phonology

Hi, is there heibangata-akusento (pitch fall) in these names? 北野 武 キタノ タケシ Kitano Takeshi, filmmaker; 樫尾 忠雄 カシオ タダオ Kashio Tadao, founder of Casio Computer Co., Ltd. Thanks in advance.

今日はあるニュースを読んでいるとき、‘“投票所”である単語が見つかった。辞書を調べると、“投票所”の発音は“とうひょうじょ”です。 が、“事務所”とは“じむしょ”です。どうして同じ漢字、同じ位置なので、発音は違いますか？この“所”の発音は不規則なのですか？ ありがとうござい。

皆さん今日は。サ変動詞「する」の未然形「さ」が成立する過程について詳しいことをご存じの方はいらっしゃいますか。日本語の言語学の専門文献が入手できない状態にあるので，確かなことが調べられず困っています。...

Hello, I'm Nick. I've been studying Japanese for a couple of years and have started learning Mandarin about a couple of months ago. I'm a very academic learner of these languages, trying to perfect pronunciation by studying linguistics and speech patterns from people around me. In summary, I'm...

Hi, guys! As it is extremely hard to find a good online summary of all Pinyin pronunciation rules, I am listening the sounds in a Pinyin chart: Mandarin Chinese Pinyin Chart with Audio - Yabla Chinese . I have read here that the final -iu is pronounced [jou], but I can't hear the "o" in the...

What is the correct pronunciation of the letters Z and C in Pinyin? Chinese phonology wikipedia says that Z is pronounced /ts/ and C is pronounced /tsʰ/, but several websites and videos on Internet say they are pronounced /dz/ and /ts/, respectively. Examples: Chinese Pronunciation - A, O with...

明日、花火大会があんだって. Does あん mean ある?

So I know that there are excpetions to how counters are pronounced depending on what number they are used with. My question is do the hard pronunciations not change? Example:isshuu-one week ichiji-one hour Doumoarigatougozaimasu

大家好： 因为我发的上一帖（new and niu4)，促使我思考汉语的这个ou音，到底是怎么发的？ 是先发schwa /ə/，然后发/ʊ/吗？ 其实我发, 比如“欧”，能长时间保持一个口型不变（嘴一直不收拢），听起来还是“欧”。 当然了，这个“欧”音要停止的时候，是必须收拢一下口。但如果不停止，嘴唇不用收拢，且能发出“欧”。 还有，我感觉不是从 schwa /ə/起始的，而是比/ə/更高的一个音（请变换着发/ə/和欧，感觉一下），而且一直是这个音，不必向另一个音滑动。 所以，“欧”到底是双元音还是单元音？起始音到底是什么？

大家好： 你觉得英语的 new 和中文的 niu4 发音一样吗？专家说汉语的niu实际上是niou /njou/。如果那样，应该是和英语的new 不一样，因为new 是/nju/。 但我怎么觉得是完全一样的呢？

hey guys! I have seen somewhere that the "r" sound is meant to sound more like a "j" sound as in the word "asia" or "measure" but can someone tell me if this is more common pronunciation? Which part of China uses this sound as opposed to the normal r sound? thanks!

大家好！ I have a question about the sounds -in, -ing. In what regions of China are these sounds usually distinguished? (I think it is a minority of speakers who differentiate -in from -ing, right? despite them being the standard sounds) From what I've heard, I think people from 北京 and 山东 do for...

大家好! My textbook says there are some blank spaces in the 拼音 table because it is either impossible for such a sound to be pronounced, or that it could be pronounced but there is no such sound in Chinese language. Is there any other explanation? e.g. "It would be confusing if used in combination...

你们好, It is widely known (or thought, I don't know) that the main difficulty to learn the Mandarin phonology is tones. To my mind, another hard characteristic for foreigners can be aspiration (mixing up b/p, d/t, g/k, j/q, zh/ch and z/c). My question is: would somebody who doesn't make a...

Hi. Probably a stupid question, but I'm confused about the pronunciation of /w/ sound in Japanese. Until now, I thought the Japanese /w/ is like a light greek /γ/ sound (not sure about IPA, but it's similar to a light English /wh/ in "what") but lately I heard many natives to pronounce /w/...

Hi everyone! I'm trying to figure out the correct way of pronouncing the hiragana が when it comes in the middle of a word, for example, かぎ (key). The speakers of the course I'm doing read it [kaŋi]. Minna no Nihongo explains that the consonants of the が-row (が ぎ ぐ げ ご) at the beginning of a...

各位好： 这个介绍中文音系的维基词条（https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Standard_Chinese_phonology）说： 安（前无介音）的元音是[a]，因此我们可推导出像办、谈、感等元音也是一样。 当然，肯定有人发这个音，但是我觉得生活中很多人不会开口那么大。 我觉得人们往往发的像英语的[æ]， 甚至是[ʌ]。 比如汉语的“办”这个词，我们发音是否像英语的ban 或 bun？我听了听美式英语的ban 和 bun，觉得都算是“办”。当然，需要忽略前面的清音和浊音。

Hello, In some Japanese textbooks (and in some scholarly texts on Japanese), there is a convention of writing ty-, sy- and si where standard Romaji would have ch- and sh(i). For example, tyō/tyoo instead of chō 町 syō/syoo instead of shō 正 hanasi instead of hanashi 話 I know that the...

Hello everyone. While the use of trill [r] is associated with baddies (or at least anyone who tries to play tough guy) in the movies, I wonder how true this characterization actually is? So basically: -Is the sound really socially stigmatized? -Or perhaps it's regional after all, so are there...

Hi, I am learning Hiragana from the page. I don't understand why the word "loop" has anything to do with "ru" here. Could you explain? Thanks! /ru/ -- Look at my loop! る as in "loop." http://japanese.gatech.edu/WebCTVista/JAPN1001/contents/Lesson02/hiragana/mnemonic-hiragana.html

Hi all, What I want to ask today, is the way native Japanese people speak certain (common) phrases, like ありがとうございます、おはようございます、おつかれさまでした and so on. When I heard native speakers talk with each other, I noticed these phrases tended to be shortened, especially when they talked fast. Just a few...

Do Japanese actually pronounce the "v" sound? They do have a kana character (ヴ) dedicated to transcribing foreign "v" sounds, but do they actually pronounce them like the English phoneme /v/ (using the upper teeth and the lower lip)? Or is it like a "weak" /b/ in Spanish, which is actually /β/...

Hey people i got a doubt about this music, i already saw a lot of singers who sing this music but i got a doubt when i saw the singers, the words kara and tobira for example one singer, sing those words with L and the other with R who is correct ??? thank you for the answers. Link of the...

各位好： 看看在下列句子中，你习惯读hao3hao3(变为hao2hao3)还是hao3hao1? 意思有差别么？ 1、这种写史方法，值得我们好好学习和借鉴。 2、劝她们回去好好抚育子女，赡养老人。 3、叔叔，你让我好好想想。 4、她以自己的身教，教育孩子们好好学习。 5、我真应好好感谢她，是她帮助我渡过了一个又一个的难关。 6、月娟，你就好好地和永鸿过日子吧。 7、回去，我一定要好好地问问他。

我很好奇大陸人怎麼念風這個音？ 我查拼音是feng, 所以就是芬的音再加個鼻音囉？ 因為台灣風的音聽起來比較像是fon(g)，而且其他像是鳳、峰、封...等只要是feng的音都念fon(g) 老師有教過feng才是正確的，但是大家都念fon(g) 蠻好奇大陸人是不是也會這樣念？

How is it that this word's 彷 sounds like P instead of F? Wouldn't it be just like 傍偟？

Konnichiva minasan :) I have a question to native Japanese speakers: is japanese "R"-sound really so different from the same sound in other languages? I mean, surely it sounds a LITTLE different, but does it influence its perception when a foreigner is talking? Maybe some of you know how to...

Moderator's Note: split from this thread. There are several Cantonese words for "scratch", so in theory, both are correct. 抓 - aau 扌肴 / 挍 - ngaau "Lazy tones" is merely a layman term to classify both improper and non-standard pronunciations. There are cases where the core meaning of the phrase...

I know that dictionaries give [júzizhī] for 桔子汁 (orange juice). However, when I go through dialogues and other audio exercises, I definitely hear an alien sound inside that word: it is rather [júizizhī] or even [juízizhī]. Is it right to assume that the first syllable in 桔子汁 has that [-i-] sound...

入聲韻母的"-p", "-t", "-k"是不是送氣音？就我聽起來，粵語和閩南語的入聲結尾似乎都是沒有送氣的，不過在粵語（沒有清濁之分）的拼音裡面，聲母的送不送氣是和國語/普通話一樣用b/p, d/t, g/k分別的，但入聲的韻母卻是用送氣音的p, t, k表示。想請問對這方面有研究的人它們到底是不是送氣音？或是「皆可」？

[『一億』與『疑義』以及『一支』與『義肢』中"i"的聲調，]我想請教一下這裡的各位在說話的時候這兩組詞的念法是否相同？ 我的情況是前後兩個『一』不但分別有二和四聲的音調變化，同時兩者又都只有輕聲的長度，和『疑』、『義』和其它的輕聲都有差異。我試過問幾個我的熟人，但他們好像原本都沒有意識到，聽到我這麼問之後才第一次聽說，所以也問不出原本到底有沒有下意識的念法差異，所以就來這裡發問了。

Based on what I've read so far, the Pinyin sequence "zh" is supposed to represent the voiceless unaspirated retroflex affricate, i.e. [ʈʂ], but in the word "zhōng" (as in "Zhōngguó"), my Chinese instructor pronounces it as the voiceless unaspirated alveolar affricate, i.e. [ts], represented by...

Hi again, for a while I've been having difficulty hearing the /ŋ/ sound at the end of words whose final letters are _ang (for example, 漂亮). I only perceive a weak realization of a normal /n/ sound, which is far from the way it should be pronounced, according to what I've been taught. Can you...

Hi, I have got the following questionair about Chinese knowledge: 下列词语的拼写正确的是： A.回复 huípú B.中医 zhōnɡ ī C.工夫 ɡōnɡfu D.棋子儿qízǐer 答案：C I thought the right answer would be D, instead. Could you explain me why it's not?

Dear friends, I've just heard a recording in which the same girl, almost in a row, pronounces the name Wang in two different ways: with initial /w/ sound and with initial /v/ sound. Am I going nuts? Thanks in advance, G.

Hello everyone, From what I have heard from the Internet resources, z consonant sounds like English j except when it is used with some vowels like u or standing alone like zi. I wonder does z in zuo sound more like English Z like the word zoo? For example, I listened to the word 工作 from Forvo...

「先生、先制」の発音についての質問です。 I have heard these two words and I think in the second the pitch falls in ”せい”　while in the first it falls in ”せん”. そうなんですか？ 宜しくお願いします。

Hi, does anyone happen to know why 窘, 瓊, and 兄 are spelled as jiong, qiong, and xiong in Pinyin, rather than jüong, qüong, and xüong? The funny part is that jiong, qiong, and xiong are listed under the Group -ü-, not Group -i- in the Pinyin Table (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin_table).

Hello all! I am beginning to study Mandarin and I have a question concerning the phonemic/allophonic status of the sounds written as "e" and "o" in pinyin. Many textbooks consider /e/ and /o/ distinctive (phonemes) and say that Chinese has the following vowels: /a, e, o, i, u, ü, and a dark...

I've heard before that えい　and おう are synonymous with えー　and おー. Is this true? Should せんせい　be pronounced like se, n, se, i or like se, n, seh? Also, are the answers to this question posted on Yahoo Answers correct? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090822142118AAEAsok I'm under...

I often hear that Japanese is exclusively pronounced syllable by syllable (あ, お, い) as opposed to diphthongs like in English (strain, plain, beat etc.). Is this really true? I certainly hear it in certain words. For instance, I can hear all the letters being pronounced individually in the name...

líng seems to be pronounced with a "y" inserted right after the "l". míng, on the other hand, does not. Can a native speaker confirm that there is indeed a hidden y in líng?

我一直认为，汉语拼音规定“二”的标注是er4，这是bullshit。“二”和“而”的发音难道一样吗？明明应该是ar4。 你们怎么看？

The sounds represented by the Pinyin symbols x and sh do not exist in English. If I were to substitute the sound represented by the English "sh" in, say, both "xī" and "shī", and there were no context of any sort, would I be perceived as having uttered "xī" or "shī"? In other words, is ʃ sound...

I've been studying mandarin phonology for a few years and there's one question that I haven't been able to answer just by looking it up. Does a word that begins with a null initial (i.e. a word that doesn't begin with a consonant) is it always pronounced with a glottal stop before it? Listening...

名词昵称通常会在后边加个儿字，像马儿、猫儿、狗儿等，人名则有青儿、蓉儿、过儿、靖儿等。儿字怎么念？是像“玩儿”那样和前面的音连在一起，还是想“儿歌”那样独立成音？

大家好！ Do Chinese people sometimes pronounce words such as 妈妈 or 那个 with un unvoiced m or n? It often seems to me that they do. The only time I have noticed someone saying 妈妈 with a voiced m, it was to imitate a foreign accent. Or may it be a regional feature? Here in Italy most Chinese people we...

So in this sentence,　ゆうむら家の３人は、半年前にこの家を購入し、転居してきた。 この家を is pronounced as "kono yo" as opposed to "kono ie o". And this phrase,　あんたは一人でこの家から学校に通っている。 この家 is pronounced as "kono ye" as opposed to "kono ie". So my question is, is this normal pronounciation for 家 when Japanese people talk...

Hi! In this thread it's been mentioned that the word zhou1 is pronounced as zou1 by some. I wonder how common is it to de-retroflex the consonants zh, ch, sh, r in Mandarin (I ask specifically about Mainland Mandarin, not the Taiwan variety, which doesn't use the retroflex much)? When do you do...

音乐 vs 录音 Do Mandarin speakers insert a semi-vowel sound before the yin in luyin to help tie it to a preceding vowel? This semivowel sound should not be present in the yin of yinyue, although the Pinyin spelling may suggest such a pronunciation.