3Q
In the earlier post, Shurely Shome Mishtake, I talked about how I came to pronounce the Mandarin sounds, zh, ch, sh too far back in the mouth. This is basically not a good thing. But before moving on to just how those sounds ought to be produced, I’d first like to draw your attention to the Chinese dentals.
Many people will be aware that Chinese students of English initially have considerable difficulty with the two English dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/, the ‘th’ sounds in ‘thin’ and ‘then’. Indeed, many Chinese students are very aware of this, and use the humorous Chinglish abbreviation, 3Q (sān – Q = thank you).
The difficulty with these sounds is not simply that they don’t exist in Chinese. The real difficulty is that there’s a whole bunch of dental sounds in Chinese and some of them are really quite similar to the English sounds. For most Standard Mandarin speakers, the following sounds, written in Pinyin, are dental:
z, c, s, d, t, n, l
Of course, there can be some variation. But z, c, s are generally made with the tongue tip touching (or, in the case of s, near) the back of the lower and upper teeth. These can be classified in straightforward fashion as dentals. The usual description used in Chinese texts is 舌尖前 or front apical.
Diagram of Pinyin 's' from 普通话发音图谱*
The sound represented by s in Pinyin is a voiceless dental fricative. So it should hardly be surprising that it should seem an awful lot like /θ/, a voiceless dental fricative.
Have a look at this diagram of /θ/ from Daniel Jones’ An Outline of English Phonetics, page182.
If you try bringing your teeth together as you make a /θ/ (you don’t need to stick your tongue out when you do this), you’ll note that it’s quite hard to stop the sibilance creeping in.
The sounds represented in Pinyin as d, t, n, l are generally made a little higher, usually with tongue-tip contact on the back of the upper teeth and gum. Traditionally, these sounds have been classified as 舌尖中 or mid apical. I guess denti-alveolar is a reasonable description.
Diagram of Pinyin 'd' from 普通话发音图谱*
One can see that Pinyin d, lacking the plosive force of its English counterpart, might easily sound like /ð/ or possibly /z/.
Now, for the majority of native English speakers, /z/, /s/, /d/, /t/, /n/ and /l/ are made with the tongue tip at the alveolar ridge – no contact is made with the teeth. If an English speaker does make these sounds on the back of the teeth, he is usually described as having a lisp. Or, if you will, a liθp. Theta’s a wonderfully evocative letter, don’t you think?
For English speakers learning Chinese it seems pretty easy to ignore the fact they’re most likely making those seven dentals, Pinyin: z, c, s, d, t, n, l, on the alveolar ridge instead of the back of the teeth. Does it matter? I’d be interested to know how people feel about this. But I intend to argue that English speaking learners of Mandarin should indeed practise making these sounds against the teeth, early in their language studies.
In the next post we’ll look more closely at zh, ch, sh, r.
* The diagrams for Pinyin s and d are from 普通话发音图谱 (Pǔtōnghuà Fāyīn Túpǔ) by 周殿福 (Zhōu Diànfú) and 吴宗济 (Wú Zōngjì), published by 商务印书馆 (Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn). I hope to post on this beautiful little book at some point.
[…] “But before moving on to just how those sounds ought to be produced, I’d first like to draw your attention to the Chinese dentals.” “Many people will be aware that Chinese students of English initially have considerable difficulty with the two English dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/, the ‘th’ sounds in ‘thin’ and ‘then’. Indeed, many Chinese students are very aware of this, and use the humorous Chinglish abbreviation, 3Q (sān – Q = thank you).” [Sinoglot] […]
That book looks fun–I might have to get myself a copy.
To answer your question–I think most of the time it doesn’t matter too much. BUT, one of the few words I say that gets consistently misunderstood (for reasons other than tone) is tang. I’ve been puzzling over this for quite a while. People consistently hear me say chang with no clear context, even when I repeat myself. My best theory is that (for me anyway) in English, t gets pulled way to the back of the alveolar ridge before the low back vowel. I’ve tried substituting a full-on laminal dental and sometimes that gets understood correctly. I’ll have to try the apical dental and see how that goes. I’ll have to try it out for luan too.
Katie, snap.
I have had exactly the same thing with ‘tang’. I think it applies to some other ‘t’ syllables as well, but ‘tang’ is the one where it happens the most. My first reaction was that it was about plosion – the effect of English leading me to make too forceful a sound. But I’ve also noted that sometimes when speaking English to even highly competent Chinese English speakers they can mishear my English in a similar way. I’ve even noted students copying me and producing something which sounds like a /ts/.
I think a fair proportion of English speakers make an overly sibilant (leaky?) /t/, but I don’t think all English speakers do this. And this certainly doesn’t affect my /d/. Maybe the force of the airstream does come into it. Even when I make the pinyin ‘t’ on my teeth, if I force it, to my own ear it still sounds a little ch/ts. Anyway, generally speaking, the apical dental seems to work a little better, and getting away from the alveolar ridge ought to reduce the chances of it being misheard as ‘ch’.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one. I could see the “leakiness” before [i] especially, but [a] less so. I should poke around and see if I can find some VOT measures for Chinese (unless you happen to know them?)
Totally off-topic, isn’t the Daniel Jones picture a little odd? I’m pretty convinced I can’t make a real θ without contact with my upper teeth. Maybe in a super-unstressed position I might do it, but then I don’t think it’s very θ-like anymore.
If you’re getting in to voice onset, we could really do with someone like Zev to drop by.
I’ve found a paper (pdf) which may be of help, but don’t expect to have time to read through it properly for a couple of days.
As for the DJ diagram, his palatogram shows contact on the teeth all along the sides, but a clear gap at the incisors. It doesn’t seem that strange to me. Even if I make the sound with my tongue out, I think there’s a small gap between the surface of the tongue and the front two upper teeth.
The paper looks promising. If I get to it before you do I’ll let you know what it says. After a day or two of muttering to myself, I’m persuaded that I do sometimes say with my tongue behind my teeth and in that case there isn’t contact. But in the cases that it’s between my teeth, the contact is pretty light, but there’s definitely enough that I can feel it.
Oops, my th looked like an html tag and got eaten, apparently.
Ok, so the gist of it is that VOT is longer for voiceless unaspirated stops in Mandarin than in English … so whatever the reason is, that can’t be it.
Now, for the majority of native English speakers, /z/, /s/ (…) are made with the tongue tip at the alveolar ridge
I’m haven’t studied any phonetics formally, but this looks strange to me. I certainly pronounce /s/ and /z/ with the tip of my tongue behind my lower front teeth, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how to articulate an s with the tip of my tongue on the alveolar ridge without sounding like Sean Connery. No one has ever told me I have a lisp?
Interesting, Jeff. I think I’m on safe ground saying that the majority pronounce sounds these on alveolar ridge, but perhaps I over-state the lisp. Is it just those two, or do you place /d/ and /t/ there too?
With the tongue tip there, do you feel the blade coming very close to the ridge at the same time?
Right, I think for /s/ and /z/ the tongue blade is the primary articulator in English. In other words, the source of the noise should be putting the flat part of your tongue close to the alveolar ridge. The tip of my tongue also touches my bottom teeth when I say those sounds. /d/, /t/, /n/, and /l/ are pronounced with the tip of the tongue on the alveolar ridge.