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Pinyin lures second-language learners into a false sense of understanding what is actually being said. Take the first letter, d, for example. That's not a d li

Pinyin lures second-language learners into a false sense of understanding what is actually being said. Take the first letter, d, for example. That's not a d like you would understand it in other latin-letter-based languages. It's actually more like a t. And actually it's not even like a t, it's more like an unaspirated t. More information is available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology I'd like to see an IPA-based Chinese dictionary, for example, but I won't be holding my breath. IPA suffers from its own problems in that it seems like its under constant revision, but damn if it's not the most useful tool in understanding the phonology of arbitrary languages.

jason_slack 10y ago
"Take the first letter, d, for example. That's not a d like you would understand it in other latin-letter-based languages. It's actually more like a t. And actually it's not even like a t, it's more like an unaspirated t." I can understand this point, but how is it damaging me? I guess I view this as a "rule" of learning the language. How would zhuyin had done this better? Thanks for the link too. Edit: Thinking about this more, other languages have characters that you pronounce differently that what is written. Spanish for example has a bit of this. As other tonal languages do too.
- imjustsaying 10y ago
  >I can understand this point, but how is it damaging me? Were you pronouncing it as /d/ before or were you pronuncing it as an unaspirated /t/? The problem is that with pinyin, people assume it's a /d/ sound, and their language learning books never tell them it's not a /d/. Conversely, when Chinese people then go to learn other languages, they see a d and say something like unaspirated /t/, and then they wonder why they can never sound like the natives when they try to say d. If you only relied on pinyin, you'd just always sound wrong and no one would tell you, and you'd never figure it out that it was the faulty phonetic system that hypnotized you into saying something almost the complete wrong way. Then you get stereotypes like "all Chinese people sound like impression", when they don't have to, but they have these misleading learning tools that are making them sound that way. edit as a reply (thread reply limit reached): Here's a concrete example of a failure of pinyin: Consider that 也 is /yě/, and 得 is /de/. Except actually, the two e's are not the same sound. In IPA, the vowels are e and ɤ, respectively. Zhuyin also correctly makes the vowel distinction with ㄜ and ㄝ. Pinyin as written does not show a difference between these two distinct sounds, whereas zhuyin does. Also, take a look at the example for /zhun/ that I give above for pinyin neglecting to show the addition of an entire syllable of a schwa.
  - pimlottc 10y ago
    Certainly it's important to realize that the english text is a merely an approximation of the actual pronunciation, but this isn't really that different than any other language that uses the western alphabet. The same thing applies in French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc. The student will quickly learn that even though the letters look the same, each language has its own idiosyncratic way of vocalizing them. Any textbook or teacher that does not emphasize this is not a very good one.
  - jason_slack 10y ago
    You are making a lot of assumptions here about how people learn. When I started learning, pinyin foundation was the absolute first thing. Before anything else. Yes, I was told /d/ is an unaspirated /t/, but I also read it in my text book. Also, you say people will never tell me I am wrong. I disagree here. People correct my tones all the time. They know I am learning. Even people I try and talk to at a supermarket are pleasantly surprised I talked to them in their language and they offer a correction. Also, you keep saying zhuyin is better, but you haven't given a single example as to why. You just keep saying pinyin isn't as good enough and gives false hope. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but you made an incomplete argument saying the method I am learning is damaging to my learning and all you state is not knowing the proper pronunciation of characters by simply looking at them. You learn a language, with its "rules".
  - paradite 10y ago
    > Consider that 也 is /yě/, and 得 is /de/. There is no distinctions between the "e" because the latter uses a different rule in pinyin system from the first one: http://www.fantizi5.com/yinjie/renduyinjie/ http://www.fantizi5.com/yinjie/renduyinjie/ In English you also have similar situations where the same composition gives you different pronunciations: baked, raped vs gated, naked.
    - jason_slack 10y ago
      This goes along with what I have been saying. The OP's argument would suggest that anyone just reading outright and not taking the time to learn would pronounce the /e/ all the same. However, learning the "rules" is required to pronounce it properly. This isn't a bad or damaging thing.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
jdietrich 10y ago
>Take the first letter, d, for example. That's not a d like you would understand it in other latin-letter-based languages. It's actually more like a t. And actually it's not even like a t, it's more like an unaspirated t. That issue is by no means unique to pinyin. "S" and "W" in German sound more like "Z" and "V" in English. Colloquial French has half a dozen ways of pronouncing "R", all of them utterly unfamiliar to most English speakers. If you're under the misapprehension that these symbols represent familiar phonemes, then you've simply been badly taught.

jason_slack 10y ago

"Take the first letter, d, for example. That's not a d like you would understand it in other latin-letter-based languages. It's actually more like a t. And actually it's not even like a t, it's more like an unaspirated t." I can understand this point, but how is it damaging me? I guess I view this as a "rule" of learning the language. How would zhuyin had done this better? Thanks for the link too. Edit: Thinking about this more, other languages have characters that you pronounce differently that what is written. Spanish for example has a bit of this. As other tonal languages do too.

imjustsaying 10y ago
>I can understand this point, but how is it damaging me? Were you pronouncing it as /d/ before or were you pronuncing it as an unaspirated /t/? The problem is that with pinyin, people assume it's a /d/ sound, and their language learning books never tell them it's not a /d/. Conversely, when Chinese people then go to learn other languages, they see a d and say something like unaspirated /t/, and then they wonder why they can never sound like the natives when they try to say d. If you only relied on pinyin, you'd just always sound wrong and no one would tell you, and you'd never figure it out that it was the faulty phonetic system that hypnotized you into saying something almost the complete wrong way. Then you get stereotypes like "all Chinese people sound like impression", when they don't have to, but they have these misleading learning tools that are making them sound that way. edit as a reply (thread reply limit reached): Here's a concrete example of a failure of pinyin: Consider that 也 is /yě/, and 得 is /de/. Except actually, the two e's are not the same sound. In IPA, the vowels are e and ɤ, respectively. Zhuyin also correctly makes the vowel distinction with ㄜ and ㄝ. Pinyin as written does not show a difference between these two distinct sounds, whereas zhuyin does. Also, take a look at the example for /zhun/ that I give above for pinyin neglecting to show the addition of an entire syllable of a schwa.
- pimlottc 10y ago
  Certainly it's important to realize that the english text is a merely an approximation of the actual pronunciation, but this isn't really that different than any other language that uses the western alphabet. The same thing applies in French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc. The student will quickly learn that even though the letters look the same, each language has its own idiosyncratic way of vocalizing them. Any textbook or teacher that does not emphasize this is not a very good one.
- jason_slack 10y ago
  You are making a lot of assumptions here about how people learn. When I started learning, pinyin foundation was the absolute first thing. Before anything else. Yes, I was told /d/ is an unaspirated /t/, but I also read it in my text book. Also, you say people will never tell me I am wrong. I disagree here. People correct my tones all the time. They know I am learning. Even people I try and talk to at a supermarket are pleasantly surprised I talked to them in their language and they offer a correction. Also, you keep saying zhuyin is better, but you haven't given a single example as to why. You just keep saying pinyin isn't as good enough and gives false hope. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but you made an incomplete argument saying the method I am learning is damaging to my learning and all you state is not knowing the proper pronunciation of characters by simply looking at them. You learn a language, with its "rules".
- paradite 10y ago
  > Consider that 也 is /yě/, and 得 is /de/. There is no distinctions between the "e" because the latter uses a different rule in pinyin system from the first one: http://www.fantizi5.com/yinjie/renduyinjie/ http://www.fantizi5.com/yinjie/renduyinjie/ In English you also have similar situations where the same composition gives you different pronunciations: baked, raped vs gated, naked.
  - jason_slack 10y ago
    This goes along with what I have been saying. The OP's argument would suggest that anyone just reading outright and not taking the time to learn would pronounce the /e/ all the same. However, learning the "rules" is required to pronounce it properly. This isn't a bad or damaging thing.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

jdietrich 10y ago

>Take the first letter, d, for example. That's not a d like you would understand it in other latin-letter-based languages. It's actually more like a t. And actually it's not even like a t, it's more like an unaspirated t. That issue is by no means unique to pinyin. "S" and "W" in German sound more like "Z" and "V" in English. Colloquial French has half a dozen ways of pronouncing "R", all of them utterly unfamiliar to most English speakers. If you're under the misapprehension that these symbols represent familiar phonemes, then you've simply been badly taught.