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I wondered this too when learning Pinyin. I believe the reason is that while Pinyin's X and Q may sound like "sh" and "ch" to English speakers, they are actuall

by tdeck 5y ago

I wondered this too when learning Pinyin. I believe the reason is that while Pinyin's X and Q may sound like "sh" and "ch" to English speakers, they are actually different sounds (and contrast with the "sh" and "ch" sounds that also exist in Mandarin). That said, I still wonder why -ui was chosen for "wei", "shi" is pronounced "shr", "-ian" is pronounced "yen", etc... MPS-II seems much closer to intuitive pronunciation for English speakers, although it never caught on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Phonetic_Symbols_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Phonetic_Symbols_II

loycombinate 5y ago
A Chinese teacher once told me that pinyin is based off Russian
- bmn__ 5y ago
  That's more wrong than correct. There's only one minor part of the design where we can see a relation: Latin q resembles Cyrillic ч.
Markoff 5y ago
> That said, I still wonder why -ui was chosen for "wei", "shi" is pronounced "shr" Shi is pronounced Shr? That sounds more like your typical pirate Beijing hua. Which can get quite confusing when you get out of Beijing to let's say to Shanghai business trip and you can't figure if something cost 4 or 10 kuai at street vendor (my personal anecdote, I think they actually do it on purpose since normally 4 would have very different sound).
squiggleblaz 5y ago
> I believe the reason is that while Pinyin's X and Q may sound like "sh" and "ch" to English speakers, they are actually different sounds (and contrast with the "sh" and "ch" sounds that also exist in Mandarin). Neither Mandarin sh nor x exist in English. X is sharper and is a little more like shy-, whereas sh is darker and a little like shr-. In reality they both strike English speakers as being quite like sh, because we use the space differently. I've heard various native English speakers who are fluent in Mandarin saying e.g. Xi as Si. I don't know if there's a dialectal difference in English or in Mandarin or both that accounts for it. > That said, I still wonder why -ui was chosen for "wei" It looks better, if you have a certain aesthetic. > "shi" is pronounced "shr" As far as I know Mandarin speakers just consider them the same. Pinyin is designed for native speakers. > "-ian" is pronounced "yen" The e in Pinyin isn't really the English e sound. It's more like the American short u in fun or the NZ short i in pin. It's not obvious what letter to use to represent that, but e is not completely unreasonable. When they do have an e-sound according to the internal logic of Mandarin, it's a variant of an a-sound.

by tdeck 5y ago

loycombinate 5y ago

A Chinese teacher once told me that pinyin is based off Russian

bmn__ 5y ago
That's more wrong than correct. There's only one minor part of the design where we can see a relation: Latin q resembles Cyrillic ч.

Markoff 5y ago

> That said, I still wonder why -ui was chosen for "wei", "shi" is pronounced "shr" Shi is pronounced Shr? That sounds more like your typical pirate Beijing hua. Which can get quite confusing when you get out of Beijing to let's say to Shanghai business trip and you can't figure if something cost 4 or 10 kuai at street vendor (my personal anecdote, I think they actually do it on purpose since normally 4 would have very different sound).

squiggleblaz 5y ago

> I believe the reason is that while Pinyin's X and Q may sound like "sh" and "ch" to English speakers, they are actually different sounds (and contrast with the "sh" and "ch" sounds that also exist in Mandarin). Neither Mandarin sh nor x exist in English. X is sharper and is a little more like shy-, whereas sh is darker and a little like shr-. In reality they both strike English speakers as being quite like sh, because we use the space differently. I've heard various native English speakers who are fluent in Mandarin saying e.g. Xi as Si. I don't know if there's a dialectal difference in English or in Mandarin or both that accounts for it. > That said, I still wonder why -ui was chosen for "wei" It looks better, if you have a certain aesthetic. > "shi" is pronounced "shr" As far as I know Mandarin speakers just consider them the same. Pinyin is designed for native speakers. > "-ian" is pronounced "yen" The e in Pinyin isn't really the English e sound. It's more like the American short u in fun or the NZ short i in pin. It's not obvious what letter to use to represent that, but e is not completely unreasonable. When they do have an e-sound according to the internal logic of Mandarin, it's a variant of an a-sound.