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correct pronounciation - beginners question
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j_spencer -

This is my first time trying to speak Chinese and I just want to make sure I have the correct
pronunciation technique. I am basing this on one of my Chinese books, which tells me how to
pronounce vowels and consonants.

This is a conversation; I’ll have a line in pinyin Chinese, and underneath, spelled out how it
sounds as if you were speaking it (in other words the pronunciation). Note - I’m ignoring tones
for this exercise:

Ni shi jones xiansheng ma?

Pronounced: Nee shee jones xyenshun ma?

Shi de. Wo Shi David Jones.

Pronounced: Shee dir. Wour shee David Jones.

Ni hao, Jones, xianshen. Wo shi wang lin. Hen Gaoxing jiandao ni.

Pronounced: Nee how, Jones, xyenshun wour shee wang lin. Hen gowxing jyendow nee.

Qing jiao wo lao wang

Pronounced: Qing jeow wour low won

Hao de, Lao wang. Jiao wo David ba

Pronounced: How dir, low won, jeow wour David ba

Huanying ni lai zhongguo, David

Pronounced: Hwanying nee lai jonggwar, David

Is this about right?

Is the structure for getting the right pronunciation as follows: you look for the longest letter
combination in the pronunciations list (pictured below), and work your way from the longest to the
shortest letter combination until you find the one that fits in with the letters in your word?
Maybe I’m not being clear, let me give you an example.

In the word zhongguo. First off, zh together form a sound (j like in jade) so you don’t need to
look at both letters individually. Then refer to the vowels list, there is iong (pronounced young)
but the I is missing from that combination in the word, so you therefore look for the next longest
with this combination, which is ong. The next part of the word is guo. There is no combination for
guo, but there is for uo. So you pronounce the g on its own, and then give the pronunciation for
uo (war). Hence, the pronunciation of zhongguo is jonggwar. Is this right? I hope it makes sense!

By the way, is it true that you don’t typically refer to or of someone by their first name only?
Rather by lao zhang, xiao li, or first name as well as second name?

Thanks a lot!

Jamie.





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lokki -

Relying on written explanations like that for pronunciation in this day and age makes no sense at
all. Get some audio material to practice with instead.

Chinese has a number of sounds not present in English so it is simply not possible to get it right
like that. The pronunciations given are just very rough approximations.

And you cannot ignore the tones, they are crucial to the meaning of words and just as much a part
of pronunciation as getting the consonants or vowels right. "Ignoring tones" is a bit like
"ignoring" the vowels in English by pronouncing all of them as "i". It might bi pissibli ti
indirstind simi pirts if whit yi iri siying bit dint bit in it.










kdavid -

I'm quite sure you've got a bad copy of pronunciation here.

shi4 (to be) should not be pronounced 'shee'. This is absolutely incorrect. It would be more like
a "shir".

I agree with the above poster. Pronunciation and tones mean everything in this language. Get some
good audio materials and join a language exchange on Skype or somewhere else.










OneEye -

Wow.

Here and here. Study at least the pronunciation and romanization tapes and PDF at the first site,
more if you like the method. You'll have to register at the second site (it's free), but the China
Panorama videos are great. You will have to buy the textbooks, and not all of the videos are
uploaded yet, but they're adding more stuff regularly. If you'd rather not wait, you can purchase
the VCDs on Ebay and many other sites. I recommend going this way if possible. Anything is better
than learning pronunciation without actually hearing it pronounced.










imron -

Agree with lokki. You're going about this completely the wrong way. If you want to get good
Chinese pronunciation, you simply cannot think of it in terms of English sounds. Get some audio
materials and practice with them until you can look at the pinyin and recognise/create the correct
sound without needing to transform it into your own pronunciation system. There are plenty
resources on the web, including pinyin tables such as this one, and also various websites that
offer tone drills, pronunciation drills etc, that will help you with this.

Regarding how the sounds are combined, usually, you combine the initial and the final together.
It's a good idea to familiarise yourself with the initials and finals, and in the table listed
above, the initials are the left-most column, and the finals are the top-most row. It's best to
think of a syllable as constructed of an initial and a final, with initials and finals being the
smallest absolute units. For example with zhong, the initial is zh, and the final is ong (note,
that the final for zhong is not iong, but ong, and that iong only goes with the j, q, and x
initials). Similarly, for guo, the initial is g and the final is uo, and put together you get guo.

Anyway, in Chinese, the common way to practice the pronunciation of the individual syllables is to
say the initial, then the final, and then finally combine them into one sound (adding whatever
tone is necessary). The table I linked to above has examples of this for each syllable under the
link "BPMF spelling"). The example for zhong can be found here, and the example for guo, here.

You will note in the examples above that when pronouncing the initials individually, they also add
a final onto the initial. The standard finals to add when individually pronouncing initials are:

bo po mo fo
de te ne le
ge ke he
ji qi xi
zi ci si
zhi chi shi ri

Which is why for guo, you will hear them say ge, uo, guo, for guo, even though there is no 'e'
sound in that syllable. This is just used as an aid for pronouncing initials individually. When
you combine the initial with another final you would use that final instead.

Finally, if you want to know whether or not you're getting the pronunciation for the various
sounds correct, rather than posting your approximation of the sounds in English, a much better
method would be to post an audio recording (Audacity is great for making sound recordings). This
will be a far more accurate way of knowing whether or not you've got the pronunciation correct,
because using English to approximate Chinese sounds is usually imprecise and ambiguous.










cdn_in_bj -



Quote:

By the way, is it true that you don’t typically refer to or of someone by their first name only?
Rather by lao zhang, xiao li, or first name as well as second name?

Yes, that is correct. You either refer to them by their surname only or their full name (surname +
given name). The exception is if you are close to them (ie - friends or family).

Also, many Chinese of more recent generation only have full names consisting of two characters, in
which case you would never refer to them by their given name only.










j_spencer -

Thanks a lot for your help everyone. My initial post wasn’t as clear as it could have been so I
apologise for that.

Firstly, I’m not ignoring tones don’t worry! I just ignored them for this example; it saved me
having put a number after every word/syllable.



Quote:

shi4 (to be) should not be pronounced 'shee'. This is absolutely incorrect. It would be more like
a "shir". I'm quite sure you've got a bad copy of pronunciation here.

Are you sure? This is where I am deriving my pronunciation from (see pictures below). You can see
why I thought “shi” would be pronounced “shee”. I is pronounced ee like in bee. This
follows sh. So “shee” is the logical pronunciation surely?

Imron, Redeye, thanks a lot for those links. They are exactly what I need. The pinyin table in
particular hopefully means I’ll be able to pronounce all words properly now.

Are there any online audio dictionaries in Chinese to help with pronunciation? The pinyin table is
very good but I’d like to here the whole word just to confirm and make sure I have it correct.

My final question on the matter, what is skype language exchange? I know what skype is but am
unfamiliar with language exchange. Is it when you get in contact with someone from China and learn
via them?

Thanks again.

Jamie.














Shadowdh -



Quote:

Are you sure? This is where I am deriving my pronunciation from (see pictures below). You can see
why I thought “shi” would be pronounced “shee”. I is pronounced ee like in bee. This
follows sh. So “shee” is the logical pronunciation surely?

If you read a bit after the explanation where it says ee like bee there is a bit commenting on the
change in pronunciation after initials like sh... the other posters are right... get some audio
files and practice, practice, practice and then for good measure practice some more... also try to
find a native speaker (shouldnt be too hard in Bris-vegas) and then get them to help you and make
you say it right... the funny thing is that the language really needs to be spoken as there are
differences to how the try to explain it through the written word...










Shadowdh -

Ni shi jones xiansheng ma?

Pronounced: Nee shee jones xyenshun ma? Nee shi (short I sound) jones sscheeanshung ma is probably
closer but its hard puting it in writing...

Shi de. Wo Shi David Jones.

Pronounced: Shee dir. Wour shee David Jones. shi der (short on the er though) war shi...

Ni hao, Jones, xianshen. Wo shi wang lin. Hen Gaoxing jiandao ni.

Pronounced: Nee how, Jones, xyenshun wour shee wang lin. Hen gowxing jyendow nee. ssscheeanshung
war shi ... jeeandow...

Qing jiao wo lao wang

Pronounced: Qing jeow wour low won jeow (rhymes with meow) war lau wang
Hao de, Lao wang. Jiao wo David ba

Pronounced: How dir, low won, jeow wour David ba - how der lau wang jeow war...

Huanying ni lai zhongguo, David

Pronounced: Hwanying nee lai jonggwar, David whoanying...

my reply in bold but its really hard to articulate sounds in writing.. use things like
chinesepod.com or FSI (found on this board) and listen to everything you can get thats in
Chinese...










imron -

I think the last few posts just serve to illustrate why you shouldn't use English to represent the
sounds of Chinese It's just too fraught with ambiguities and open to interpretation by the reader,
not to mention if the written material isn't clear then it's easy to make mistakes like what the
OP did with shi/shee. If you listen to the audio recordings of this syllable you will find it is
nothing like shee at all, and I think the book you listed failed to really explain that more
clearly. Anyway, although it might feel comforting and familiar to see a description of the sounds
as related to English, if you learn pronunciation like this, then in the long term it will be more
of a hindrance than a help.

j_spencer, In addition to just listening to the audio files on that site, I would also recommend
recording yourself saying these sounds and then comparing the recording you make with the original
audio, and trying to figure out where the differences are. This can be a really useful way of
spotting mistakes in pronunciation.

Oh, and if you find a discrepancy between what the book says, and the audio files, trust the audio
not the book

Finally, if you're finding it a pain to type tones in pinyin, you might like to check out this
thread :-)












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