Aspiration: The Key to an Authentic Chinese Accent.

Hi xiaohu,

It’s a very educational topic. I look forward to reading your future postings. Correct knowledge about phonetic symbols, regardless of kinds, is vital in learning languages, but at the same time, they are rather cumbersome to master.

At the very least, they are NOT an attractive part of learning Chinese. So you apt to forget the importance of phonetic symbols once you outgrow elementary steps and keep using them even without knowing correct pronunciations.

I agree with you on the importance of aspirations in Chinese. Actually, speaking Chinese with correct pronunciations is a somewhat “fatiguing” job, which often requires you to aspirate, raise the tongue, tighten your lips, and so on. 

I sometimes get tired when speaking Chinese simply because of these busy mouth movements. The Japanese language, my mother tongue, is very easy in terms of pronunciations. Japanese is an energy-saving language, just like TOYOTA cars.

I personally think that Wade-Giles is as sloppy as Hanyu pinyin. Conversely speaking, Hanyu pinyin is not so bad compared to Wade-Giles. Contradicting? What I don’t like about Wade-Giles are their “consonants symbols”, such as “ch” and “p”.

In W-G, 半 is transcribed as “pan”, while it’s “ban” in Hanyu pinyin. I love the latter. The “ch” is more disastrous. The pinyin “zh”, “ch”, “j”, and “q” are all expressed by “ch” (and an aspiration mark) in W-G. Which is better for 赵, “zhao” or “chao”? I like the former one in Hanyu pinyin.

见 (jian) becomes “chien” in W-G. I just can’t accept this. As you can see, Wade-Giles is also as confusing as Hanyu pinyin. The point is that you have to learn tacit agreement hiding behind phonetic symbols, in any romanization system.

Please keep on posting.

"In this sense, Hanyu pinyin "p" and English alphabet "p" share the same sound, which means you don't need to put an auxilialy symbol to emphasize aspiration, although the alphabet "p" is not necessarily always aspirated strongly."

I would disagree. As both you huibert said, (most dialects of) English aspirate p/t/k, and thus "p" in English and "p" in Pinyin are nearly identical. However, the point is that "b" in English and "b" in Pinyin are different; in English, "b" is voiced while in Pinyin, "b" is voiceless (it is actually written "p" in the IPA, while Pinyin/English "p" is written "p" followed by a superscript "h").

In many languages, such as French and Spanish, p/t/k are not aspirated and I imagine for them the Pinyin could be confusing since French/Spanish "p" = Pinyin "b". In this case, I would agree with the author in that Wade has a better system, since it acknowledges that the distinction between "p" and "b" in Chinese isn't a matter of voicing, as it might seem to English speakers, but rather of aspiration.

Some languages, such as Ancient Greek, actually distinguish between three series: 

[p t k] written pi, tau, kappa are the voiceless and unaspirated stops, e.g. "stop" in English or ba1 in Chinese

[pʰ tʰ kʰ] are the English/Chinese "p" "t" "k" and are written in Ancient Greek as phi, theta, chi, e.g. English "top" or Chinese ta1.

[b d g] (English "b" "d" "g", do not exist in Chinese) are written beta, delta, gamma, e.g. English "bat."

This error is also common for English learners of Spanish and French, who aspirate the unaspirated p/t/k of the learnt language.

For more information, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirated_consonant is quite extensive.

thanks Xiaohu,

very helpful.

my first misconception was that pinyin was designed for westerners to learn Chinese. It was actually developed to increase Chinese literacy. Here is an interview with the founder posted back in Feb by Phil. He is 102 now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/feb/20/zhaou.youguang.pinyin

very interesting topic xiaohu! I look forward you your future posts. My mandarin 101 teacher also talked a lot about this "puff of air" thing. It took me awhile but I'm just now starting to understand what its all about. Thanks for helping to clarify this topic.

Hi rjberki,

Let me explain a little about the history of romanization in China.

As you wrote, it gradually started to increase literacy rate in China around the end of the 19th century. The movement was stimulated not only by western notation systems but also by Japanese one. Some thought that Japan owes its successful modernization partly to the use of phonograms, Hiragana and Katakana, which led to the high literacy rate in Japan.

Later, especially after the May Fourth Movement (五四运动, 1919), romanization movements became rather radical in China. In short, not a few intelligentia tried to introduce romanization to completely eliminate Chinese characters. So, the introduction of Hanyu Pinyin, invented in 1950s, meant a first step toward complete abolition of Hanzi for radical activists including 毛泽东.

At the same time, conservationists tried to soothe extremists for the time being by introducing Hanyu pinyin. Of course, moderates actually had no intention to abolish Chinese characters. In the end, 周恩来 (Zhou Enlai) officially announced in 1958 that Hanyu pinyin are NOT substitutions of Chinese characters, but are only phonetic notations introduced to promote 普通话. 

What a great idea of a group, Xiaohu, and timely too. During my last classroom lesson, our regular teacher was off on training and her husband, who has a much heavier northern accent, stood in. We politely asked him to slow his speech down as most of us in the class were used to a more southern accent. He then gave us a lesson on the geography and history of spoken Chinese in China, explaining that the northern accent is actually closer to standard Beijing pronunciation, due to proximity with the capital, and that the southern way of speaking was actually heavily accented. What an insightful lesson it was!

Thank you for 'h' - I sound better already!

.

Hi huibert,

Thank you very much for the insightful and informative comment. That is just the information I've been wanting to know. Actually, I've been thinking about the name of my chubby dog, "Patty", since yesterday, and I've come to the conclusion today that the P in "Patty" is definitely aspirated when I call her.

Naturally, when my neighbors say "你家的小狗太胖(pang4)", this p is aspirated. In this sense, Hanyu pinyin "p" and English alphabet "p" share the same sound, which means you don't need to put an auxilialy symbol to emphasize aspiration, although the alphabet "p" is not necessarily always aspirated strongly. 

Thanks for the quick reaction.We seem to understand each other.

The problem is, of course, that our alphabet is a rather small collection of signs onto which we map an incredibly large number of distinctive sounds... Accidentally the English and Chinese p are very similar, but I, being Dutch have to make sure to say 胖 with a good clear pop on the p, otherwise I risk to be understood wrongly: 我的小狗很 棒,on the basis of the weak Dutch p. For Arabs this is even more difficult, since they have no p, only a 'b' sound. You know the joke: an Arab shouts: 'don't bark in front of my door', when someone has but a car in front of his house. And when I teach in the Arab world, they say: 'brofessor, we have a broblem'.

So forget about the letters and learn - first to hear and then to produce -  the sounds. The risk of pinyin is that it suggest that you can actually write the sounds. Directly connecting characters with sounds would be a way to avoid this, but most of us cannot do without the pinyin.

Just wanted to say hi and thanks for making this group. I don't have time to explore the discussion here so much yet as I just found the group and now I need to leave for work.

I really need this sort of discussion at this point in my learning. So thanks and talk to you all soon. :)

In the introductory note, it is said that aspiration doesn't exist in European languages. This is not correct. It does exist, at least in (British) English and German. One of the problems, actually, for Dutch people with speaking English and German is that the Dutch don't have the aspiration of the T and the K which are so typical of (British) English and German. When a Dutch person says 'tick', the English listener may hear 'dick', and when he talks about the German politician (from the past) Kohl, the German listen might hear 'gohl'. The difference: a strong puff of air after the T or K in English and German, an aspiration that is lacking in Dutch, causing this language to sound a bit weak and unarticulate. By the way, in old German the aspiration used to be written, by using the combination Th where we have T now.

So, saying that aspiration is a Chinese thing is just not true. The real problem, I think, is that it is different from the sort of aspiration we are familiar with in English and German, since it is combined with something else: the absence of the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants. In Dutch, German and English, the main difference between d and t, between b and p and so on, is the first being voiced and the second being voiceless. In German the voiceless sound is then also aspirated, whereas the aspiration is lacking in Dutch, French and Italian, for example. Chinese, don't really pay much attention to the voiced/voiceless difference. If I say 大 da4 and allow a litte bit of air to come between the d and the a, a Chinese person might hear 踏 ta4 or something like that.

Another difference is of course the place where the air comes from, and what the throat does, which is very well explained by the opening note. But to make my point once more, that aspiration does exist, just try to say 'populist party politics' with a strong Britisch accent. A series of explosions, if you do it right.