User Comments - BillJefferys

Posted on: Ways to Describe Things that are "Inside"

@eupnea63355

I see that your reasonable question hasn't been answered:

"Listening to the lesson, I realized when I heard "shui3 zhong3" that I really don't know the difference in the pronunication of "xue3" and "shui3" 雪 and 水。"

The best way, I think, to look at this is to think first about the quality of the vowel that follows the consonant. In 'xue', the 'u' is actually umlauted, as in German, for example. It is pronounced with the lips pursed, and as a consequence, the pronounciation of the consonant in front of it is also affected, since if you are pursing your lips to make the vowel (sounds like English 'oo' except the pursing of the lips alters it to a sound that doesn't exist in English), you will find that the articulation, the position of the tongue, of the sibilant consonant 'x' is moved forward in your mouth. In 'shui', the vowel cluster is pronounced like English 'way', and when you pronounce the sibilant constant 'sh', the tongue will naturally curl back to the middle or back of the hard palate, making the vowel much "harder" than 'x'.

The articulation point of the tongue for the English 'sh' is actually intermediate between that for 'shui' and that for 'xue'. So I'd recommend figuring how you say the English 'sh', then curling your tongue further back on the hard palate to say 'shui', and moving it close to the teeth when saying 'xue'.

Note that similar comments apply to the consonant pairs 'zh' and 'j' and 'ch' and 'q'. The first in each of these pairs is pronounced with the tongue in back (retroflex). The second with the tongue close to the teeth. And you will find that the vowels following each of these are also pronounced back or front.

Download the ChinesePod pinyinchart app. Listen carefully to the various examples. This may help.

Posted on: Thank You Note

Those who are interested in learning to read (and write) handwritten Chinese, including various cursive forms, might be interested in Fred Fang-yu Wang's Chinese Cursive Script: An Introduction to Handwriting in Chinese. Wang was a professor at Yale and produced quite a lot of educational material. The title notwithstanding, the book covers much more than cursive.

Another fun book, which reproduces a number of Chinese restaurant menus, both printed and handwritten, is James McCawley's The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters. It features an extensive menu-oriented dictionary.

Warning: The most important drawback of both these books is that they use traditional characters only; however, it should be noted that many of the simplified characters used on the mainland are based on cursive forms.

Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!

@changye

I think the "scholarly" word for '生词' would be 'neologism'

Bill

Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!

@cassielin

Remember, this is an "ellie" lesson. It's going to be hard for most of the people who really need these comments to read something that is entirely in hanzi.

Posted on: It's cold, wear more clothes!

When I first visited China in 1982, there was a Professor Feng in my department, but he didn't pronounce his name to rhyme with 'lěng' (冷). Instead, he pronounced it to rhyme with 'sòng' (送).

I noted that in this lesson, Jenny pronounced 'fēng' (风) to rhyme with 'sòng' rather than the way she pronounced the word 'lěng'. I think this is an interesting difference, and worth note. It illustrates possibly a regional difference between the folks that invented the pinyin system and the way some people pronounce things.

I noted that Ken seemed somewhat conflicted in his pronounciation, between before and after he heard Jenny say the word!

Comments are invited

Posted on: Fruit Basket of Cause-Effect

I have seen '果' used by itself to indicate a result (it's been a long time, but I think it was substituting for '结果').

This may be a literary thing; I don't think I've ever heard it in spoken Chinese.

Posted on: Away on Business

My Chinese teacher many years ago remarked that the various Chinese dialects are indeed as different from each other as European languages that we consider distinct, like French and Italian.

The common writing system (hanzi) does hold them together more closely than the European languages are, though there are characters that exist in Cantonese that don't appear in putonghua, for example. Perhaps this is part of the reason that the Chinese dialects have been classified as such by Westerners.

Posted on: Away on Business

It would have been helpful if the discussion had mentioned the fact that the character '差' has several pronunciations: 'chai1' as in this lesson, but it is more commonly 'cha' in first or fourth tone, meaning something falling short of some standard or goal.

Maybe this was not mentioned because as "newbie", students aren't really learning these subtleties; but you can't make real progress in Chinese unless you know that characters can have alternative readings that can be completely unrelated.

Posted on: Pinyin The Final R Sound

@John, thanks for mentioning International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Last Saturday, I was celebrating it fully, but didn't make the connection to erhua. I love your new word, 'piratify.'

Those that like erhua or r's in any form should take a look at the Pirate's Ergonomic Keyboard.

Posted on: Tone Change Rule: Yi '一'

@Mclarty

Chinese 'ch','q', etc. For example, Chinese 'ch' is pronounced farther back on the hard palate than English 'ch'. You have to curl the tongue back to the middle of the hard palate to pronounce Chinese 'ch', whereas in English, it is pronounced with the tongue more forward. The technical term is 'retroflex'. 'ch' is regularly followed by back vowels (e.g., 'i', 'u' as in 'boo') that are pronounced in the back of the mouth. On the other hand, 'q' is pronounced with the tongue more forward than the English 'ch'. This is because it is followed by front vowels that encourage this position (e.g., 'i' [ee as in 'see'], 'ü'). Vowels following 'q' etc are almost "palatalized" in Chinese pronounciation.

I think that understanding how to pronounce the vowels after these consonants is a key to understanding how to articulate those consonants. So I recommend listening to the ChinesePod podcasts and paying attention to the difference in the vowels. This will help you with the consonants.

@mudphud, who asks:

yi plus neutral stays first tone, yes?

e.g., 一个人 yi1 ge ren2.

My inclination is to pronounce 'yi' in this sentence as second tone. Even if you pronounce 'ge' in neutral tone, it's really fourth and that will carry through. But I'm not a native speaker and I will defer to those that are.