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How to Pronounce "Zheng Jie" 郑洁

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Uploaded by on Jan 17, 2010

The Two Chinese Characters (2CC) offer this lesson on how to pronounce the name of Chinese tennis star Zheng Jie, just in time for the Australian Open 2010. Help us stop the butchering of this woman's good name by western sports broadcasters. Zheng Jie, jiayou! 郑洁,加油!

"How to Pronounce Zheng Jie" also doubles as a linguistics lesson in one of the trickier aspects of Mandarin Chinese pronunciation, namely the distinction between the retroflex and non-retroflex sounds, represented in the Pinyin Romanization system as zh & j, ch & q, and sh & x.

Song written & performed by Jamie Ciocco, with Matt Corriel on piano.

Tennis announcer caricature by Bethany Gully

Images used under Creative Commons Attribution License:
"Zheng Jie 2007 Australian Open R1" and "Zheng Jie" by pfctdayelise; "Zheng Jie US Open 08" by Charlie Cowens; "Tennis Court for Australian Open" (3D model) by Roary

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This video is a response to How NOT to pronounce "Zheng Jie" - BBC fail!
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  • @amjan She might not like Polish sausage.

  • I wish you were my Chinese teacher..My Chinese teacher is so horrible :(

  • This was effin' awesome!

  • Thanks for the video's.

    You learn things in a recreational way.

  • This video is so clever :P The pronounciation is a tricky thing in Chinese, I mean in Japanes pronouncing words is easy if you know spanish, but Chinese is different...

  • I have a question, how far back does the tongue need to go for zh, ch, sh, r, etc.? Is it ok as long as it is pointed up and touching the hard palette? 

  • @amjan

    Polish has a few more tough ones though, especially with the 3 "z" characters! Anyways I would still like to take Zheng Jie for dinner.

  • Is the Jie hitting the bottom tooth?

  • This is pro!

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