytime that part came up. Just now I tried listening to the dialogue again, and I can hear the p sound.

 

I think this is one reason why transcription exercises are great.

[Pietro Pedrini]

my problem is with the word jintian, I listened to it pronounced by other people and I still heard a P sound every time so the audio is not the problem, do you guys have any suggestion or resource to recommend that could help?

[roddy]

Is it just in this word, or a more general issue with hearing that t sound?

Does your native language have that sound? Can you pronounce it? 

[Pietro Pedrini]

well, I went through my saved words and so far I have been exposed to 2 words with a T sound, jintian and tuodi and I can hear the T sound in tuodi. My native language is portuguese and there is a T sound in it,  and I probably cant pronounce jintian properly.

[amytheorangutan]

Hi Pietro,

 

As you said that you have just started learning this week. I wasn't sure if you have looked into learning pinyin first. There are quite a lot of videos on youtube on pinyin exercises which might help with your problem. I have also used the Chinesepod pinyin chart when I started 

https://chinesepod.com/tools/pronunciation 

Even though these are exercises for pronunciation but they are the basis of Chinese sounds so it might help? 

 

[Pietro Pedrini]

thank you amy, I'll study pinyin and see if it helps

[Michaelyus]

You can hear Pinyin "d" right? I think your problem might be to do with hearing aspiration, and potentially aspiration (I'm thinking about which Portuguese accent you have) of "t" before "i" in the middle of the word.