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In modern Taiwanese Min Nan, "tê" sounds more like "day" than "tea". Maybe it sounded different in the Min Nan of Fujian a few hundred years ago, or something

In modern Taiwanese Min Nan, "tê" sounds more like "day" than "tea". Maybe it sounded different in the Min Nan of Fujian a few hundred years ago, or something was "lost in transcription" when the dutch wrote "thee".

jdmichal 9y ago
I don't have any reason not to believe you, but your position does not seem to be backed up by Wikipedia, where /d/ is not listed as a phoneme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Taiwanese_Hokkien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Taiwanese_Hokkien I have a hypothesis, mostly dependent on the position of a native English speaker, which I have no idea whether you are or not: It's common to not be able to easily distinguish /e/ and /ai/. English does not have the former, and it tends to best match to the /ai/ diphthong, which glides over and would "average" to /e/. It's also common to confuse aspiration and voicing on stops. English initial voiced stops are unaspirated, while initial unvoiced stops are aspirated. Hence, an unvoiced, unaspirated initial stop does not typically occur in English, and can vary in listener interpretation between /t/ or /d/. This article covers voice onset time (VOT) and how voicing and aspiration play into it: http://www.linguisticsnetwork.com/tutorials-aspiration-and-voice-onset-time/ http://www.linguisticsnetwork.com/tutorials-aspiration-and-v... Important note is that VOT is negative for voiced, near zero for unvoiced, and positive for aspirated. This measurable phenomenon backs up the fact that unvoiced, unaspirated sounds are basically in between standard English sounds and why you can get differing interpretations.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  Yeap you probably hit the nail on the head. I'm a native English speaker and I only know a tiny bit of Hokkien. I really struggle with the aspirated/non-aspirated aspect of many of the consonants. Not sure about the vowel sounds, I found those all reasonably trivial to distinguish. https://mkdict.net/results?query=te%CC%82&page=1&q_type=tw&roman=t&t_dict=moe https://mkdict.net/results?query=te%CC%82&page=1&q_type=tw&r... If you click on the "+" button, there's a voice recording of how to pronounce it. It's from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education. To me it sounds much more like "day" than "tea".
  - jdmichal 9y ago
    The vowel sound definitely matches /e/. It sounds like /ai/, but there's none of the glide that would be present in a diphthong. I ran it by my wife, as she's a native Spanish and English speaker, and she agrees with /e/ over /ai/. Thanks for that link. Very cool site; reminds me of dict.leo.org for German.
    - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
      The vowel sound in day is /ai/? I can hear a slight difference between the vowel sounds in both tê and day. That's something I always just attributed to accent, not a different vowel - but I suppose vowel changes can be very subtle.
      - jdmichal 9y ago
        Er... No, I brain farted. The diphthong in "day" is /eɪ/. /aɪ/ (which I was listing as /ai/ on my phone) is as the word "tie". So maybe that makes it more obvious why it would be easy to confuse /e/ and /eɪ/, especially when your native language only has the latter. Brain heuristics work regardless of whether you want them to or not, and they'll fill in the missing /ɪ/ even if it's not present.
Zeklandia 9y ago
The Dutch would have pronounced 'thee' closer to 'tay' (i.e. /tʰe/) whereas modern English speakers would pronounce it like the word 'thee' (/ði/).
clw8 9y ago
The Min Nan "t" is an unaspirated consonant (meaning if you hold your hand in front of your mouth when you pronounce it, you shouldn't feel the puff of air), like the t in Spanish. English speakers routinely interpret these sounds as aspirated consonants since we lack those sounds. Why Dutch writes it as thee, I don't know, since Dutch lacks aspiration. Wiktionary just said the h is faux-Greek but I don't understand the motivation of that.
- DonaldFisk 9y ago
  Neither Cantonese nor Mandarin has voiced stops. In Yale and Pinyin, t is aspirated as in English "tea", d is unaspirated as in the t in English "Steve". English does have the sound, but only as an allophone of t when it's preceded by s.
wluu 9y ago
I’m not sure how you got “day" out of it, the linked recording sounded (to me) more like "the", if you were trying to say the word "there" (but obviously without the "re"). My mums' native dialect is Teo Chiew, which is a variant of and falls under the Min Nan family of dialects (but can be quite different in many ways, a native speaker of one does not necessarily means mutual understanding of the others). And while similar, Teo Chiew uses a "dê” rather than "tê" for tea. On another note, the area is also the origin of the "Gong Fu Cha" style tea ceremony. [1] [1] https://www.kyarazen.com/chaozhou-gongfu-tea/ https://www.kyarazen.com/chaozhou-gongfu-tea/
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  > I’m not sure how you got “day" out of it, the linked recording sounded (to me) more like "the", if you were trying to say the word "there" (but obviously without the "re"). What kind of English accent do you have? I'm from New Zealand, so the way I pronounce vowels is probably differs a lot from the prestige accents of English.
  - wluu 9y ago
    Ah. I’m from across the ditch (Aussie for those unfamiliar with the term).
hhw 9y ago
My father is a baby boomer born in Xiamen, Fujian and then left for Taiwan as a child with his family in 1949, although did most his schooling in Hong Kong and then came to Canada for University. He pronounces it somewhere between "te" and "de", but nothing like "day".

jdmichal 9y ago

I don't have any reason not to believe you, but your position does not seem to be backed up by Wikipedia, where /d/ is not listed as a phoneme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Taiwanese_Hokkien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Taiwanese_Hokkien I have a hypothesis, mostly dependent on the position of a native English speaker, which I have no idea whether you are or not: It's common to not be able to easily distinguish /e/ and /ai/. English does not have the former, and it tends to best match to the /ai/ diphthong, which glides over and would "average" to /e/. It's also common to confuse aspiration and voicing on stops. English initial voiced stops are unaspirated, while initial unvoiced stops are aspirated. Hence, an unvoiced, unaspirated initial stop does not typically occur in English, and can vary in listener interpretation between /t/ or /d/. This article covers voice onset time (VOT) and how voicing and aspiration play into it: http://www.linguisticsnetwork.com/tutorials-aspiration-and-voice-onset-time/ http://www.linguisticsnetwork.com/tutorials-aspiration-and-v... Important note is that VOT is negative for voiced, near zero for unvoiced, and positive for aspirated. This measurable phenomenon backs up the fact that unvoiced, unaspirated sounds are basically in between standard English sounds and why you can get differing interpretations.

HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
Yeap you probably hit the nail on the head. I'm a native English speaker and I only know a tiny bit of Hokkien. I really struggle with the aspirated/non-aspirated aspect of many of the consonants. Not sure about the vowel sounds, I found those all reasonably trivial to distinguish. https://mkdict.net/results?query=te%CC%82&page=1&q_type=tw&roman=t&t_dict=moe https://mkdict.net/results?query=te%CC%82&page=1&q_type=tw&r... If you click on the "+" button, there's a voice recording of how to pronounce it. It's from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education. To me it sounds much more like "day" than "tea".
- jdmichal 9y ago
  The vowel sound definitely matches /e/. It sounds like /ai/, but there's none of the glide that would be present in a diphthong. I ran it by my wife, as she's a native Spanish and English speaker, and she agrees with /e/ over /ai/. Thanks for that link. Very cool site; reminds me of dict.leo.org for German.
  - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
    The vowel sound in day is /ai/? I can hear a slight difference between the vowel sounds in both tê and day. That's something I always just attributed to accent, not a different vowel - but I suppose vowel changes can be very subtle.
    - jdmichal 9y ago
      Er... No, I brain farted. The diphthong in "day" is /eɪ/. /aɪ/ (which I was listing as /ai/ on my phone) is as the word "tie". So maybe that makes it more obvious why it would be easy to confuse /e/ and /eɪ/, especially when your native language only has the latter. Brain heuristics work regardless of whether you want them to or not, and they'll fill in the missing /ɪ/ even if it's not present.

Zeklandia 9y ago

The Dutch would have pronounced 'thee' closer to 'tay' (i.e. /tʰe/) whereas modern English speakers would pronounce it like the word 'thee' (/ði/).

clw8 9y ago

The Min Nan "t" is an unaspirated consonant (meaning if you hold your hand in front of your mouth when you pronounce it, you shouldn't feel the puff of air), like the t in Spanish. English speakers routinely interpret these sounds as aspirated consonants since we lack those sounds. Why Dutch writes it as thee, I don't know, since Dutch lacks aspiration. Wiktionary just said the h is faux-Greek but I don't understand the motivation of that.

DonaldFisk 9y ago
Neither Cantonese nor Mandarin has voiced stops. In Yale and Pinyin, t is aspirated as in English "tea", d is unaspirated as in the t in English "Steve". English does have the sound, but only as an allophone of t when it's preceded by s.

wluu 9y ago

I’m not sure how you got “day" out of it, the linked recording sounded (to me) more like "the", if you were trying to say the word "there" (but obviously without the "re"). My mums' native dialect is Teo Chiew, which is a variant of and falls under the Min Nan family of dialects (but can be quite different in many ways, a native speaker of one does not necessarily means mutual understanding of the others). And while similar, Teo Chiew uses a "dê” rather than "tê" for tea. On another note, the area is also the origin of the "Gong Fu Cha" style tea ceremony. [1] [1] https://www.kyarazen.com/chaozhou-gongfu-tea/ https://www.kyarazen.com/chaozhou-gongfu-tea/

HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
> I’m not sure how you got “day" out of it, the linked recording sounded (to me) more like "the", if you were trying to say the word "there" (but obviously without the "re"). What kind of English accent do you have? I'm from New Zealand, so the way I pronounce vowels is probably differs a lot from the prestige accents of English.
- wluu 9y ago
  Ah. I’m from across the ditch (Aussie for those unfamiliar with the term).

hhw 9y ago

My father is a baby boomer born in Xiamen, Fujian and then left for Taiwan as a child with his family in 1949, although did most his schooling in Hong Kong and then came to Canada for University. He pronounces it somewhere between "te" and "de", but nothing like "day".