I think probably the inventor of Pinyin was thinking about [ioŋ] only...
Many people pronounce in that way, for example, who live in Taiwan.
Would this person's pronunciation of 翁 weng be in the minority then? (Sacat, under 汉语) I think he is pronouncing "weng" to rhyme with "feng", right? (but it looks like it officially rhymes with 东 according to the chart?)
I'm sorry all computers I can use now don't audio cards so I can't check it for you.
I think it's possible to pronounce "weng" to rhyme with "feng", especially when the "w" sounds like /u/(longer) rather than /w/.YangMuye said:
I've heard many prople pronouncing eng after b/p/m/f/w as ong, and some are especially common when singing, like 梦meng and 风feng. However this generally(with some exceptions) gives me a sense of South.
You are right on the money. The following is a possible dialogue in Taiwan:
This makes a tiny difference for me. A pure -i- would be classified as 开口, whereas y or iy (I guess that's what you described as something in between) would be 合口. 兄 is classified as 合口 according to the ancient rhyme table. In other words, there seems to be an underlying ü there that makes xiong belong to the -ü- group, not -i- group.
[Jiong, qiong, xiong] = [jüong, qüong, xüong]: they are allophones.
.Sorry, I'm not able to answer it. I actually have the same question. All I know is that there exist some variations as Tarlou and others have kindly pointed out for me. But I'm still hoping to find out what the "standard" or the most common pronunciation is supposed to be.
I'm not clear what you mean by that. Both [ju qu xu] and [jiu qiu xiu] exist in pinyin and they represent 2 different sets.
Why not? Another person may ask why "ung" and not "ong".
)
I meant those people who designed the Pinyin system might have though thatI'm not clear what you mean by that. Both [ju qu xu] and [jiu qiu xiu] exist in pinyin and they represent 2 different sets.
Why not? Another person may ask why "ung" and not "ong".
(By the way "ung" was used in some earlier romanisation system, and the new regime (PRC) probably wanted to differ
The [jiu qiu xiu] set, which sounds like 贛語 (e.g., 南昌 dialect) rather than Mandarin, is a mystery to me as well. Intuitively, I would have spelled jiou 灸, qiou 丘, and 休 xiou, rhyming with English yow.
I think I got the answer: You actually move your lips from an unrounded position to a pursed one during the process of pronouncing 兄. It is different from mine. My lips are rounded (合口) when or even before the first sound comes out of my mouth for 兄, and they are kept pursed till the end of the word. It becomes obvious now that the spelling Xiong is based on a northern dialect (e.g., Hebei and perhaps Beijing).
But do your lips ever become as round as when you say ü as a vowel (e.g. 玉 yù) or as a glide (e.g. 月 yuè)? Then they would have to unround a bit to pronounce the -ong.
When I pronounce xiong yong 汹涌, my lips are rounded through out the two syllables.
This not only clarified iong is rounded, but also answered my previous question: (if they have wanted to make a compact scheme,) why didn't they just choose ung?
My point was about the degree of lip-rounding, and whether it is phonemically specified or a phonetic effect.
I still have a doubt. for example, if someone asked me to pronounce 涌 in a very drawn-out, exaggerated way, I would come up something like [iː(j)oːŋ], with no rounding at the beginning, and not [yː(ɥ)oːŋ], with rounding throughout.
I think it's a personal preference. I will definitely use the rounded one.
That is how I pronounce 汹涌 as well.
Same here.
The degree of roundness is identical for me in 兄, 玉, 月 except that my lips change from a pursed position to a stretched one during the pronunciation of 月 but they make little changes during the pronunciation of 兄 or 玉.
I doubted it at first, but after Tarlou, who speaks the Hebei dialect as far as I know, said there is a change in lip position during the articulation, I was convinced that /xiong/ indeed exists in a northern dialect.
To avoid confusion between u with n? That seems to be a very weak justification for such a big decision (That is a comment for 汉语拼音方案委员会, not for you, YangMuye. You provided a reliable source, thank you.)
The opposite here. I would do [yː(ɥ)oːŋ], not [iː(j)oːŋ]. Tarlou seems to have confirmed that [ioŋ] exists in 普通话. And I can testify that [yoŋ] is prescribed in 國語. Apparently both ways exist in Mandarin. Despite the dialectal differences, the underlying representation of that phoneme seems to be ù, as -iong (or yong) is classified under the ù category both in the Pinyin table and in the Zhuyinfuhao table.
In fact Pinyin was originally designed to be a writing system to replace Hanzi, but such plan eventually was abandoned. So you can see why: there really are some people who would write u and n as almost the same(a и-ish appearance), such as if they are writing really fast. Any possibility that may cause such a great confusion shuold be eliminated.
