Re: USAGE: Help with Chinese phrase

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004 16:14:36 -0400, Douglas Koller, Latin & French
<latinfrench@...> wrote:
> Pinyin "x" is /C/.
> "q" is /tC/    and
> "j" is the unaspirated equivalent of "q"
> Someone better versed in SAMPA can sort that out for me.
Well, looky here, I found a Pinyin/IPA equivalence table:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanyu_Pinyin

And it looks like your SAMPA doesn't suck as much as you think.
Indeed, as you say,  |x| is /C/, |q| is /tC_h/ and |j| is /tC/.

But who in the heck designed Pinyin?  Some of those assignments make
no sense - |r| for /z`/?   Given |sh| for /s`/, I would have used |zh|
for /z`/, but no, |zh| is used for /ts`/, while |ch| is used for the
aspirated version /ts`_h/.  I think I'd have better luck learning
Maggel. :)


> As for Chinese final "n", I did you a diservice. It could indeed be
> /V~/. The range here is pretty broad, from /n/ to a kind of nasalized
> thang and everything in between (Shanghainese collapses this with
> /N/). SAMPA may have a more specific symbol for this, but it is not
> nasalization in the French or Taiwanese sense, but the tongue doesn't
> hit the roof of your mouth to give you a full-blown /n/. Beyond that,
> while I can produce the sound perfectly well, I'm at a loss as to how
> to describe it effectively.
Most people are at a loss to describe most of the sounds they make.  I wouldn't
sweat it. It's certainly not a "disservice".

The above-mentioned page equates |n| to /n/ in all cases with no
mention of the nasalization effect, so I have no idea how to represent
the latter in IPA or SAMPA.

Thanks again!

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