The Chinese alphabet

Factual Questions
1

I am currently a student of Mandarin, and I found this to be an interesting question:

Chinese, of course, is not normally written phonetically. However, since the communists came to power, they standardized on the pinyin system of transcribing their language using roman characters (the characters took up new sounds, however). My question is, how was this really possible? Did their language naturally divide into 20 or so sounds, or was there some square-peg-in-round-hole action? Even in Englsh, which coexisted with phonetic spelling all its life, there’s tons of sounds that don’t really fit into our alphabet at all. This is especially relevant to me, as I try to nail my pronounciation.

2

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
I am currently a student of Mandarin, and I found this to be an interesting question:

Chinese, of course, is not normally written phonetically. However, since the communists came to power, they standardized on the pinyin system of transcribing their language using roman characters (the characters took up new sounds, however). My question is, how was this really possible? Did their language naturally divide into 20 or so sounds, or was there some square-peg-in-round-hole action? Even in Englsh, which coexisted with phonetic spelling all its life, there’s tons of sounds that don’t really fit into our alphabet at all. This is especially relevant to me, as I try to nail my pronounciation.
[/QUOTE]
There have been a variety of romanization systems. Wage-Giles, which was developed by liguists, but most people don’t understand the aspiration mark (ending up with nanking versus nanjing). The Yale system, which to an american is probably the closest intuitive pronounciation. And a bunch of others.

The thing to remember about pinyin is that the letters and syllable sounds are an *approximation * or *representation * of the Chinese pronunciation. X has no relation to the english sound. X is used to represent a Chinese sound. If you learn that X is pronounced with your mouth shape in a broad tight smile and tounge placed on the bottom of your mouth with a soft aspiration, then you should be at least ballpark (as opposed to trying to pronounce X with some preconcieved English alphabet baggage). You’ll also figure out that the C sound is pronounced like X except the tounge is on the roof of the mouth behind the teeth with a hard aspiration. S on the other hand is a soft aspiration and the mouth is relaxed (not pulled back into that wide narrow smile).

xi, ci, shi, si all have nothing really to do with the English pronunciation but everything to do with various mouth shapes, aspiration and tounge placement.

chinese actually does have phonetic characters. from those phonetic characters came a system called Zhuyinfuhao (bopomofo), which was used widely in Taiwan. I believe Taiwan has switched over to a close but not quite the same mainland pinyin system.

chinese does have a set of sounds. I dont remember how many. Pinyin again represents/approximates those sounds.

there’s tons of sounds that don’t really fit into our alphabet at all. again, this is the key to learning pinyin. Pinyin represents a Chinese sound and not an English sound. Forget how the sound should be pronounced in English, and drill drill drill on how they sound in Chinese. 3-6 months and it will become natural. Given the amount of dictionary work you’ll do, after a year or two you’ll be much faster and more accurate at pinyin that 99% of native Chinese speakers.

Understand the phonetics of Chinese sounds. What is the mouth shape, soft or hard aspiration, where is the tounge placed, etc.

3

No, I know pinyin has as much to do with English as any other language that uses the same symbols. The thought that I had was if a language that didn’t write itself phonetically would evolve to be a zoo of sounds. Then, while writing this, I realized English itself is a zoo of sounds.

But anyway, I thought this was an interesting thing to think about. And it’s of practical concern for me to know whether pinyin + tone marks really do represent all there is to know about chinese pronunciation, or if there’s nuances, exceptions, etc that don’t get transcribed.

Edit: I just realized I already knew some. E.g., the “er” sound that gets added to some words sometimes (like shi, ‘is’). Maybe the “official” clean Mandarin is transcibed perfectly, and it was, like I said, a purging of square pegs?

4

Alex_Dubinsky writes:

> Did their language naturally divide into 20 or so sounds, or was there some
> square-peg-in-round-hole action?

Of course their language always naturally divided up their utterances into several dozen sounds. They’re called phonemes. All languages break up their utterances into phonemes. The phonemes used differ between different languages, but all languages use a finite (and rather small) set of phonemes. They might differ slightly between various dialects of a single language, but each dialect has its own fixed set of phonemes. The fact that a language has been written in a non-phonemic script (like Chinese characters) doesn’t mean that it lacks phonemes. You might want to get an introductory text on linguistics and learn about such things.

5

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
Even in Englsh, which coexisted with phonetic spelling all its life, there’s tons of sounds that don’t really fit into our alphabet at all.
[/QUOTE]

Just for the record, English wasn’t a written language “all its life”.

6

[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner]
Of course their language always naturally divided up their utterances into several dozen sounds. They’re called phonemes. All languages break up their utterances into phonemes. The phonemes used differ between different languages, but all languages use a finite (and rather small) set of phonemes. They might differ slightly between various dialects of a single language, but each dialect has its own fixed set of phonemes. The fact that a language has been written in a non-phonemic script (like Chinese characters) doesn’t mean that it lacks phonemes. You might want to get an introductory text on linguistics and learn about such things.
[/QUOTE]
I know what phenomes are. And English has 40+, twice as many as it has letters. And no one can even say exactly how many there are.

Maybe it’s that English literacy actually wasn’t so hot most of its life that caused it to end up like this? (but there’s gotta always have been letters to the words, no?)

7

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
I know what phenomes are. And English has 40+, twice as many as it has letters. And no one can even say exactly how many there are.

Maybe it’s that English literacy actually wasn’t so hot most of its life that caused it to end up like this? (but there’s gotta always have been letters to the words, no?)
[/QUOTE]
Languages change over time. Modern English spelling is actually a pretty good indicator of late Middle English pronunciation: knight, for example, hasn’t always had a silent [k] or silent [gh]. And what do you mean “no one can even say exactly how many there are?” Of course they can, it’s just that different dialects have different sounds. I do not distinguish between the vowels in “caught” and “cot,” but the British (and lots of Americans) do, therefore I have one fewer phoneme, but any competent linguist could sit me down for an hour or so and take a phonetic inventory, assign each one a symbol, and present me with a fully phonetic alphabet. In a thousand years, my linguistic heirs would be complaining about how complex and illogical the once-perfect system was.

8

This is exactly why you should stay away from any pronunciation system that uses “English” letters when studying Mandarin. One cannot help trying to pronounce the letters you see in a Wade-Giles (or similar) system as you would pronounce them in English.

The Zhuyinfuhao system uses symbols for each of the many different sounds in Mandarin. You learn a particular symbol represents a sound in Mandarin. There is no confusion; you learn to think in Mandarin.

9

[QUOTE=Mangosteen]
The Zhuyinfuhao system uses symbols for each of the many different sounds in Mandarin. You learn a particular symbol represents a sound in Mandarin. There is no confusion; you learn to think in Mandarin.
[/QUOTE]
IMHO Zhuyinfuhao blows monkey chow. YMMV. And it sucks in the computer age. And even Taiwan is now using their own version of pinyin instead in schools.

“er” sound is for the northern/beijing accent. It’s not part of broadcast Mandarin, if that’s what you want to define as standard Mandarin. Not sure about now, but the “er” used to be inside of () to indicate it was optional/Beijing hua(er).

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
And it’s of practical concern for me to know whether pinyin + tone marks really do represent all there is to know about chinese pronunciation, or if there’s nuances, exceptions, etc that don’t get transcribed.
[/QUOTE]
Of course there are nuances, and many of those are related to dialects and not broadcast or standard Mandarin. I can’t think of exceptions off the top of my head. I remember finding out “nang” was a word and thinking that was wierd.

the only thing that makes Chinese a doable language is because it is so logical, no verb tenses, grammar is simple, etc.

10

I agree, the pinyin does confuse me more than it helps. On a semi-related note, I hate it how pinyin is used to write Chinese names in English. It’s like the Chinese are asking for Americans to horribly butcher their words. Sure, “paris” sounds fine vs “paree,” but I dunno if that’s the path you really want to take.

Anyway, China Guy, it sounds like you’re saying Mandarin is also a second language for you. Care to share your experience?

And speaking of things I’ve found weird: learning that nigga (my transliteration) is used every other word in conversation. Also this girl called me a nigga jew, which means ‘this little piggy’ or something (which I can’t say I liked either, but she swore it meant something cute).

11

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
And speaking of things I’ve found weird: learning that nigga (my transliteration) is used every other word in conversation. Also this girl called me a nigga jew, which means ‘this little piggy’ or something (which I can’t say I liked either, but she swore it meant something cute).
[/QUOTE]
nigga should be na ge. It means “that one”. Zhe ge means “this one.” That little piggy would be na zhi zhu.

The above should highlight that if you really want to learn Chinese. First, forget that pinyin has any relation to the English sound. Work very diligently to differentiate the actual sounds in Mandarin. Many sounds (further complicated by tones) are very similar. As I wrote earlier, it will really help instead of guessing and relying on your own phonetic sounds like nigga, to master pinyin. You won’t really get anywhere until you master pinyin and standard corresponding characters for those basic sounds.

Using your own transliteration pretty much guarantees you won’t make progress beyond a few words and phrases.

I took 4 years of Mandarin at UC Davis (pinyin. simplified characters, horrible mainland books, then long form characters and short stories), with a year off in the middle to study in Taiwan (learned zhuyinfuhao and never used it because it’s not really practical). Lived in Taiwan, HK and China for 20+ years. also speak basic Japanese.

12

This site might be helpful for you to show the pinyin and equivalent american sounds: Pronunciation: Chinese and Japanese - Sinosplice

13

omg, for the nth time, I know pinyin! I was making a joke

Anyway, I’ve spent nearly a year living in Shanghai working with my professor. Pretty much everyone there spoke english, however, so I didn’t get to learn too much chinese. But I did manage to pick up some, of course, and am now trying to keep studying it on my own. I’m trying to use several tools at once, but at the moment I’m going through the pimsleur tapes. My goal is to start being able to understand chinese tv and switch to that. I noticed that the best English speakers over there were the ones who watched English tv and movies [without chinese subtitles].

14

Oh, and maybe you can help me. I used to have a link to all the PRC elementary school readers. When I started learning, I even managed to get through the whole first year first semester with just a dictionary. I think it was a little early to start doing that, but even so I learned quite a bit of vocabulary and characters. That was a while ago, and I’d really like to come back to it. I’m more ready for it, and it’s a good complement to the audio-only pimsleur. Trouble is, the site was chinese and I can’t seem to find it through english google.

15

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
omg, for the nth time, I know pinyin! I was making a joke.
[/QUOTE]
Next time you should probably open such a joke thread in a different forum. Some people might actually think you’re posing serious questions. It might start an urban rumor that Chinese go around saying nigga all the time. To clarify for readers that don’t understand Chinese, Chinese people don’t go around saying nigga. That sound is “na ge” (means “that”), which is kinda close if you’re looking for a connection. Alex I guess was exaggerating out of context for comic effect.

It is true that the American pronunciation of “Jew” ironically corresponds to the Chinese pronunciation of “pig” (or zhu in pinyin). Linguistic coincidence and all that. However, there is no possible linguistic coincidence in Chinese that corresponds to “nigga Jew” as the Chinese sounds would be “na zhi zhu.” Just wanted to be clear on that since this is GQ.

16

[QUOTE=China Guy]
IMHO Zhuyinfuhao blows monkey chow. YMMV. And it sucks in the computer age. And even Taiwan is now using their own version of pinyin instead in schools.
[/QUOTE]

Funny, as a foreigner living in Taiwan, I’ve always used Zhuyin Fuhao, many of my friends are schoolteachers here and use it all the time to teach elementary school kids Chinese (never even heard of a “pinyin” beng taught), and everyone in my office uses it as the preferred input system when typing Chinese on their computers. I use it to type myself, though painstakingly–but some ladies in the office can type Chinese faster than I can type English.

FWIW I agree with Mangosteen that a Chinese-based phonetic system is vastly superior to a jury-rigged romanization system for foreign learners.

17

Numerical classifiers! Oh my! :slight_smile:

18

“That sound is ‘na ge’”. But you just wrote that in pinyin, so how is someone supposed to know how to say it? “nigga” is definately the way it sounds (well, depending on speaker), although the stress is on the second syllable not first. Anyway, chinese people do go around saying “nigga” all the time, and I found it pretty damn funny because you can go halfway round the world, and some things never change :D.

Anyway, looking at the zhuyin fuhao page it says there are 37 symbols total. This exactly goes back to my OP. Pinyin has nearly half as many symbols; that is a huge discrepancy! What is pinyin missing, and will it affect my learning chinese?

19

p.s. ‘nigga’ doesn’t just mean ‘that.’ It’s a filler word (like the word ‘like’ for teenage girls). So it gets inserted everywhere in informal speech.

20

[QUOTE=Alex_Dubinsky]
Anyway, looking at the zhuyin fuhao page it says there are 37 symbols total. This exactly goes back to my OP. Pinyin has nearly half as many symbols; that is a huge discrepancy! What is pinyin missing, and will it affect my learning chinese?
[/QUOTE]
It depends how you are counting. In Pinyin, you have c, ch, z, zh, s, and sh. Are you counting these as four symbols (c, h, s, z) or six? I guess I really still don’t understand the complaint in the OP.

Chinese has different sounds than English. So what? The Roman alphabet is made up of arbitrary symbols. There is nothing about the combination of three lines in [z] that makes it go zzzzzzzzzzzzz. It can be used for anything. Languages that adopt the Roman alphabet generally go with some permutation of the original phonetic value, but they don’t have to. Just by taking [h] out of the system and combining it with the remaining 25 letters (so: a, ah, b, bh, etc.) you have 50 different symbols, which is more than enough sounds for most languages.

Re: Chinese: Wikipedia’s page lists 25 consonants and about 10 vowels. That’s considerably more than 20 sounds, even without considering the tones. So the Roman alphabet will have to be bent a little for it to work. As far as I can tell, Pinyin consonental values are pretty straightforward and the vowels were designed by sadistic space mutants. But you can certainly learn the system and be able to pronounce a Chinese word correctly from its Pinyin equivalent; why would you think otherwise? Do you think there are secret sounds not represented in Pinyin that only Chinese people have access to?