tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post4276332666329872844..comments2024-03-17T09:14:13.950+00:00Comments on John Wells’s phonetic blog: fun with phoneticsJohn Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684304410735867148noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-55250992641460862432011-07-09T07:58:07.472+01:002011-07-09T07:58:07.472+01:00Phonetics: the study of speech sounds
Phonics: th...Phonetics: the study of speech sounds<br /><br />Phonics: the relationship between the sounds of a language and the letters used to represent those sounds<br /><br />Phoneme: basic sound unit of speech<br /><br />Phonemic Awareness: the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds.It includes the ability to distinguish rhyme, blend sounds, isolate sounds, segment sounds, and manipulate sounds in words.<br /><br />http://www.neutralaccent.com/phonetics.php" Neutral accent "https://www.blogger.com/profile/18305295491246705569noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-49257070317502426032011-03-19T11:48:16.747+00:002011-03-19T11:48:16.747+00:00Ad wiarek
I do not think I am being misled. I was...Ad wiarek<br /><br />I do not think I am being misled. I wasn't saying 'anywhere', of course. 'zęby' (teeth) is pronounced with an 'em', 'błędy' (errors) with an 'en', this I know, I think every educated Pole knows that. Yet in front of fricatives (s, z and their ilk) we do have a nasal, even when the spelling is different and suggests a non-nasally-vocalic pronunciation, for instance in 'sens' (sense). Your extremely subtle description of how you pronounce that 'surpasseth myne intellygence' as one cobbler once said, it is probably right, I can't judge.<br /><br />Again, 'hawański' has a nasal 'j' (non-syllabic 'i'), this again is clear. But I'd say, you seem to be kinda agreeing, that pronouncing 'język' with a diphthong constituted of an oral 'e' and a nasal something-or-other, say a possibly un-rounded 'w' or something like that is in a sense sub- or para-standard. Some adolescents, particularly she-adolescents seem to have that, some women, some wanna-be highbrows, if my observations are any guide. No slur intended of course, but people have various reasons to take to non-standard pronunciations.<br /><br />Perhaps John said 'jełzyk' with a nasal 'ł' ('w') and someone felt it was well-mannered or old-fashioned. I'd say it's ... well.. rather new-fashioned and affected, but that's opinion.Henryknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-58533470806871458242011-03-18T21:49:03.931+00:002011-03-18T21:49:03.931+00:00Sorry, Henryk, you're being misled by the spel...Sorry, Henryk, you're being misled by the spelling (and/or prescriptivist advice). I have yet to hear a native speaker of Polish produce a nasal monophthong <i>anywhere, even finally</i> for <i>any</i> of the so-called "nasal vowels" in normal speech that is not meant to be mocking. No such thing.<br /><br />But, then, a clear [n] before a fricative is <i>quite</i> unusual, too (@David M.).<br /><br />I'd say my own usual pronunciation before a fricative has a very slightly nasalised [ɛ] followed by a glide that almost forms a [n] but there's never full alveolar contact along the midline of the tongue; and there's no real velar action, either. A very good example of the shortcomings of segmental-like transcription; I don't think there's a satisfactory way of showing this.<br /><br />I find using [w̃] for this quite misleading, and that's what could have tripped John up. It suggests lip rounding and no involvement of the tongue tip. I think this does not reflect the phonetic facts. If memory serves, Wiktor Jassem once had a paper about this -- way back in the 1950s, I think. I have it somewhere in the drawer, but don't have the time to look for it at the moment.<br /><br />Finally, Henryk, <i>splitting nasal vowels... into an oral vowel and a nasal 'w' or such-like has something dialectal [etc.]... about it</i>: Well, that may have been the effect that John achieved. But I think what you may really be after is diphthongs without nasalisation whatsoever, especially [ɔw] for <i>ą</i> finally. Yes, that does feel dialectal.wjarekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07871668374161722713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-82992194501007185872011-03-18T14:52:41.366+00:002011-03-18T14:52:41.366+00:00Ad Lipman
being an ingenuous native speaker of Po...Ad Lipman<br /><br />being an ingenuous native speaker of Polish I can't really judge, but my impression is that splitting nasal vowels before 's' 'z' and their ilk in Polish, especially into an oral vowel and a nasal 'w' or such-like has something dialectal, or affected or in any event something un-standard and to-be-avoided about it. (Maybe comparable to saying 'meyarn' or 'mairn' or 'meearn' instead of 'man' in certain variants of English?) In a pronunciation which I'd judge 'correct' such words as 'język' have a nearly perfect nasal vowel. So if you say that word the way you describe 'for fun' you're, I'd say, on the safe side... .Henryknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-22881378910416480232011-03-18T09:26:05.998+00:002011-03-18T09:26:05.998+00:00Henryk,
as John said above, it was about the dipht...Henryk,<br />as John said above, it was about the diphthong, with a <b>w</b> after the nasal vowel. <br /><br />(I myself use this exclusively for the word <b>ˈʃɔˑpẽw̃</b> in Polish, and just for fun. As another aside, isn't it interesting that the nasals developed differently?)Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-192235473823009782011-03-17T20:19:28.829+00:002011-03-17T20:19:28.829+00:00'Tongue' in Polish, 'język', is pr...'Tongue' in Polish, 'język', is pronounced 'ḭẽzɨk', I do not know any other pronounciation, being Polish and middle-aged. I wonder what kind of well-mannered or old-fashioned pronounciation of 'język' J. C. Wells achieved; I can think of no pronounciation of that word (known to me) that would deserve either adjective. Maybe they failed to tell him 'j' in Polish' is not like 'j' but like 'y' in English? But even so, that wrong pronounciation of 'język' would not be either well-mannered or old-fashioned; just wrong.Henryknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-71278610314841371622011-03-17T14:12:45.378+00:002011-03-17T14:12:45.378+00:00I've read the -ging instead of -jing forms are...I've read the -ging instead of -jing forms are nonstandard Mandarin.<br /><br /><i>Nánjìng 南靖, Fújiàn</i><br /><br />Wow. I had no idea...<br /><br /><i>I made it <b>ˈjɛ̃w̃zɨk</b>.</i><br /><br />The form I've encountered in the company of university students from Warsaw and Opole is [ˈjɛ̃nzɘk], with a loud and clear [n]. ([ɘ] is the HAPPEH vowel.) Similarly, <i>mięso</i> "meat" is [ˈmʲɛ̃nsɔ].David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-73360280238003626472011-03-16T11:40:20.420+00:002011-03-16T11:40:20.420+00:00Yes, Steve, of course it does. I realized it must ...Yes, Steve, of course it does. I realized it must be, but do you not think they should have a separate entry for the capitalized word? An awful lot of dictionaries do, you know. The fantasy that it was not there at all was fun while it lasted, though.<br /><br />The fact remains that I went to the lengths of doing a case-sensitive search for "Mandarin" in Full Text, checking All Quotations, and there is no indication in the results that there is a separate subheading for that sense in that entry. Unfortunately I did this on the new OED site, for which I am still in the middle of a learning curve which now seems to have gone asymptotic. I see now that even if I had done it on the Senses tab it wouldn’t have helped. For all the improvements I find the new OED software so horrible that I am mostly using the old site until they take it down. Doing the corresponding searches on that now, the results are perfectly obvious, but perhaps that's just familiarity with the old software. It's like Microsoft XP. I'm hanging on to that like grim death. It's not just senility: I used to be able to do things with MS-DOS that nobody thought possible, but XP had already gone beyond the foolproof to the user-proof, and Windows 7 on is sanity-proof.mallambhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07086916400059545681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-66323878724773883952011-03-15T23:51:26.678+00:002011-03-15T23:51:26.678+00:00The OED defines Mandarin in its linguistic meaning...The OED defines <em>Mandarin</em> in its linguistic meaning as sense 2 of the word <b>mandarin</b> <em>n</em>.¹.Steve Doerrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11410868047916610730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-12418118879556464152011-03-15T18:58:34.769+00:002011-03-15T18:58:34.769+00:00Glen, don't beat yourself up about it. At leas...Glen, don't beat yourself up about it. At least you didn't say "Nanking is **based** on the Guangdongese name" or "Nanjing is the Beijingese name". And if you'd said "Pekingese" or even "Pekinese" for Mandarin you'd have had the support of the OED, which along with other examples of the toponymic and ethnonymic chaos you refer to, gives the definition "The form of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Peking (now Beijing)", with the latest quotation (1991) from Internat. Jrnl. Lexicogr. 4 84: "The modern Sinitic vernaculars (Pekingese, Amoy, Swatow, [etc.])". BTW it tells us we may still say Amoy for Xiamen, but that Swatow is now Shantou. It has no entry for that, but Collins tells us to mispronounce it [ˈʃænˈtaʊ].<br /><br />And you have not only the assurance of the OED and the Internat. Jrnl. Lexicogr. for "Pekingese", but my assurance that it is "Mandarin" which is a ridiculous appellation! And lo! The OED appears to have neglected to have any entry at all for that! It only appears under other lemmata. Is this not a shining example of the great wisdom of that ever-fixèd mark which is the OED?mallambhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07086916400059545681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-26011720808628048692011-03-15T13:15:03.454+00:002011-03-15T13:15:03.454+00:00@John
The nasalised diphthong is only, I think, &#...@John<br />The nasalised diphthong is only, I think, 'unmannered' in one word - the name of the letter. Within a word the letter represents 1) /e/ plus nasal consonant homorganic with the following stop 2) nasalised cardinal three when a fricative follows 3) /e/ when an approximant follows.<br /><br />In word final position the monophthongal nasalised diphthong is often heard, but this isn't what I would call 'unmannered' speech. Completely natural in a certain style, but not unmannered. Better to use /e/.Paul Carleynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-24644012560593039822011-03-15T04:34:49.502+00:002011-03-15T04:34:49.502+00:00Mallamb: "I don’t think Steve is being seriou...<b>Mallamb: <i>"I don’t think Steve is being serious, Glen, but I do think he's being subtle."</i></b><br /><br />Yes, it was wrong of me to miss a pedant's point which was too unserious and subtle to be worthy of direct communication and hence my consideration. I'll try to seppuku myself quietly in the corner. ;o)<br /><br />As for Anonymous (great name, btw! good for you), thanks for the correction. I did carefully say "Nanking is **based** on the Cantonese name" instead of "is Cantonese" because I was well aware of that <i>-m-</i> but I should have considered a longer history of these names.<br /><br />Ultimately I concur with Steve that our choices in toponyms and ethnonyms are arbitrary. Consider "Greek" instead of "Hellene" or "Hittite" instead of the more accurate "Nesite". Is it "Istanbul" or "Constantinople"? Oh damn, I better get my tapshoes on quick. I feel a musical number coming on...Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-87813444729248748432011-03-15T01:05:56.742+00:002011-03-15T01:05:56.742+00:00Happy birthday to you, John!Happy birthday to you, John!Wolfganghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14806223195432656376noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-85202237169513192782011-03-15T00:01:44.898+00:002011-03-15T00:01:44.898+00:00When did Maks Marzec start learning English?When did Maks Marzec start learning English?Philnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-67585682416975559452011-03-14T23:32:11.709+00:002011-03-14T23:32:11.709+00:00Paul Carley: Yes. I made it ˈjɛ̃w̃zɨk.Paul Carley: Yes. I made it <b>ˈjɛ̃w̃zɨk</b>.John Wellshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13684304410735867148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-45183315810536304922011-03-14T21:22:02.461+00:002011-03-14T21:22:02.461+00:00If it's good enough for the French, it should ...If it's good enough for <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/2011/03/14/04016-20110314ARTFIG00533-nucleaire-pekin-garde-le-cap.php" rel="nofollow">the French</a>, it should be good enough for us. In fact, if it's good enough for <a href="http://english.pku.edu.cn/" rel="nofollow">the Chinese</a>... <br><br>For Nanking, cf. <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/124964" rel="nofollow">http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/124964</a>, <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/255587" rel="nofollow">http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/255587</a>, <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/255586" rel="nofollow">http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/255586</a>, <a href="http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/245052" rel="nofollow">http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/245052</a>.<br><br>It doesn't seem any less logical to say 'Peking' than to say 'Cologne', 'Munich', 'Nuremberg', 'Rome', 'Moscow', 'Georgia', or, indeed, 'China'.Steve Doerrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11410868047916610730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-43097255539848371342011-03-14T20:27:54.645+00:002011-03-14T20:27:54.645+00:00Nanking is based on the Cantonese name ...
I’m no...<i>Nanking is based on the Cantonese name ...</i><br /><br />I’m not a fluent Cantonese speaker, but according to my Zhōngwén Xīn Cídiǎn 中文新詞典 from Hong Kong the city is Nam⁴giŋ¹ (=Jyut⁶ping¹ <i>Naam⁴ging¹</i>) 南京 in Cantonese, retaining the final <i>-m</i> that no longer exists in Mandarin. Also the 南 morpheme is still 남 <i>(nam)</i> in Korean, and English too has <i>-m</i> in <i>Vietnam</i> 越南 and <i>Annam</i> 安南.<br /><br /><i>Nánkīng</i> is the older Mandarin form that still conserves the <b>ts~k</b> distinction even before <b>i</b> and <b>y</b>. By the late Qīng Dynasty they merged into <b>tɕ</b> which is now written <i>j</i>. The corresponding aspirates and fricatives underwent the same sound change, and are now <b>tɕʰ</b> <i>q</i> and <b>ɕ</b> <i>x</i> respectively.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-80053738620635037362011-03-14T19:59:40.044+00:002011-03-14T19:59:40.044+00:00Was your mannered Polish 'język' down to a...Was your mannered Polish 'język' down to a diphthongal ę?Paul Carleynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-74854009770710847842011-03-14T19:20:46.146+00:002011-03-14T19:20:46.146+00:00I don’t think Steve is being serious, Glen, but I ...I don’t think Steve is being serious, Glen, but I do think he's being subtle. In a sane world, Nanking and Peking would be the English names, just as Warsaw is, and Nánjīng and Běijīng would be the Chinese names, but not quite as Warszawa is the Polish name. A better parallel would be that Tokyo and Chiba are the English names and Tôkyô (Tookyoo) and Tiba the Japanese names, but that in the case of Japanese the international community, including Japan, but not ANSI et al., have had the sense not to adopt the official romanizations of the Japanese names.<br /><br />Japan itself is half in and half out of any sane world: the well-established Japanese names are Nankin and Pekin, which it seems are quite good enough for the sensible Japanese, but the spellings 南京 and 北京 are the same as the former names Nankyō and Hokkyō.mallambhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07086916400059545681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-73197671498701552252011-03-14T19:04:29.843+00:002011-03-14T19:04:29.843+00:00Ahh, Ffynnon Ioan, 'rwyti'n siarad Cymraeg...Ahh, Ffynnon Ioan, 'rwyti'n siarad Cymraeg. Da iawn a phenblwydd hapys hefyd.Brian Morganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05666000459948733548noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-73333803419258725502011-03-14T16:21:28.853+00:002011-03-14T16:21:28.853+00:00No no, people. Nanking is based on the Cantonese n...No no, people. Nanking is based on the Cantonese name and Nanjing is the Mandarin name. Modern newscasters elect the Mandarin names (Beijing instead of Peking) because, afterall, the official language of China is Mandarin, not Cantonese (the predominant language of the Hong Kong area). As we all know, Hong Kong is now China too so there seems to be a largescale trend of squeezing Cantonese toponyms out of the English language altogether. If you're saying Peking nowadays, you may be dating yourself.Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-12401371626003182992011-03-14T15:39:07.277+00:002011-03-14T15:39:07.277+00:00No, Nanking is its English name (like Peking for t...No, Nanking is its English name (like Peking for the national capital).Steve Doerrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11410868047916610730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-48661646458352153422011-03-14T15:01:31.535+00:002011-03-14T15:01:31.535+00:00Anonymous: I regard Nanjing as its English name, N...Anonymous: I regard <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing" rel="nofollow">Nanjing</a> as its English name, Nánjīng / 南京 as its Chinese name. Compare Warsaw / Warszawa.John Wellshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13684304410735867148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-42618532886453225652011-03-14T14:29:00.182+00:002011-03-14T14:29:00.182+00:00The initiator of all this was one Maks Marzec, a s...<i>The initiator of all this was one Maks Marzec, a student from Poland with native-like English and fluent Mandarin, who picked up the idea from a similar event he had attended in Nanjing.</i><br /><br />I suppose reference has been made here to Nánjīng 南京, Jiāngsū, not to Nánjìng 南靖, Fújiàn.<br /><br />Honestly I don’t understand why so many educated people who are eager not to forget any accent of any other common or less common foreign language keep ignoring the tone marks of romanized Mandarin, or Hànyǔ pīnyīn. In this language they are absolutely essential, as any bisyllabic word is pronounced with just one of 4×5=20 possible tone combinations. What’s more, even when the diacritics are used as they should be, countless homographs —or, from a phonetic point of view, homophones— still remain undistinguished.<br /><br />Happy birthday and many happy returns anyway!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-13917848619672984222011-03-14T13:22:33.131+00:002011-03-14T13:22:33.131+00:00jɛs! ˌhæpi bəˌlˠeɪɾɪd ˈbɹ̩θdeɪ, dʒɑ̃njɛs! ˌhæpi bəˌlˠeɪɾɪd ˈbɹ̩θdeɪ, dʒɑ̃nGlen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.com