Fricatives
Mar. 7th, 2010 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prusik[I'm cat waxing. Shut up.]
Mandarin has essentially two different 's' sounds, one is the English 's' sound (IPA s), and the other is a retroflex consonant (IPA ʂ). If you speak with a Taiwanese accent, you substitute /s/ for /ʂ/ when you speak, but you can hear the difference when you listen. It turns out English doesn't have retroflex constants at all. (I had no idea.)
Pinyin romanizes /ʂ/ as 'sh.' This is unfortunate because it naturally leads English speakers to use the English 'sh' sound (IPA ʃ) instead. To my ear, they don't sound anything alike. (I think everyone else in the world, including other Mandarin speakers, disagrees with me.) Unfortunately, there no way to notate "Hey, curl your tongue!" since English has no retroflex consonants. (Also, pinyin isn't geared towards English speakers anyway.) To me, substituting /s/ for /ʂ/ seems a smaller mispronunciation than substituting /ʃ/.
Now, what does sound like /ʃ/ to me is /ɕ/ which pinyin romanizes as 'x.' I can hear the difference. They differ in lip and tongue position. I can even demonstrate the difference. These two still sound closer to me though even though the mechanics of making /s/ and /ʂ/ are far more similar. Funny that.
(For the record, Mandarin doesn't have /ʃ/. I have no idea what someone speaking English with a Mandarin accent substitutes in its place.)
Anyway, if I write a story in English, I can't give anyone a name that uses /ʂ/ or /ɕ/ unless I notate her name (at least partially) in IPA. In English, I get either /s/ or /ʃ/, period. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Right now, the story I'm working on is not going to turn on whether someone said /s/, /ʂ/, /ʃ/, or /ɕ/, but it does make me wonder how one writes, in English, a story that does. (Yes, I read Another Fine Myth, which makes a joke about being unable recognize between two different pronunciations of "Istvan." However, since the POV character, can't hear the difference at the time, unless they brought it up again later in the series, we don't know exactly what the differences in pronunciation were.)
Mandarin has essentially two different 's' sounds, one is the English 's' sound (IPA s), and the other is a retroflex consonant (IPA ʂ). If you speak with a Taiwanese accent, you substitute /s/ for /ʂ/ when you speak, but you can hear the difference when you listen. It turns out English doesn't have retroflex constants at all. (I had no idea.)
Pinyin romanizes /ʂ/ as 'sh.' This is unfortunate because it naturally leads English speakers to use the English 'sh' sound (IPA ʃ) instead. To my ear, they don't sound anything alike. (I think everyone else in the world, including other Mandarin speakers, disagrees with me.) Unfortunately, there no way to notate "Hey, curl your tongue!" since English has no retroflex consonants. (Also, pinyin isn't geared towards English speakers anyway.) To me, substituting /s/ for /ʂ/ seems a smaller mispronunciation than substituting /ʃ/.
Now, what does sound like /ʃ/ to me is /ɕ/ which pinyin romanizes as 'x.' I can hear the difference. They differ in lip and tongue position. I can even demonstrate the difference. These two still sound closer to me though even though the mechanics of making /s/ and /ʂ/ are far more similar. Funny that.
(For the record, Mandarin doesn't have /ʃ/. I have no idea what someone speaking English with a Mandarin accent substitutes in its place.)
Anyway, if I write a story in English, I can't give anyone a name that uses /ʂ/ or /ɕ/ unless I notate her name (at least partially) in IPA. In English, I get either /s/ or /ʃ/, period. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Right now, the story I'm working on is not going to turn on whether someone said /s/, /ʂ/, /ʃ/, or /ɕ/, but it does make me wonder how one writes, in English, a story that does. (Yes, I read Another Fine Myth, which makes a joke about being unable recognize between two different pronunciations of "Istvan." However, since the POV character, can't hear the difference at the time, unless they brought it up again later in the series, we don't know exactly what the differences in pronunciation were.)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-07 04:56 pm (UTC)?
I don't follow. That's like me saying I can't myself Ellen unless I want to spell it with an epsilon and an n-underdot. Any transliteration that's not IPA is going to be basically phonemic. Any writing system that's not IPA is going to be basically phonemic-- there are always phonetic details that aren't captured, in any language; there's no way around that.
If I'm reading you right, Mandarin has three sibilant phonemes, /s/, /ʂ/ and /ɕ/, and Pinyin transliterates them as [s], [sh], and [x], correct? So there's no difficulty in capturing all the contrasts.
Why not just use Pinyin, and add an author's note describing the phonetics? Or, if there's a non-Mandarin-speaking character, let someone correct their pronunciation.
Right now, the story I'm working on is not going to turn on whether someone said /s/, /ʂ/, /ʃ/, or /ɕ/, but it does make me wonder how one writes, in English, a story that does.
One hauls out the diacritics, I think.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-07 06:52 pm (UTC)there are always phonetic details that aren't captured, in any language; there's no way around that.
That's pretty much what I'm saying. The distinction is that if I write "Ellen", your typical North American English speaker will up come up with more or less what I had in mind. OTOH, if I write, say, "xin shi" (not a name, BTW), I expect wacky hilarities to ensue. I'm just lamenting there doesn't seem to be a way to avoid that.
Why not just use Pinyin, and add an author's note describing the phonetics?
I was hoping for some way to avoid what is effectively the Celeborn Problem. There doesn't seem to be one though. I can't really manipulate the writing system to trick a North American English speaker into forming sounds that don't exist in her language.
One hauls out the diacritics, I think.
That makes sense. It'll cue the reader that the name isn't pronounced as he might expect. (And non-English speakers will probably get confused because that symbol undoubtedly exists in their languages.)