Spelling pronunciations, instructed pronunciations
In English, spelling pronunciations have a long history, sometimes of bitter conflict. I recall a grade school teacher who insisted that “often” be pronounced with /t/ in the middle (ignoring the obvious phonetic parallel to soft->soften). She was not the only one. This spelling pronunciation has spread to the point that some people — including my own brother, 10 years younger than me — pronounce it that way naturally.
In Mandarin it’s more difficult to call something a spelling pronunciation, because of course the characters give only, at most, a hint about how they should be pronounced. Still, the language is rife with words that are “supposed to be” pronounced one way, yet are almost always pronounced another way.
In my mind the easiest example is 谁, which is almost always pronounced as shéi, at least around Beijing where I am. Yet the “proper” pronunciation is shuí, a pronunciation I’ve heard only in the context of teachers instructing students in a very formal way.
For Mandarin, then, I think it would be fair to create a category of “spelling pronunciation” or maybe “instructed pronunciation” that is distinct from words whose pronunciation varies by region. A pronunciation would only be considered an instructed pronunciation if
- It is listed as the pronunciation of a word in standard Mandarin (普通话) dictionaries
- We can find no significant group of speakers who pronounces the word that way in everyday speech
Keeping Criteria 2 would make Mandarin Spelling Pronunciation a small, tidy group of words well-distinguished from the enormous body of words whose pronunciation varies from dialect to dialect.
This all comes up because of a comment my friend made the other day as we were working on a translation together. For 他的演讲很有说服力 (tā de yǎnjiǎng hěn yǒu 说服力 = “His speech was very persuasive”) I used the pronunciation shuōfúlì for 说服力. My friend interjected:
“Did you know that the pronunciation’s supposed to be shuìfúlì, I mean in standard Mandarin? No one does it any more, because everybody misread shuō for so long that it’s kind of become that.”
It would be a great example if he’s right — a spelling pronunciation that has actually become the default after years of (mis)use. Potentially that would make shuìfúlì an Instructed Pronunciation.
But I’m not entirely sure he’s right. In the dictionaries at hand: ABC Dictionary and the C-E Dict both list only the shuōfúlì pronunciation; Pop-up Chinese’s Adsotrans (installed on my Pleco) has only shuìfúlì. Google’s IME takes either pronunciation typed in for the Pinyin…
Well, maybe. In the meantime: anyone have good candidates for Instructed Pronunciation besides 谁?
The obvious candidate is 什么 = “she(n)me”, where the n is only pronounced when breaking the characters apart for teaching purposes.
I can’t add much to 说服力, I’d just like to add that of(t)en drove me crazy when I was learning English – I’d hear it one way and they’d pronounce it without the ‘t’, and I’d be thinking “okay, this time I heard it clearly! Now I know how to say it!” and the next time they’d say it differently again.
According to my dictionary, it’s shuōfú. Can anybody come up with a source that says shuìfú?
Sougou IME, upon typing shuifu, gives “说(shuō)服” as the 4th option, and they wouldn’t do that if there weren’t a significant amount of people who pronounced it that way.
Randy, the point is that nobody is saying it, but “properly” it should be pronounced that way.
Also, note that the ABC dictionary says:
>> 33 说(F說) [shuō] say, speak [shuì] try to persuade
So, shuì would make more sense, logically speaking. All the words that are given as examples for 说:shuì are listed as having variant pronunciations with shuō.
@smyth: That’s preparatory assimilation, so I think that doesn’t count.
血 (xuě) might count, but I’m such a Chinese Language prescriptivist, correcting people when they pronounce it like that, that I can’t really be a trusted source of these things.
@Randy: Adsotrans has shuìfú (as mentioned in post, but maybe not clearly). Just because the IME has it doesn’t mean anyone says it that way, does it? It might be that people type it that way cuz it’s an Instructed Pronunciation a la 谁 shui, right?
@Smyth: she(n)me is an interesting case. I agree you never hear the N, but that’s because of a phonetic assimilation/melding that occurs. Kind of parallel to the way MBA and NBA actually have the same sound unless you’re being weirdly super-careful.
That’s the easy answer anyway. The harder one is why we say it’s pronounced shén in the first place, since the only place it seems to appear is together with “me” in shénme. So it doesn’t really have much life of its own. Maybe someone with better historical background than me can weigh in on this.
@Randy, I forgot to refresh and didn’t see your followup. 血 (xuě) is one of my favorites, since around Beijing xuě is the common pronunciation but even some Beijingers still insist that it’s “supposed to be” xiě or xuè (I can’t remember which). So what do you prescribe for people and what possesses you to do that?
And if you hear someone saying /ɒftən/, you can say “/ˈlɪstən, ju ˈmʌstənt prəˈauns ɪt ðæt wei/”
I prescribe that it is xiě when alone, and xuè in compounds, like it is in my dictionary.
But I do have two northeast dialect Chinese dictionaries that have xuě in compounds.
文林 ｆｏｒ 说 ｇｉｖｅｓ： 说(F說) [shuō] say, speak [shuì] try to persuade ; 游说
游说[-說] yóushuō* v. persuade !ci 1016411687|See also yóushuì
!ci 1016411687|游说[-說] yóushuì* v. go lobbying/canvassing !ci 1016412269|See also yóushuō
Zdic gives you the pronunciations shuō， shuì (and yuè) – where shuō is speak, shuì is persuade.
(http://zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE8ZdicAFZdicB4.htm)
Also interesting that the 说文 entry list two different 反切 pronunciations for 说 – “失爇切。又，弋雪切”.
I’d like to add that I also hear people saying ‘nuanhe’ for 暖和 (nuanhuo) and jiaose for 角色 (juese) ALL the time.
As for 谁, I’ve found the shui2 pronunciation is not so uncommon in the south, particularly around Hangzhou. My girlfriend (who sometimes merges retroflexes and alveolars, and has r/l confusion) uses this pronunciation, as do several of my Hangzhou friends. Unless they were being extra careful around the foreigner.
@GAC: Fascinating. So I guess shui2 will have to renounce its candidacy for the Instructed Pronunciation position after all. So when you say they’re “extra careful” does that mean they then say “shei2”?
@Max: I meant to express earlier my heartfelt empathy for your of(t)en experience. This situation — native speakers saying you should do one thing but doing another — was part of what inspired me to start the Beijing Sounds blog.
@Stz
Oh, sorry, I wasn’t so clear. I mean, I think shui2 is a common dialect pronunciation there, but it could be that they are being very careful to use the “correct” pronunciation for me. I have had friends who seemed to be using more formal language with me or degrade their own dialect pronunciations because they thought I should learn “standard” Mandarin.
@GAC. I see. So you’re not sure whether it’s the shui2 of “super formal register” fame, or really a dialect pronunciation. I *have* had people do the shui2 thing with me too, I mean very clearly speaking the sentence “properly” for the foreigner. But usually they’ll get over it after a sentence or two once they realize we can actually communicate in normal speech. If you’re hearing it all the time, I’d guess it’s more likely a genuine way of speaking.
I recall overhearing a conversation on a bus, years ago, between two people preparing for the Pǔtōnghuà exam. They were working through a list of commonly mispronounced words – testing each other – and one of them was as shocked as I was when her friend announced that 馄饨 should be pronounced húntun, not húndun.
On an almost related note, can anyone shed any light on how widely 熟 is pronounced as shóu?
@syz:
Haha, thanks, I appreciate it! I’m also enjoying Beijing Sounds, and it’s helping me a lot! Thank goodness I’m over these problems in English now (for the most part)… I really hope I’ll be able to say that about Mandarin some day. At any rate, keep up the good work! Tell me when you get to the Wudaokou area some time, I’d like to buy you a coffee or something.
@Sima: 馄饨 reminds me of 糊涂, which locally is pronounced húdu at least as often as it is pronounced hútu, the “proper” way.
熟 I hear mostly shóu here (guessing 80-90%), but shú a not insignificant amount either. I think it actually depends on context, but I’d have to pay a lot more attention to figure out what the context is.
Just remembered another parallel from English. Most dictionaries list the pronunciation of “mauve” as /moʊv/, but for my money I’d say most Americans would give it a (spelling?) pronunciation that rimes with “suave”.
I just asked a classful of student’s parents (16 parents) how they pronounce 说服, and all but two said shuìfú. The two who said shuōfú said that shuōfú isn’t standard; the standard is shuìfú.
In the 现代汉语词典 (Contemporary Chinese Dictionary), only shuōfú is given. 说 (shuì) is listed with the meaning of “pursuade” with only one example given: 游说.
BTW, I take putonghua to be a prescriptive dialect, and I take 现代汉语词典 to be the primary standard of this prescription. I do accept that there are other dictionaries that might also be accepted prescriptive references, and I also accept that there are fuzzy areas here and there in the putonghua prescription.
I have a conversation partner who is from northern China, near Dalian, and the first time we met I was stymied by her use of shuí. I prodded her about it, and she was actually surprised that shéi was the reading I was familiar with. Since then I’ve either stopped noticing when she says shuí, or she’s been using shéi; I’m not really sure which is the case.
Understanding her has been a real challenge because she confuses s/sh, c/ch, etc. (what’s the technical term for that?). I’m not sure if it’s regional, or because she grew up in a Korean-speaking household (in China).
SYZ,
I’d guess it would be well over 90% around here for shóu on its own – 熟悉 would, I think, very likely be shú.
As for mauve rhyming with suave, that’s just sick. What are you people doing to my precious language?!
@Duncan: I was a bit surprised to read your comment on the pronunciation of 角色, since I was always taught that jiǎosè is the Instructed Pronunciation of this word, with juésè being the popular reading. But according to the 教育部 dictionary, the standard Taiwanese 國語 pronunciation of 角色 is actually juésè, 又音 jiǎosè. Interesting.
@Sima: In Taiwanese Mandarin, shú tends to be used exclusively by older speakers, but will still be widely understood. The younger generation seems to use only shóu, however.
For what it’s worth, I was always taught that shuìfú is indeed the “proper” pronunciation of 說服, with shuōfú being a more recent reading. The reading shuì seems to go back all the way to Old Chinese. Schuessler 2007’s entry for 說 says:
shuō 說 (sjwat) LH suat, OCM *lhot
‘Explain, excuse’ [Lun], ‘speak’ [Shi].
>> shuì 說 (sjwaiC) LH suas, OCM *lhots
‘To exhort’ [Meng].
[<] exoactive (?) of shuo "說 (sjwat) *lhot (§4.3).
In much the same way, the "proper" pronunciation of 說苑 (an early Chinese book) is shuìyuàn, as far as I know.
I just asked a classful of student’s parents (16 parents) how they pronounce 说服, and all but two said shuìfú. The two who said shuōfú said that shuōfú isn’t standard; the standard is shuìfú.
In the 现代汉语词典 (Contemporary Chinese Dictionary), only shuōfú is given. 说 (shuì) is listed with the meaning of “pursuade” with only one example given: 游说.
BTW, I take putonghua to be a prescriptive dialect, and I take 现代汉语词典 to be the primary standard of this prescription. I do accept that there are other dictionaries that might also be accepted prescriptive references, and I also accept that there are fuzzy areas here and there in the putonghua prescription.
@Aaron: One non-technical name (in Chinese) for s/sh, c/ch confusion is 平射/翘舌问题. People with this problem don’t differentiate between alveolar fricatives and retroflex fricatives (or alveolo-palatal fricatives and retroflex fricatives). Usually this manifests itself in the person never using retroflex fricatives.
SYZ, I think you need to draw a distinction between pronunciations of words/morphemes that differ from what is listed in the standard Pǔtōnghuà dictionaries, and pronunciations that seem to have been influenced by the written form of a character. (In some cases the two categories overlap, of course.) The latter situation is more analogous to English spelling pronunciations.
There are two scenarios that can lead to the latter situation. One is a scenario in which a character is used to write two different morphemes with two different pronunciations (i.e. a pòyīn zì 破音字). The example that we’ve seen in the discussion is 說 being used to write both shuō ‘speak’ and shuì ‘persuade’. If one of those morphemes occurs with much higher frequency than the other, there will be a natural tendency for the written character to be associated with that pronunciation, in this case shuō. People who then see 說服 in written form will be likely to read it as shuōfú instead of shuìfú, either because they are not familiar with the spoken form, or because they assume the spoken form is in error. If people read 會計 as huìjì (do they ever?) it would be an identical process.
The second scenario is one in which a character is pronounced by relying on its phonetic element. This is more likely to happen with rare or unfamiliar characters. (And it’s a mistake that adult learners of Chinese are also likely to make!) That’s even more analogous to spelling pronunciations in English. (I can’t seem to bring an example to mind, but I’m sure other readers of this blog can supply them.)
I think the situation with 誰 shéi/shuéi is different–it’s of the first type. Often this kind of thing is the result of dialectal variation and/or irregular changes in pronunciation over time. It’s very common for such changes to occur in the pronunciation of high-frequency grammatical terms (particles, pronouns, question words), which often become phonologically reduced.
Sometimes the changes in pronunciation can be traces by looking at dictionary pronunciations over a long period of time. Sometimes what may strike us as an artificial formal pronunciation is simply a remnant of an older standard, still preserved in earlier dictionaries and perpetuated by teachers.
Great topic! I recently had a discussion with a Chinese friend over exactly the same issue. We shared a prescriptivist professor for our Critical Discourse Analysis class who insisted that we all pronounce 说服 as shui4fu2 because that was the correct pronunciation. (Yes, there are still champions for this particular pronunciation out there!)
The words we were talking about, though, were 秘鲁 (Bi4lu3), the transliteration of “Peru,” and 泌尿学 (mi4niao4xue2), meaning “urology.”
These two cases are interesting because (1) they illustrate the exact two cases laid out by Zev Handel above, and (2) they involve confusion between the same two sounds, centering on the character.
In the case of “Peru,” the 秘 in 秘鲁 (Bi4lu3) is commonly known as the 秘 in 秘密 (mi4mi4), and so you often hear the “Mi4lu3” pronunciation for “Peru” (no one cares that it’s supposed to be a transliteration, obviously).
For “urology,” you hear “bi4niao4xue2” for 泌尿学 (mi4niao4xue2) because of the 必 component, which can be seen exerting its phonetic influence in characters like 毖 [bì], 佖 [xú] [bì], 咇 [bié] [bǐ] [bì], 妼 [xū] [bì], 珌 [bì] [biè], 苾 [bì] [bié]. None of these characters is terribly common, though, so I’m guessing the phonetic influence comes mainly directly from 必, which would explain why all the “mi4” readings are overlooked (like the two in 秘密).
Oops, I meant to go back and replace “, centering on the character” with “mi4 and bi4.”
@John: Fascinating! Thanks for sharing!
Hm.. If someone had told me a couple of years ago that one day i’d be ‘fascinated’ by phonetic components in ‘urology’ in Chinese… tz…
I have to agree with Max on that one. Fascinating indeed!
Great examples, John!
“The harder one is why we say it’s pronounced shén in the first place, since the only place it seems to appear is together with “me” in shénme. So it doesn’t really have much life of its own. Maybe someone with better historical background than me can weigh in on this.”
I’ve noticed shen crops up alone in Cantonese a fair bit (given the paucity of my Cantonese, I have mainly noticed this on restaurant menus). This doesn’t help us much with the Mandarin question, but it does point to some historical divergence from the good old gudai days.
给予 on the page is not infrequently read gěiyǔ.
There are tons of classical phrases whose variant or archaic readings for certain characters tend to trip up commentators from time to time. Remember the drubbing Yu Qiuyu took over reading 仁者乐山 as rén zhě lè shān instead of rén zhě yào shān? His response was sensible: “There are many archaic pronunciations that have substantially changed since the May 4 New Culture Movement…it’s fine if you want to use archaic pronunciations, but you also ought to allow people to use contemporary readings as well.” But it didn’t go over too well…
Chengyu dictionaries will often warn against certain misreadings, which implies that those pronunciations are fairly common.