6 responses to “Pinghua romanization”

1. Bruce says:

   March 16, 2015 at 10:11 pm

   Neat!

   I immediately understood a third of the recordings based on the dialect I learned in HK. For me, they are simply speaking a somewhat non-standard but charming Cantonese.

   You can see the impact of Mandarin vocabulary in sentences such as 今日是星期日, where 今日 is still used, but 是 — awkwardly for me — replaces the traditional 系.

   In example 2, it seems that the initial in 去 is that curious in-between sound, similar to what you find in Hunan and Japan, which is not quite “h” or “f”.

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   • SYZ / Steve says:

     March 17, 2015 at 12:06 am

     Great to hear from a canto perspective. I figured there should be a lot of similarities, but I know nothing about Cantonese, embarrassingly.

     I’ll keep an ear out for the h/f sound you’re talking about. Maybe I can get video of a word or two to look at articulation. I’ve got a bunch of recordings ready to round out this post (which is missing some phonemes). Hope to get it up in a few weeks. And beyond that there’s some tantalizing 上 / 下 flipping that I hope to say something intelligent about if I can just get it pinned down.

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2. Zrv says:

   March 22, 2015 at 1:45 pm

   Steve,
   What a fun project!

   It’s fabulous the way you’ve got the audio for each syllable isolated. Really helps.

   Although you say Binyang is classified as a Pinghua dialect, these samples really do sound like Yue in terms of phonology, syntax and lexicon, with some overlay from Mandarin (as Bruce noted). In fact it sounds a lot like a 四邑 dialect. The lateral fricatives are exactly in the same places you find them in Toisan (Táishān). I bet there’s one at the beginning of 先 too. Have you elicited a first-person plural pronoun yet? I’d be curious to know if it differs from the singular by tone only, or if there is a clear plural suffix on it.

   A few other things I noticed. There are velar /ng/ and palatal /ny/ initials, distinct from alveolar /n/. These are typically very hard for English and Mandarin native speakers to notice. The words for ‘five’ and ‘I’ start with /ng/. But ‘two’ and ‘sun’ (as in ‘Sunday’) start with /ny/. I would bet a significant amount of money that you can find minimal pairs for /n/ and /ng/. It’s possible that /ny/ is how /n/ comes out before /i/, but it might be contrastive.

   For 名 in ‘famous’, I heard a definite nasal ending, not /k/. It’s hard to tell if it’s really /ng/ or if it is just nasalization on the vowel. But the syllable as a whole is very similar to Mandarin ‘meng’. I also hear /ng/, not /n/ at the end of 宾阳. Same with 粽. As you say, unless you find a contrast with /n/, you could just use /n/ for all these sounds. But in fact you do have an /n/ in ‘pluck (guitar)’. And you don’t have any other words yet in which we’d expect to hear /n/ instead of /ng/. So keep looking for minimal pairs, like 名 vs. 民 and 正 vs. 真.

   You may find that a modified version of one of the Cantonese romanizations (like jyutping) may serve you better than starting with a pinyin-like romanization. You’ve definitely got a Cantonese-like short-a vs. long-a distinction (e.g. ‘1’ and ‘7’ /a/ vs. ‘8’ /aa/; 子 /ai/ vs. 正 /aai/. Using “e” for the short /a/ may not work because there is also a true /ei/ (in 水) distinct from /ai/ and /aai/.

   Tones are really hard not only because of the possibility of tone sandhi, but because they are seriously warped just by ordinary sentence intonation. The best way to try to isolate them is to set up a “carrier” sentence that will make your speaker say individual words in an identical intonational context.

   For example: give your speaker a word (like ‘water’). Then prompt him with “What word did the teacher say?” and have him respond “The teacher said the word ‘water’.” You can use this template for all sorts of words, and if your speaker is slow, even tone sandhi won’t be a problem. Be aware that you are quite likely to have 8 or 9 distinct tones (if you treat short tones with -p -t -k endings as distinct from the others).

   I hope you keep this up and keep posting. You’ll eventually start having very discrete questions that you can crowd-source (“Do the finals of these two words sound the same or different?”).

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3. Zrv says:

   March 22, 2015 at 1:48 pm

   BTW, I think the h/f sound Bruce was talking about in 去 is just a good old-fashioned velar fricative /x/. But that impression could be influenced by the fact that it comes after a -k at the end of 落. (But that’s what I hear in the full sentence, not in the individual sound you separated out for the syllable. This might be a case where the place you’ve split the audio for the two syllables is misleading, or a case where it is revealing. Need another sentence with 去 in it!

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4. Brian says:

   June 27, 2015 at 1:11 am

   A couple of observations, mostly about the word 弹.

   First, I hear a very conspicuous “creaky voice” or “glottalization” on all the words that are pronounced in that tone (阳平 — the words are 阳龙明弹) which helps to distinguish it from the tone of words like 在.

   Second, what is the initial consonant of 弹? It’s certainly a “d” not a “t,” which is different from both Mandarin and Cantonese. But this particular 弹 sounds particularly voiced. Is it the same initial as the “d” in a word like 单？

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5. John says:

   July 21, 2017 at 3:51 pm

   I’ve tried four different browsers and none of the audio will play, is there another way I can access it?

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