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Gulao -



Quote:

There are no voiced consonants in Chinese.

Can't be that great of a site, for all they neglect "r."



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owen -

No voiced consonants in chinese? There are at least 2 ('l' and 'r') - 2 more if we consider the
nasals ('n' and 'ng').
I suspect we might be quibbling over the details of morphological desciptors. Though it seems to
me if one is explaining the sound of chinese for the purpose of teaching an english speaker they
should use that persons linguistic framework to explain. In the final analysis all of these
statements 'this is voiced/unvoiced/aspirated/fricative/nasal/etc.' are arbitrary. I just think i
would get way further teaching someone to make an approximation of the chinese initial 'z' by
using 'dz' than 'tz'.










atitarev -

Agree about R, L, N and NG (adding M to the list) but they have no voiceless equialents and they
are voiced by their nature. By all means, Owen. I can't provide you another interesting link but
they were discussing how Chinese native speaker hears.

Let's compare Russian and Chinese phonology - I will use Russian since it is an opposite of
Mandarin in this respect - there's no aspiration whatsoever in Russian but strong differentiation
between voiced/voiceless. So if a Russian speaker says "папа" (like "papa" but with no
aspiration at all) a Chinese untrained person hears "bàba", they ignore the voicelessness of "p"
but they hear that it is unaspirated and register "b", not "p". English sounds have both
voiced/voiceless and some aspiration, not as strong as Chinese, that's why Chinese speakers are
often (not always able) to hear if it is a P or B but confusion exists on both sides. I could use
a French/Italian speaker vs Mandarin in my example, since these languages have no aspiration
either. So the initial P in Paris sounds almost exactly like B in Mandarin's 巴黎 Bālí, but
the initial in B 波尔多 Bōěrduō (Bordeaux) can be confused by a French speaker for a "P" -
by some English speakers as well, I think.

Of course, you can get away teaching the way you prefer but I just wanted to go into a bit more
detailed discussion about differences in phonology.










owen -

So a french person would say that 'baver' (to drool) and 'paver' (to pave) are pronounced
identically? Same for any word that is the same save for the exchange of b and p?
I never would have guessed. That makes me think even less of the spelling system.










atitarev -

I thought I expressed myself well, please reread my post. French B and P are not the same, I
haven't said this, the first one is voiced, the second is voiceless but that doesn't make a lot of
difference to a native Chinese speaker, since Chinese B and P are different in
unaspirated/aspirated.

IPA doesn't use symbols B-P, D-T or G-K D when describing Mandarin (B, D and T non-existent)
phonology but p-pʰ t-tʰ k-kʰ:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standar...arin#Phonology










owen -

Sorry if i misunderstood what you were saying about french b and p. Perhaps its that canadian
french is a little more aspirant than parisian french.

The whole idea of labeling consonants voiced or unvoiced doesn;t seem all that convincing a
descriptor. It seems to me language is somehow resistant to being cut up and analyzed that
atomically.










atitarev -

No, in standard French they don't aspirate consonants, but:


Quote:

/p/, /t/ and /k/ are never aspirated in French, unless one wants to indicate contempt.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_phonology

Neither does Spanish (at least standard), in case you are exposed to this language more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology










Lorean -

Hey, several things. I think a good approach to teaching the pronounceation of 'z' is to first
teach 'c'. 'c' is easier to teach because it occurs naturally in English, for example the word
"it's". However, it will take time to be able to produce the 'c' sound without any preceding
vowels. e.g. saying "it's" is easy, but saying it without the "i" is harder. Going from "c" to "z"
isn't that hard once you understand that the only difference is aspiration. You can teach the
concept of aspiration by having the student place a piece of paper infront of their mouth,
pronounce "c", and notice the paper move forward. To make "z" they have to perform the exact same
linguistic acrobatics except without making the paper move forward.

Another thing, while the French "p" and Mandarin "b" are both considered to be voiceless
unaspirated bilabial stops they are infact recognizably different sounds. (I can verify this
because French is my first language and Mandarin is my 3rd). Catford's "A Practical Introduction
to Phonetics" categorizes them as distinct sounds accordingly.

Peace.












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