Anyone else have trouble distinguishing between retroflex initials?

Think it is a regional thing - those sounds are not very clear in Taiwan, from what I remember. Sichuanese doesn't distinguish - in Sichuan four and ten sound almost exactly alike and when you add the complication of the second tone falling instead of rising it's common to hear someone saying si4 as they make the hand signal for ten.

Maybe if I live here long enough I'll have the ability to distinguish someday, but for now I just use context and hand signals to figure it out.

haha, it is rather annoying. Especially when they claim to not understand my pronunciation of some words...
but how does one get 'huan' from 'fan'  ...
 She was asking for a raincoat or something and it sounded like:

wu mei wu 'eung' yi yi.. instead of 有没有用雨衣

Though if you wanted to hear a horrible language (they admit to it) listen to 福州话 Fuzhou hua...

which reminds me that yu and yi get mixed up a lot too.

andrew_c, since so many Chinese do fine without them, they (retroflex initials) seem pretty much optional.  As learners we need to stick to Mandarin as taught, but that all goes out the door where native speakers are concerned.

The retroflex consonants "zh, sh, ch" gradually developed characteristically in norther dialects, Mandarin included, after the 11th century, perhaps because of the influence of northern ethnic languages.

...............上............张
普通话 shang .....zhang
上海话 ssaang......zang
台湾话 siong........tiong
潮州语 zion..........ziang
客家语 song.........dzong
广东话 seung........jeung

changye, I seem to recall reading (perhaps one of your posts) that some believe the retroflex consonants came from the Manchus... or was it Mongols?

Hi tvan,

You have a good memory. I almost forgot it. I heard before that 儿化 in Mandarin came from Manchurian (满族语), but some scholars say it’s originated in Mongolian (蒙语) pronunciations. As for 翘舌音 (retroflex consonants), some people say they appeared because of the influence of northern ethnics such as Hsiung-nu (匈奴).

I don’t know if there is the accepted theory, but at least you can say ancient Chinese got influence by northern ethnic people and languages. Otherwise, it’s difficult to explain why only northern dialects pronunciations changed so drastically in the past one thousand years, while ancient sounds are relatively well preserved in southern dialects.

Hi Tvan,

Are there regions in China where Mandarin is the first dialect/language of the region and has been so for more than a few generations that speaks in this way?

Most people I encounter who speak this way, are not native speakers of Mandarin, and they learned it in school.  When they are at home with their family they speak Cantonese or Shanghainese or some variant of those dialects/languages.  So it seems that they have disregarded the idea that: "As learners we need to stick to Mandarin as taught, but that all goes out the door where native speakers are concerned."

Based on my experience, a more descriptive statement is "As foreigners we need to stick to Mandarin as taught, but that all goes out the door when you are Chinese, in which case you can speak Mandarin in a way that often bares little resemblance to the standard (putonghua) or the way in which native speakers, i.e., Northerners, speak".

I hear it from 南方人, in particular people from Shanghai and its vicinity  and Guangzhou. I find it frustrating as well.  I'm trying to just get used to it considering how widespread it is.  These days for fun I will 跟南方朋友说南方话 "gen nanfang pengyou suo nanfang hua"  They don't seem to notice/care once I start doing this.  But I still get confused.  I recently got totally thrown off guard when I kept hearing "a dirty ticket" 一脏票 when my friend really meant 一张票.

Does anyone else think that these disregarded sounds are the most essential sounds in making Mandarin sound like Mandarin?

I just remembered, my friend who grew up in Guangzhou, can fully pronounce these sounds, but has told me that to him, and I guess other people in Guangzou, it sounds pretentious.

To compare to English, at least American English, it would be the difference between pronouncing the word "poem" with one syllable, or pretentiously like  "po-em" with two syllables.

andrew_c, I think we're probably both getting at the same thing.  While certainly not a linguist, it seems to me that languages often have a standard form that is taught; however, native speech almost always varies from this "center," particularly Chinese.

Even as non-native speakers, I believe that, as one becomes more advanced, it is proper to deviate from standard Mandarin.  I often mix Cantonese in with my Mandarin when speaking with friends.  Probably Sushan mixes in Sichuanese, and John mixes in Shanghaiese.  You don't want to do it in a Chinese class, and you'll get frowns from the purists.  However, I think it's perfectly natural and, if you do it well and understand others when they do it, you've just taken your language to another level.  My opinion.

andrew_c, there is a saying/俗语 in Chinese that I can't recall, but that translates roughly as, "There's nothing uglier than a Cantonese speaking Mandarin".

What's Ubuntu?  Sounds like an obscure African tribal dialect.

Ubuntu is a linux-based  operating system.

As for the complication with the retroflex initials... I don't find that the hardest bit of living in the south. I find the replacing of "h" and "f" pronunciations or 'L' and 'R' (sometimes even 'N') is a lingual boundary that is really irritating to overcome. Though I am quite in tune with it now.

I refer to your aforementioned '南方话' as "普通fua" as it is called that many times around here.
Examples:

咴常好(hui chang hao) instead of 非常好
词换  (ci huan) instead of 吃饭
你冷不冷做这个事情 (leng by leng)  instead of 你能不能。。etc.
喽 (lou) instead of 肉 (rou)
--As a whole sentence--
hui ji hui hui, hui lai hui qu. instead of 飞机会飞，回来回去


Ah the list goes on and on.

Good points.

About Ubuntu, it's an operating system, the interesting name is explained here.

wuansen:  Wow, I'll stop complaining.  What I have experienced is nothing.

*speak    (editing isn't working for me since a recent Ubuntu update)