Talk:Regional accents of English
I removed a false statment:
Mandarin does not distinguish /p/ vs. /b/, /t/ vs. /d/, /k/ vs. /g/, etc.
The Wade-Giles transliteration system blends the above sounds. It was the westerners who didn't distinguish these sounds in Mandarin. In the native Bopomofo notation, Bo and Po are two distinct sounds, in fact, they are the FIRST two sounds of the phonetic system. Right after Bo Po Mo Fo are De Te Na La, obviously D and T are distinct as the 5th and 6th of the pronounciation system. Then followed by Ge Ke He, again G and K sounds are distinct as the 9th and 10th sounds.
In my opinion, those Wade and Giles fellows simply pulled a cruel practical joke on the Chinese language. They specifically dropped the FIRST sounds out of the FIRST three groups of the phonetic symbols, namely Bo, De and Ge. These sounds were significant enough to be placed first in the phonetic system. What better way to make fun of a language than to remove the most important sounds? It is like removing ABC from the English alphabet. Remember this was done at a time when the westerners called Chinese people Ching Chong and other funny names.
Despite worldwide recognition of this transliteration system, it is piece of junk in my opinion. It is a sad thing that much of the Western knowledge of China was recorded based on such a malice.
Yes, I admit that I am strongly opinionated and I pay absolutely no respect to this Wade-Giles thing. I actually considered it an insult to all the Chinese people. Let's use pinyin!
- While Wade-Giles is certainly not very good; I suspect you've missed the point completely. Mandarin does not, in fact, distinguish between the voiced-unvoiced pairs /b/ and /p/, between /d/ and /t/, or between /g/ and /k/. It does distinguish between the unaspirated-aspirated pairs /p/ and /p'/, /t/ and /t'/, and /k/ and /k'/, which are in pinyin written as <b> and <p>, <d> and <t>, and <g> and <k>. These letter pairs were chosen precisely because Mandarin does not distinguish the voicing, and perhaps because some Latin-based languages also aspirate the unvoiced sounds. (For instance, at the beginning of a word in English, an unvoiced consonant becomes aspirated in pronunciation: <peat> /pit/ [p'it], <beat> /bit/ [bit].) Thus, an English speaker is more likely to produce the correct sounds when reading text in pinyin without training (at least, for those six sounds), because the voicing doesn't matter. [b] is the same as [p] (both equivalent to phonemic /p/), while [p'] is kept correctly separate.
- But, going from Mandarin to English, it doesn't work so well. The aspiration isn't relevant (not phonemic) and is in effect not heard by English speakers, while the voicing is difficult to get right for Mandarin speakers not used to making the distinction. Hence, the pairs will tend to be confused. With that in mind, I'm putting the statement back. Brion VIBBER
- However, in whispered English, aspiration does replace voicing as the phonetic manifestation of lenition. --Damian Yerrick
- I don't buy it. B and P don't sound alike in English nor Mandarin. The Bo in Bopomofo has the B sound; the Po has the P sound.
Hi - I'm the original author of the line causing this debate (pgdudda). I've studied several languages, including Mandarin Chinese (2pu 1tong 4hua). In listing /b/ vs. /p/ etc., I was referring to their SAMPA (and IPA) values, not their pinyin values. While it is certainly true that pinyin b vs. p are distinct, they are not distinct in the same way that those two letters are in most European languages (with the possible exception of Icelandic). Pinyin b is an voiceless unaspirated bilabial stop (/p/) and p is a voiceless aspirated bilabial stop (/ph/). In English, the letters represent a voiced bilabial stop (/b/) and a voiceless bilabial stop (/p/).
Furthermore, English p has two allophones: [ph] at the onset (start) of a stressed syllable, and [p] elsewhere. Mandarin accents arise from the fact that [b] is an allophone of /p/ in (Mandarin) Chinese, leading to a reversal of distribution from the English pattern vis à vis orthography. Thus, the p of pin sounds different from the p of spin to a native speaker of Mandarin, and the b of bin sounds the same as the p of spin.
<td[bIn]
| English spelling | pin | spin | bin |
| Phonetic realization of word | [phIn] | [spIn] | |
| English speaker hears: | /pIn/ | /spIn/ | /bIn/ |
| Mandarin speaker hears: | /phin/ | /spin/ | /pin/ |
| (Closest) Pinyin spelling | pin | sibin | bin |
The same pattern holds true for the symbols g vs. k and d vs. t. (Also note that there are Chinese languages that have a three-way distinction of /ph/ vs. /p/ vs. /b/; I think Guizhou is one of them.) Hope that helps!
This is a rather English-language-centric article. More accurate would be the title "How to tell the origin of an accent in the English language."
Gritchka comments:
- Cantonese
- 'wh' is rare in English anyway; most accents have 'w'
- 'th' - doesn't distinguish [T] from [D]
- German
- 'th' - as above
- Japanese
- bilabial f
- Mandarin
- m occurs initially, just not finally
- New Zealander
- six and seven are sux and siven
- Persian
- throat noise? Persian has a [k]. It also has [x] and /q/ (various realizations) but there's no reason their /k/ should be odd.
- Russian
- palatalized dental? Their cjonsjonantsj are oftjen pjaljatajalized but I don't know what you mean by this epenthetic consonant
- Indian subcontinent
- retroflex t d n l
I am simply commenting rather than changing it because it's a very vague grab-bag at the moment, and I'm not sure whether it's useful without more solid detail.
2002.03.28: Thank you, Gritchka. You are quite accurate in all of these comments. I just looked in here before making changes to the original article in case discussion shed light on why certain things weren't listed. I'll go make my changes now -- feel free to comment! (Intended changes are to New Zealand and that Indian retroflex thing. More if I think of good ways to address them.) -- pgdudda