“-ng”, for English speakers, pretty invariably means the final consonant (NOT final letter) in words like hung, band, or king. That consonant, rendered /ŋ/ in IPA, is called a velar nasal.
Also: Velocity, could this all be attributed to a dialectical variation within Mandarin? Some Latin American Spanish speakers have a free variation of word-final /n/ and word-final /ŋ/ after some vowels (cf. the pronunciation of “man” as “mang”). Maybe something similar is happening in your dialect?
You said it’s pronounced “Ling.” That’s spelled with a G. How can there not be a G sound? Compare ding, king, ping, ring, sing, and wing. Spelled with a G, have a G sound.
Where and since when does the spelling Ling indicate a long vowel? Pronounced “Lean” makes sense. Saying it’s pronounced “Ling” like you did twice before makes no sense. In other words, spelling “Ling” does NOT equal pronunciation “Lean” in anything I’ve ever heard of. Where does this come from?
I’m a native English speaker and you’ve confused the heck out of me.
Okay, fair point. But “Ling” does have the ng sound you’ve described, as reflected in its spelling. With that modification, I believe the rest of my questions are valid.
Then I’m doubly perplexed that you would ask the question in the OP. As a native Mandarin speaker, you should already know that transliterated Chinese surnames often fail to accurately represent the way they are pronounced in the native Mandarin language. Let’s take a Chinese surname that is very well known to Westerners: Chang (張) – yet, in Mandarin, it’s actually pronounced more like “Zhang.” Another example is “Chen” (陳) – again, the proper Mandarin pronunciation of the surname is something closer to “tsun” or “t’xen.”
Transliterations can only approximate the proper pronunciation. I would say that “Lin” comes closer to the Mandarin pronunciation of 林 than Chen or Chang does to 陳 or 張.
Count me as another native Chinese speaker that is thoroughly confused. If as China Guy says, the name is 林书豪, 林 in pinyin is definitely “lin”, li + n. The pinyin for “ling” would be for words like 零. 零 and 林 definitely do not sound the same.
Are you asking why pinyin was designed the way it was? Or the different romanisation methods maybe?
Lin and Ling are as different as din and ding in English. “Ding” (as in you put a ding in my car) rhymes with “Ling”. “Lin” is pronounced almost exactly like the name “Lynn”.
Color me confused as how a Mandarin speaker cannot distinguish between 林 and 苓？
For those trying to follow at home.
“Lin” is pronounced pretty much exactly like the family name “Linton” (minus the “ton” part). Or to rephrase, like “in” with an 'L" sound.
“Ling” rhymes with “ring”
I’m just not parsing how “lin” and “ling” result in some kind of confusion (albeit I’m not a native Chinese speaker)
That’s my point exactly.
Since the thread seems thoroughly lost on the “Lin/Ling” issue, I’ll use other words to convey my point.
Kate is not pronounced as Kat, Wing is not pronounced as Win, Time is not pronounced as Tim.
Dude, it’s pinyin and 林 as in Jeremy Lin is transliterated at “Lin” regardless if you think “ling” is a closer approximation. And if you’re a chinese reader, then you know that 林 (pinyin is “lin”) is not the same as 苓 (pinyin is “ling”).
I’m really not following what your point is??? Is it you think Jeremy Lin should really be Jeremy Ling in pinyin? And that in Pinyin “ling” should be changed to something else like “Linggg”??? I’m just not getting it…
Yeah, I’m partly confused by that. “Lin” and “ling” have the same vowel sound, just as “win” and “wing” do, an /ɪ/. I suspect the nasalization of the “ng” makes it sound to some people a bit more like what in common language is referred to as a "long i,’ but it’s not a “long i” in those words. It’s a “short i.” I thinkVelocity is saying what you are, that the sound is something more akin to a “long i” except shorter, so an /i/ instead of an /i:/ in IPA.
Before you bow out, have a look at my post #21. Is your OP perhaps representative of your own dialect** of Mandarin? From what I can tell, the pinyin letter “i” can vary a lot in pronunciation … but I cannot find any reference that indicated a pronunciation difference for “i” based on being followed by either “n” or “ng”.
For what it’s worth, I am looking at scholarly phonetics references, not “Chinese for the traveler”. I could dig a little deeper and see if I can find some specific information about Mandarin dialects** and how they may differ on this point.
*** when I write “dialect” here, I do not mean the colloquial meaning of “Chinese dialect” to distinguish Mandarin from Cantonese from Wu, etc. I mean a dialect within Mandarin – just as Estuary English, Scouse, Cockney, etc. are dialects within English.*
IMHO, one of the big challenges of pinyin is that the user can get caught up in confusing the pronunciation with English (or whatever Romanized language they use). If one accepts that pinyin is just an approximate placeholder to Romanize Chinese characters, then you avoid a lot of these pronunciation idiosyncrasies. Pinyin was never designed to be linguistically equivalent with English, much less German or Romanian.
i think that you’re saying the “i” in Lin could be somehow better approximated in pinyin. And I’d have a hard time arguing the point. But, again, if one accepts that the pinyin “i” is just a placeholder, it might make more sense.
FWIW, I’m a pinyin whiz. Had to become one as a foreigner learning Chinese in University. I can use pinyin much faster and more accurately than most native Chinese speakers that started out with characters. My daughter who is a native Chinese speaker (bilingual more accurately) and went to local Chinese school in Shanghai for 4 years hasn’t learned pinyin as well as I did.