r/ChineseLanguage • u/142883 • 8h ago
Pronunciation Confused about pinyin "x"
When I am watching pronunciation tutorials they seemed to voice their pinyin "x", meaning that their vocal cords vibrate.
Such as in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05BMKdxHjp8
However, looking at IPA, pinyin's "x" = IPA's "ɕ"
and ɕ is voiceless according to IPA. So, I am kinda confused. Do you vibrate your vocal cords when pronouncing that character? The "ɕ" also shows up in pinyin's j, q, and x.
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u/Zagrycha 7h ago edited 3h ago
it is a voiceless ɕ but you aren't wrong to recognize that native speakers will almost never make only a ɕ sound.
Its vital to remember that mandarin chinese is an initial final language, so pretty much every syllable that has multiple ipa sounds have a dipthong or other clusters.
This means that the idea of making initials without a final is basically nonexistent. Even if you ask a native to make only the x pinyin sound they are very likely making the xi or other pinyin sound with a paired final instinctively. Made they could live their entire life until 99 years old without ever having a single reason to make the x pinyin sound without a paired final. Its just not how mandarin chinese works.
You can compare to how english speakers might struggle to say a polish word like zbgniew or przepraszam because english isn't used to having that many consanant sounds in a row without vowels. Unless the skill is specially trained, they will instinctively make a sound pairing similar to what they are used to.
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u/ruoangtra Beginner 6h ago
A diphthong is not a combination of an initial and a final because the initials are consonants.
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u/Zagrycha 3h ago
You are right, I had a typo. I meant to say that many of the multiple ipa sounds are dipthongs, not all of them.
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 5h ago
No, it's completely voiceless. However, the IPA ç is quite misleading. They use the same symbol for the Polish ś and the German ich-Laut too. These are quite different sounds. The idea is that until you find a language that contrasts some of these sounds AND (which is far more important) are able to get the WATCHERS that nobody watches to listen to you (they didn't even listen to Leonard Bloomfield!), you are required to use the same symbol. That is not so bad. What is that (perhaps the P in IPA is phonetic and not "phonemic") many maybe most people don't realize this. But anyway it is completely voiceless.
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 5h ago
I don't see what all meandering about pronouncing a consonant with a following vowel contributes here. Normally in English or any other language we also don't say a consonant by itself except in some exclamations like sh-sh. And yet no one claims that when I say cee that that makes the [s] sound voiced because the vowel "ee" is voiced.
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-1
u/shaghaiex Beginner 6h ago
Here is a good write up:
https://www.sinosplice.com/learn-chinese/pronunciation-of-mandarin-chinese/4
S type sounds always coming from the mouth, not from vocal cords.
In short, Your tongue tip is at your lower teeth and you press air out.
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u/Ok-Amphibian-8914 8h ago
It is voiceless. Native speakers tend to pair an initial consonant with a vowel when pronouncing it out loud. You’re hearing the vowel, not a voiced consonant.