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When people pronounce mandarin they often pronounce differently depending on their local dialects, which is why I brought up Cantonese/hokkien. In turn these of

by ximeng 3y ago

When people pronounce mandarin they often pronounce differently depending on their local dialects, which is why I brought up Cantonese/hokkien. In turn these often derive from older variants of chinese. It seems like there has been some kind of shift from ngxxx in Middle Chinese to yxxx in Cantonese and to rxxx in mandarin, but only for some vowel sounds now represented by y… in mandarin, which is why we don’t see the y to r shift for other vowels. Just guessing here, definitely not an expert. The pinyin spellings are confusing, and I’m not sure the history of why they were chosen exactly like that. It definitely makes it hard to learn the pronunciations.

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> It seems like there has been some kind of shift from ngxxx in Middle Chinese to yxxx in Cantonese and to rxxx in mandarin, but only for some vowel sounds now represented by y… in mandarin, which is why we don’t see the y to r shift for other vowels. I think this is a fundamentally different kind of phenomenon. Historical sound changes that occurred between Middle Chinese and the present can explain why the same word is pronounced differently in different varieties of Chinese. But they can't explain why or how certain people perceive different sounds to be equivalent. Consider a non-Chinese example - the letter Y in the English words yard and day derives from an original G. (There was also a G at the end of the word I, and it changed in the same way, but this is not reflected by a letter Y in the modern spelling of I.) But the historical sound change does not mean that modern English speakers have trouble telling the difference between the sound of a Y and the sound of a G. They don't. All modern speakers will effortlessly maintain the distinction between yard and guard or gird, and between yes and guess, just like they maintain the distinctions between big and bee or bag and bay. If you suggested to them that any such pair of words might sound similar to each other, they'd give you funny looks. I'm interested in the ability of speakers to produce and perceive differences between different sounds, not in the different evolution of one sound as it develops along different historical paths. (Well, not here. I am interested in the historical development of the sound as a more general matter, but it's not what I was asking about.) I was hoping that a fuller understanding of the identification of r- and y- in certain Chinese regions might help explain why certain pinyin syllables are spelled with an initial letter Y. For example, I have been saying that "yue" represents the combination of a final -üe with a zero initial, and this is indeed the official definition, but there's a bit more to it than that - I knew a Cantonese girl for whom the Mandarin words 肉 and 月 began with the same sound. That's easy to explain if "yue" really does have an initial y-; it's much harder to explain if "yue" has no initial consonant.
- ximeng 3y ago
  月 and 肉 initials are much closer in Cantonese which is why Cantonese speakers often fail to differentiate these sounds in mandarin. I don’t think it’s directly linked to the pinyin, which has a different evolutionary path. You see the same in Nanjing dialect, where speakers fail to differentiate l/n initials and n/ng finals. The pinyin is different, but their home dialect doesn’t distinguish so they fail to distinguish the sounds. Presumably if Nanjing speakers had been writing the pinyin standards there would be more chance that lan/rang would have ended up written the same. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_dialect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_dialect I think what you’re after probably is a historical analysis of romanisations including pinyin. Such an analysis might also cover other no-obvious features of pinyin, like why jiao and yao have similar vowel sounds but different spellings and the nv/yu and nu/wu similarities and differences. For your historical English example, I think in some dialects and in some historical times there would have been people that fail to distinguish some of your examples and others but all of this is a bit beyond my expertise.

by ximeng 3y ago

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> It seems like there has been some kind of shift from ngxxx in Middle Chinese to yxxx in Cantonese and to rxxx in mandarin, but only for some vowel sounds now represented by y… in mandarin, which is why we don’t see the y to r shift for other vowels. I think this is a fundamentally different kind of phenomenon. Historical sound changes that occurred between Middle Chinese and the present can explain why the same word is pronounced differently in different varieties of Chinese. But they can't explain why or how certain people perceive different sounds to be equivalent. Consider a non-Chinese example - the letter Y in the English words yard and day derives from an original G. (There was also a G at the end of the word I, and it changed in the same way, but this is not reflected by a letter Y in the modern spelling of I.) But the historical sound change does not mean that modern English speakers have trouble telling the difference between the sound of a Y and the sound of a G. They don't. All modern speakers will effortlessly maintain the distinction between yard and guard or gird, and between yes and guess, just like they maintain the distinctions between big and bee or bag and bay. If you suggested to them that any such pair of words might sound similar to each other, they'd give you funny looks. I'm interested in the ability of speakers to produce and perceive differences between different sounds, not in the different evolution of one sound as it develops along different historical paths. (Well, not here. I am interested in the historical development of the sound as a more general matter, but it's not what I was asking about.) I was hoping that a fuller understanding of the identification of r- and y- in certain Chinese regions might help explain why certain pinyin syllables are spelled with an initial letter Y. For example, I have been saying that "yue" represents the combination of a final -üe with a zero initial, and this is indeed the official definition, but there's a bit more to it than that - I knew a Cantonese girl for whom the Mandarin words 肉 and 月 began with the same sound. That's easy to explain if "yue" really does have an initial y-; it's much harder to explain if "yue" has no initial consonant.

ximeng 3y ago
月 and 肉 initials are much closer in Cantonese which is why Cantonese speakers often fail to differentiate these sounds in mandarin. I don’t think it’s directly linked to the pinyin, which has a different evolutionary path. You see the same in Nanjing dialect, where speakers fail to differentiate l/n initials and n/ng finals. The pinyin is different, but their home dialect doesn’t distinguish so they fail to distinguish the sounds. Presumably if Nanjing speakers had been writing the pinyin standards there would be more chance that lan/rang would have ended up written the same. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_dialect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_dialect I think what you’re after probably is a historical analysis of romanisations including pinyin. Such an analysis might also cover other no-obvious features of pinyin, like why jiao and yao have similar vowel sounds but different spellings and the nv/yu and nu/wu similarities and differences. For your historical English example, I think in some dialects and in some historical times there would have been people that fail to distinguish some of your examples and others but all of this is a bit beyond my expertise.