As an ABC, I was taught Chinese characters using the “bopomofo” phonetics, probably because our local Chinese community in NYC came mostly from Taiwan raised families (though most of those “Taiwan” people were really Mainlanders who’d fled to Taiwan after WW2, such as my own parents).
After finishing with Saturday Chinese language classes when I was 16 I didn’t think about them again until some time in the mid-late 1990s, when it suddenly became a fad to wear baseball caps with bopomofo symbols on them sounding out the English pronunciation of the first letter of the team’s name.
I remember thinking WTF??? to myself the first time I saw what I eventually figured out was a Yankees hat on a guy in the subway, where the front of the hat phonetically sounded out as “wye”, which in the absence of any tonal marker by default means the first tone, which therefore means “bent” or “crooked” in Mandarin.
Since I’m a Mets fan I found this very funny, that all these ultra-hip Yankee fans were going around announcing they were “bent” or “crooked”. Huh-huh… Huh.
To answer my own question, having done more research (but with the help of leads from posters), there are tons of sounds not “simply” represented in pinyin but which show up as various combinations/formations of letters (some combinations are simple, some, especially concerning vowels, are not). I guess this all still counts as “pinyin,” but it is a whole higher level that my introductory materials seemed to completely ignore and not even mention.
Still, I have a feeling that there are some rarer sounds that don’t typically get included even in pronunciation guides. Like I said, English has em (particularly with foreign words like fiance). I guess I also wanted to learn more about what it’s like for a language to transition to being written phonetically and how phoneticism affects it. Whether non-phonetic languages are “wilder” in terms of sounds, because maybe in the act of teaching phonetics you simplify (eg my introductory books on chinese). But oh well, I guess no one’s in a mood to philosophize linguistically.
My plan is not to dwell too much trying to figure pinyin out in all its details, but just continue trying to learn mandaring with the ear (using tapes and tv programs*) and with the eye (reading characters). Trying to figure out mandarin sounds or trying to prounce them correctly seems pointless until my ear learns them first. (And no, I think listening to one guy on a tape is not how you learn the subtle sound patterns to a language. hence the big importance of tv).
*pplive is a godsend in that regard, as is bittorrent.
Alex, let’s try this a last time. With all due respect, you don’t understand pinyin very well or this thread would not exist. You just might want to try out that link I provided earler.
Second, please stop the nigga already. It wasn’t funny the first time. In Chinese the sounds are as follows:
pinyin = na and the American equivalent is naw (rhymes with raw) or nah (as in, a slang form of no)
pinyin = ge and the American equivalent is Gus (without the s)
some chinese will say pinyin = nei (for the na character), and the american equivalent is the first sound in neighbor
Not sure about other Chinese speaking dopers, but I really can’t think of sounds that fall out of the standard *with the exception * of dialects and people that speak mandarin with a heavy accent.
I would say that zhuyinfuhao would have made sense if used like the Japanese katakana system. But it doesn’t. I think it’s from really old legacy software that you have people who are pretty fast with bopomofo. pinyin has the advantage that it is easy and fast with no special keyboard training required, and works on any western language keyboard. Lots of programs such as dictionaries can be accessed using a western keyboard instead of a specialized taiwanese one. For that matter, pinyin has the advantage that it’s in roman script as opposed to a character system that only 20 million people in the world understand. Taiwan also uses a romanization system (think street signs), so have 2 systems in place to help on characters. I think a lot of the criticism of pinyin is from native english speakers, who expect a global system for romanizing Chinese to be based on American English.
Maybe zhuyinfuhao is “better” for non native speakers learning Chinese pronunciation. If it is, I think it’s one akin to the kwerty versus dorvak keyboard debate. Having learned both, certainly pinyin works a lot better for me. YMMV.
It was on these boards that someone pointed out that the Taiwanese version of pinyin is now used in Taiwan. A casual search shows this government site and some explanations here.
No, I don’t know pinyin very well, but half the thread you were trying to explain to me that pinyin isn’t english.
Anyway, I did find your link helpful, thank you. Now if I could only find those elementary school readers… just the standard ones that all the kids use.
p.s. about nigga. a) i did stop b) it is funny (or at least cute) and c) to an american ear, it does sound like it enough that you turn around and go “whoa, who said that.” It wasn’t just me, the other american kids thought the same. And the point isn’t just that they have this word/phrase. It’s that the use it all the time for no reason. Don’t you find that ironic? They really liked basketball too where i worked
Wait… you guys think it’s better to learn a completely new system of symbols, not used in any modern, living language and for all intents and purposes arbitrary, rather than one based on an existing, familiar roman alphabet with loosely similar pronunciation?
Yeah, definately. At least depending what’s your goal. If you want to have good pronounciation, all it does is throw you off. I’ll bet the same thing happens when people try to learn, eg, French.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the moral of the story is that if you want to study a foreign language in a way that is easy and approachable . . . stay the hell away from Chinese already!
But why is the American pronunciation of the Roman letters necessarily the correct one? The letters are just symbols used to represent different sounds – that we pronounce them one way in English[sup]*[/sup] doesn’t make that the right way. How would you react to a Spanish speaker telling you that the way you say initial-R is wrong because you don’t roll it like he does? Or a German making fun of your W because you don’t pronounce it his way?
The Roman letters used in pinyin don’t necessarily have any correspondence to the sounds that the same letters make in English or in French or in Spanish or in Gaelic or in Hawaiian or in Japanese or in any other language that uses the Roman letters. Get over that and you’ll get what China Guy is saying to you.
[sup]*[/sup]And we don’t even always pronounce them the same way. Bough, through, cough, rough – all different sounds. Cot and caught – same sound for (most) Californians, different sounds for me and most other East Coasters. Two examples among many.
Alex did not imply that it is. He is alluding to the fact that someone raised reading roman characters one way may have difficulties habituating himself to pronouncing its characters differently when learning a system like Pinyin.
That’s been my experience with classmates. I can always tell someone who studied using pinyin in the classroom bcs they pronounce the word for “I” incorrectly. (The character is 我 , the pinyin is “wo” and the Zhuyin is “ㄨㄛˇ”.)
People studying with pinyin invariably pronounce the character as “whoah” like you’re stopping a horse, whereas it should be something like “oo-aughh”. I’ve heard people taking their fourth year of Chinese still pronouncing it like “whoah”, which frankly sounds pretty silly.
Since “oo-aughh” isn’t something that can be directly conveyed very well in roman characters (at least for English speakers), and the standard pinyin is pretty misleading, IMHO learners are better off understanding from the get-go that this is a sound that doesn’t occur in their native language by learning “ㄨㄛˇ”.
It’s not that bloody hard. In fact, and as I implied above, it’s about the least complicated thing you’re going to encounter as you embark on your decade-long path to moderate fluency.
I’d say **Koxinga ** (which is pinyin btw ) it is likely that you’re either using exceptions to prove the rule or confusing Taiwanese pronunciation with mainland broadcast mandarin (and especially with Beijingese). Taiwanese standard Mandarin versus Mainland is somewhat different, it’s a southern dialect, and you’ve got the Taiwanese (fujian) accent bleeding through. Bopomofo certainly didn’t help the majority of Taiwanese that speak Taiwan Guoyu. So yes “wo” may sound a little different but I’m highly skeptical that it’s owing to bopomofo versus whatever standard is used in that part of the mainland. Have you spent any serious length of time in China?
I can usually tell if a speaker of Chinese as a foreign language has studied in Taiwan or not. I can usually tell a native Mandarin speaker from Taiwan. I did live in Taiwan for 3 years and spent a year at the Chinese Normal University Mandarin Center 25 years ago. But, it’s not like I speak Beijingese or even broadcast Mandarin for that matter - living 20 years south of the Yangzi river will do that to you.
Keep in mind, there is no one standardized sounding Mandarin. Even broadcast Mandarin from china and Taiwan are a bit different. Don’t even get into Beijingese versus Taipei best Mandarin as those two are far apart.
(Jovan - all I can say is bwahahahahahhaahahahaha)
The (for lack of a better term) “Northern” style of Mandarin does pronounce it closer to “whoah” than your way. In fact, most people, if they were listening closely, would recognize your pronunciation as a Taiwanese accent, not the “correct” pronunciation.
Seriously, this is splitting hairs. No one will have an trouble understanding either pronunciation, most people won’t even give a passing thought about it.
When I was in Shanghai, I worked with a guy from France. He spoke fluent chinese (and even better english), but sometimes I wasn’t sure if he was speaking mandarin or french
About academically-schooled people saying “wo” like “whoah” or exaggerating their tones or otherwise sounding weird. I think it also has a lot to do with the Chinese pronounciation tapes. The people on them, speaking as slowly, clearly, and unnaturally as they can, do say “whoah.” This paradigm of language instruction is a big pe peeve of mine. There is certianly a place for the instructor to exaggerate pronounciation to make a point, but there’s also a place to say words quickly and even mangled, like a normal speaker. Also you can’t learn pronounciation by hearing three people all your life (your professor, and the man and woman on your tape). Tapes should have dozens of speakers with some talking clearly and some not. I don’t understand why that’s not done, except maybe cost.
> Still, I have a feeling that there are some rarer sounds that don’t typically get
> included even in pronunciation guides. Like I said, English has em (particularly
> with foreign words like fiance). I guess I also wanted to learn more about what
> it’s like for a language to transition to being written phonetically and how
> phoneticism affects it. Whether non-phonetic languages are “wilder” in terms of
> sounds, because maybe in the act of teaching phonetics you simplify (eg my
> introductory books on chinese). But oh well, I guess no one’s in a mood to
> philosophize linguistically.
Once again, there is no such thing as a non-phonetic language. All languages have finite (and rather small) set of phonemes that they use for all the sounds of the language. The fact that a language is written in a non-phonetic script (like Chinese characters) has nothing to do with it having phonemes. It’s possible that some Chinese speakers may know a foreign language well and thus will occasionally throw a foreign word into their speech in which they use non-Chinese phonemes, but the same thing is true of English or any other language. Essentially, writing a language in a phonetic script has no effect on the language.
Of course there are. Alex’s post makes it clear that by “non-phonetic language” he means “A language that is not normally written down using an alphabet.” There are plenty of such languages. Chinese is one of them.
Alex wonders whether a language’s being non-phonetic contributes to a language’s phonemes being more variable than those of phonetic languages. The answer to this question of Alex’s is “no.” Cites would be appropriate, but I don’t have them. Someone like you might, and they would be appreciated. The seemingly intentional and clearly condescending refusal to understand what he’s asking, I am sure, are not.
Alex - is this your first foreign language? if yes, I feel for you and it also explains some of your perceptions (and not being snarky here). the thing is, ‘textbook’ language/tapes or classroom language is a structured way to get you on a bcycle and the training wheels off. it’s a necessary evil to get the student to a base level. otherwise language study and especially chinese is like learning to ride a unicycle blindfolded on an incline with zero experience. not imposdible but pretty tough.
Shanghaiese sounds similar to french, and calling someone a ‘french person’ is in the slang.
Chinese is actually my third language (well, fourth, but i’m not gonna count Latin). The second language I learned was English, around the age of 9. Obviously it’s much easier to learn a language at that age, but the unstructured way I went about it also gives me some perspective. I think there’s a fundamental problem with “structured” language learning. It’s short term gain for long term loss. So yeah, tring to understand a bunch of different speakers, for example, will definately be more difficult in the beginning. But the difficulty is more than worth it and the correct way to do it. When listening to that one speaker, you’re actually learning this speaker’s voice rather than the language itself (which goes back exactly to the talk of phonemes). Another line of argument against structured learning is that you learn it cognitively, with the wrong part of the brain.
Many modern instruction regimens, like Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone, embrace a more ‘natural’ method and I think for good reason. You just need more discipline to not get frustrated at first when you don’t understand and everything isn’t being explained. It’s also a good coincidence that Chinese has simple grammar, since it makes such methods much easier.
P.s. regarding bicycles, i’m against training wheels too. (They don’t help you learn balance at all! they just teach you the completely wrong notion that you sit on the bike not carring which way it leans.)
) it is likely that you’re either using exceptions to prove the rule or confusing Taiwanese pronunciation with mainland broadcast mandarin (and especially with Beijingese). Taiwanese standard Mandarin versus Mainland is somewhat different, it’s a southern dialect, and you’ve got the Taiwanese (fujian) accent bleeding through. Bopomofo certainly didn’t help the majority of Taiwanese that speak Taiwan Guoyu. So yes “wo” may sound a little different but I’m highly skeptical that it’s owing to bopomofo versus whatever standard is used in that part of the mainland. Have you spent any serious length of time in China?