Pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese using IPA (Beijing)

[jradetzky]

great video, thanks a lot! I'm gonna move to Dalian in a few months. Is the accent there very different from Beijing?

[Glossika]

@jradetzky all of the outer northeast is pretty much the same.

[funkysirish]

best e-book to follow to learn chinese mandarin atleast 50%, so that i can learn the rest from my gf when i get back to UK

[funkysirish]

Where do i learn the basic alphabets and their pronunciations, i get confused searching for them, some say Pinyin some others say something else being a beginner itself i'm into shit loads of trouble but wanna fight it and learn it though!

Can somebody plzz help me!!!

[LearnChineseWithEase]

The differences are really hard to follow.

[MillennialMan]

Mike, I'm learning Chinese and have trouble differentiating the Pinyin

c, q, z, x, sh, zh, j. This video is helpful but need a bit more.

E.g. Many courses say x = sh, but when I say xie xie like shie shie natives say it's wrong. Same with the c and q etc. Any advice?

[ellebelle9]

@MillennialMan @Glossika I have the exact same problem. Could you clear it out for us Glossika? Maybe you could make an description of how exactly to put your tongue. Every detail is a help. These sound pairs just seem to be all the same for me.

Thanks for you great work. It is appreciated en Denmark as well :)

PS. I will like to suggest that you get a microphone to get rid of the background noise.

[sehnsucht333]

@MillennialMan Pinyin x represents the alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕ/, a sound which is close to the "ch" in German "ich," /ç/. A trick for pronouncing /ç/ is to isolate the first sound in the English word "Hugh": [hju:]- the semivowel /j/ palatalizes /h/, resulting in a palatal fricative. Mandarin /ɕ/ is similar to this sound but with the tongue closer to the teeth, resulting in a slightly more "hissy" sound than the "h" in Hugh- almost a lisped [s], to think of it from the other direction.

[sehnsucht333]

@sehnsucht333 on second thought "lisped" /s/ might be a little misleading but yeah you get the idea :)

[Shakamuni]

Pronunciation of Mandarin is extremely difficult (at least for me having spanish as mother tongue), not only for the great variety of sounds but also because of tones!!!. But grammar is so easy and flexible! It's a pity, I can't make myself understood because of my bad pronunciation!

Anyway, good video!

[inkandbamboo]

Excellent video. I've been speaking Chinese for several years and am familiar with IPA from learning other languages, but I never thought about Chinese pronunciation in terms of IPA due to the existence of the pinyin system. It's an important point you make about the voicing ('b' in pinyin vs. 'p' in IPA). I wonder how many English speakers learn bad habits in the beginning due to the different phonetic values of letters in pinyin and English...

[midiot2005]

Thank you so much! Very nicely done.

[LerneGern]

I have a question for you regarding the sound sequence "yuan." You mentioned that this is pronounced differently in North and South Mandarin. Could you please tell me what the difference is in terms of IPA characters? I would so appreciate it!

[delatroy]

Hi Mike, thanks for videos. As I understand you take a scientific approach to learning languages so as I'm living in Beijing, I'm wondering what your opinion is on the 'best' way to learn oral Mandarin from scratch? There's many different methods obviously so maybe you have some thoughts on the most efficient way? Thanks.

[AlexKenfrey]

I like your mandarin pronounciation, could you make another video about cantonese phonology please. i'll be waiting for it so much!!!

[JonnyNice]

When you say dialects, do you mean Cantonese, Shanghai hua (Wu), ...

Or do you just mean accents like in your reaction to anubistiger's comment? Because I think that's kind of unfair, yes Taiwanese people typically don't speak with the retroflex sounds, but that not exactly what they would refer to as their "standard mandarin" either, I think.

[JonnyNice]

@JonnyNice

Wow, I've watched some more of your videos now, and I must say, never mind my question :P You obviously know what you're talking about :-)

I'm interested in China's Southers dialects too, have learned (Beijing) Mandarin already and I'm going to study in Hong Kong for one year now, I'll be learning Cantonese there. I don't think I'll be able to learn many more though. I really respect you, and wish you good luck!

[Glossika]

@JonnyNice I would say that Taiwan Mandarin is an accent. Dialects are more divergent like what you hear in Shandong and Jiangsu. I have a hard time understanding these people but we can still communicate. Wu, Min, Hakka, Yue; these are completely different languages and must be specifically learned in order to communicate at all.

[jrlieto]

where do you get your information? have you lived in china?

[Glossika]

@jrlieto I still am here. This information is common knowledge among Chinese linguists from whom I've reviewed thousands of publications from universities all over China. It seems that this still remains inaccessible to western linguists, but of course you can use the Comrie or Starling databases for the phonological set of most languages and dialects.

[anubistiger]

also i'm having troubles with many consonants: z,c,& s (third line) sound similar but I can sort of tell the difference between z and c. Q, ch and sh, x sound nearly the same to me and so does the first letter in both the fourth and fifth line (j). Do you have a word in english you can use as an example for these consonants?

[Glossika]

In the word "mutually" if you avoid the temptation to pronounce the "t" as a full-out "ch" and say it as you do in fast, connected speech, then you get the Chinese "q" right there. Now try to isolate that sound which should feel like your tongue bunched up in the middle and not flat with the sides up on the teeth like you would with "ch". The "j" is a softer version of this, not unlike the connected sound between "would_you" again avoiding the temptation to say it as a "dge" sound.

[anubistiger]

xie xie ni! what are the differences for taiwanese mandarin?

[Glossika]

Pronunciation in Taiwan does not retroflex but instead uses aspirated and unaspirated palatal affricates.

[ladysleopat]

@Glossika I noticed that the Taiwanese do not really use the retroflexes because when I watch the Taiwanese dramas, they say ZH like z and the R is not that hard R sound they teach in the textbooks. I've noticed some other things but I can't remember right now. I would love to come and live in Taiwan for a few months, maybe as an English teacher.

[speedjounetsu]

a real "B" ???

Do you think that english is the owner of the real sounds of the letters or what ???

[Glossika]

你聽錯了吧，這個不是英文字母，這是國際音標字母，全國的語言學­家都用得非常熟悉。沒錯普通話沒有全濁音 "b" 你認為不對的話麻煩到中國各大大學的語言學教授吵，謝謝!

[speedjounetsu]

あれ、あれちょっと待って、

第一、私はあなたが言ったことを誤解して言いませんよ。もちろん­国際音声記号（ｉｐａ）について話していると分かってるよ。だけ­ど、「英語のように本物のＢ」とか言うんだから、どういうことで­すか、それ！。基準となる国際音声記号より英語のＢの発音のほう­が本物であると示唆するなんて言語道断じゃないか。

[speedjounetsu]

第二、なんで中国語で返事してくるのかよ。何様のつもりなのかお­前！。言葉の達人に見せたいのか？俺を侮りたいのか？

俺はどんな人か知ってる？

言っとくけど、喧嘩を売るなよ。裏目に出るから。いい？

じゃー、お元気に！

[Glossika]

現在討論的是中文而不是日文。真是情緒化，你那個來了對ㄇ？我的­比喻不是離譜而是一種教學的方法，別忘大部分的人懂英文，其次這­個字母的英文發音就是全濁音，用這個當例子怎麼讓你火起來呢? 說難聽點我用日文來比喻也沒有人理解。還是說你那麼專業就自己來­拍看看。哼少管閒事、馬嘴不對牛頭！

[Fasulye2009]

I found this video very interesting, because you systematically present the IPA transcription of the consonants and vowels of one language. The more different videos I watch on IPA the better the knowledge of this will stick in my memory. Fasulye

[todesesser]

A good example of unaspirated /k/ is 'skate', or other sk- blends in English.

[Glossika]

But the "s" sort of complicates it. If you want a pure /k/ in English, you can find it in "back up" or any combination like that "like it or not" has both /k/ and /t/