On the Maryknoll CDs (they’re in CD format now, and they rock, very good quality), the speakers pronounce “I” as “gwa” 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% as “wa”. It is always written as “goa”. Can anyone explain this?
Ironlady, Feiren, and other Taiwanese learnin folks, help me out.
Thanks,
Bo Han
Ouch…you got me on this one.
The only clue I can offer is that there are two different characters used to write the word “I” in Taiwanese. Maybe that’s what’s going on – a different character is being used? Although just what THAT is…just assume it’s for your convenience, I guess.
Anyone? Anyone??
[quote=“ironlady”]Ouch…you got me on this one.
The only clue I can offer is that there are two different characters used to write the word “I” in Taiwanese. Maybe that’s what’s going on – a different character is being used? Although just what THAT is…just assume it’s for your convenience, I guess.
Anyone? Anyone??[/quote]
no, the “correct” prononciation is “gua” 50 years ago that’s all you would have heard. the “wa” you hear today is a result of mandarin influence. the character is the same as the mandarin “wo”.
Could it be one of the differences between the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou varieties of Hokkien? (A question worth considering, despite the above post.)
nope. just as some factual backup, and i say this drunk before going to bed at 5:30 am 
those all involve vowel sounds, i can’t think of any involving initial consonants.
[quote=“gao_bo_han”]On the Maryknoll CDs (they’re in CD format now, and they rock, very good quality), the speakers pronounce “I” as “gwa” 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% as “wa”. It is always written as “goa”. Can anyone explain this?
Ironlady, Feiren, and other Taiwanese learnin folks, help me out.
Thanks,
Bo Han[/quote]
Did you get the CDs at the Taipei or the Taichung branch?
Isn’t the ‘g’ sound pronounced very softly? Sometimes it may just be inaudible.
[quote=“Feiren”][quote=“gao_bo_han”]On the Maryknoll CDs (they’re in CD format now, and they rock, very good quality), the speakers pronounce “I” as “gwa” 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% as “wa”. It is always written as “goa”. Can anyone explain this?
Ironlady, Feiren, and other Taiwanese learnin folks, help me out.
Thanks,
Bo Han[/quote]
Did you get the CDs at the Taipei or the Taichung (Taizhong) branch?
Isn’t the ‘g’ sound pronounced very softly? Sometimes it may just be inaudible.[/quote]
It’s my impression that the “g” is very soft, as in the “gua” sound in the Spanish pronunciation for “Guatemala”.
Grrrrr! Do you think if I return the tapes, they’ll give me a discount on the CDs??
[quote]Did you get the CDs at the Taipei or the Taichung (Taizhong) branch?
Isn’t the ‘g’ sound pronounced very softly? Sometimes it may just be inaudible.[/quote]
Taipei.
Well, I am going to say no to this one. Only because sometimes the main speaker (at least he’s the main speaker so far) will say it with a very audible “g” sound, and then sometimes on his second reading will very clearly not use it at all (such as at the opening dialogues). Interestingly, sometimes he will prefer to use “wa” instead of “gwa”, for example when it comes at the end of the sentence. “Li e goan chu bit lai ho goa” <-- goa will be pronounced as “wa” by him, and as “gwa” by the next person who reads it! This is consistent. All of the readers so far will always “correct” the word to “gwa”. But it seems from the replies here that people on the streets use “wa”, not “gwa”, or as Feiren says, the g sound is barely aspirated by those who do? This reminds me of my class at Shi-da where my teacher would insist on us using a pure Beijing accent, because it’s the “right” way, although everyone on the streets uses the Taiwanese accent. When we would say a word using the Taiwanese accent, she would invariably correct us. It would be like American teachers of ESL, in America, insisting their students use British accents in class. Argh, it’s just stupid. I was hoping Maryknoll would be beyond that, but apparently some of the legacy of poor teaching remains. HOWEVER, I want to point out that the Maryknoll textbooks and cds are far, far, far superior to any of the sludge they gave us in my Mandarin classes (in America).
I have heard pig pronounced as both “di” and as “du” … which one is correct?
now this is an example of the dialect difference Juba referred to.
Right on, Chris. The ‘g’ is hit way far back in the throat; a lot farther back than in English, so it blends easily with the ‘w’ sound that follows it, making it inaudible.
It’s not ‘Mandarin influence’.
One of the big dialectical differences is how to pronounce the ‘j’:
Some people pronounce it as an ‘l’ and some as a weird ‘z’ sound.
Right on, Chris. The ‘g’ is hit way far back in the throat; a lot farther back than in English, so it blends easily with the ‘w’ sound that follows it, making it inaudible.
It’s not ‘Mandarin influence’.[/quote]
wrong. it’s not that it becomes inaudible, people just aren’t pronouncing it. this was not true historically, and many experts attribute it to mandarin influence. as an example, the character for moon also has a soft g followed by a w, but you don’t hear people going around saying “oe niu”
[quote]One of the big dialectical differences is how to pronounce the ‘j’:
Some people pronounce it as an ‘l’ and some as a weird ‘z’ sound.[/quote]
true, but there is no such dialect difference for the soft g sound.
Another sad thing about Taiwanese is that little kids aren’t learning their stops.
At Maryknoll, we learned about the final ‘p’ ‘t’ and ‘k’ stop: as in the numbers 1 (chit), 6 (lak), 7 (chhit), and 10 (zap)
It’s similar to the final sounds in English when our tongue stops at the place of articulation, but the consonant is barely heard. People rarely say ‘noTTTTT’; we just say ‘not’ and the ‘t’ isn’t really heard, only the ‘t -stop’
Anyway…
I asked some of my students how to say ‘10’ in Taiwanese. They said:
‘Za’…
and they didn’t close their lips for the final ‘p’.
Anyway, I still think Chris is right.
[quote=“gao_bo_han”]
But it seems from the replies here that people on the streets use “wa”, not “gwa”, or as Feiren says, the g sound is barely aspirated by those who do? This reminds me of my class at Shi-Da where my teacher would insist on us using a pure Beijing accent, because it’s the “right” way, although everyone on the streets uses the Taiwanese accent. When we would say a word using the Taiwanese accent, she would invariably correct us. It would be like American teachers of ESL, in America, insisting their students use British accents in class. Argh, it’s just stupid. I was hoping Maryknoll would be beyond that, but apparently some of the legacy of poor teaching remains. [/quote]
I live in a heavily Taiwanese speaking part of Taipei. I do hear a lot of younger people saying ‘wa’. But I also here a lot of middle-aged and older people hitting the ‘goa’ every time. I guess it varies from speaker to speaker.
The Maryknoll teachears have mentioned to me that they teach to the book–that is with a Taichung accent. For a novice like me this gives me a lot of trouble since the Taiwanese spken here by Taipei people is noticeably different. And Yilan is even worse. I guess Taiwanese is just a language that has not been fully standardized by TV and the like.
funny, st, i read your name as sister tiddlywinks at first, thought you might have been one of the maryknoll teachers :)
never mind the stops, many of them are not learning it at all!
I have the impression that a similar variation in the reading of 我 (I) occurs in Cantonese, i.e. either ngo (the way I learned it) or o.
That’s correct. The ng- is hardly ever pronounced by younger Hong Kong people. I doubt it is because of any influence from Putonghua; most HKers were pronouncing it this way long before they were exposed to much Putonghua. Guangzhou people seem to pronounce it as “o” as well. Whenever I speak Cantonese (which is rarely and poorly), people tell me that it is a good thing that I pronounce “ngo” correctly (do I?), even though they NEVER pronounce it that way. I guess Putonghua is not the only Chinese language whose speakers believe in some sort of “standard” that isn’t really found in the language as spoken by most people.
[quote=“Sinister Tiddlywinks”]Another sad thing about Taiwanese is that little kids aren’t learning their stops.
At Maryknoll, we learned about the final ‘p’ ‘t’ and ‘k’ stop: as in the numbers 1 (chit), 6 (lak), 7 (chhit), and 10 (zap)
It’s similar to the final sounds in English when our tongue stops at the place of articulation, but the consonant is barely heard. People rarely say ‘noTTTTT’; we just say ‘not’ and the ‘t’ isn’t really heard, only the ‘t -stop’
Anyway…
I asked some of my students how to say ‘10’ in Taiwanese. They said:
‘Za’…
and they didn’t close their lips for the final ‘p’.
Anyway, I still think Chris is right.[/quote]
Thanks! I remember a showing a Taiwanese girl a “teach-yourself-Taiwanese” book. She saw that the book spelled the Taiwanese word for “I” as “goa”, and asked, “Why don’t they spell it ‘gwa’?”
As for the final stops, they can be difficult to hear in isolation, but when followed by a vowel, such as “e” (as in “zap e lang” - “ten people” or “jit e lang” - “one person”), you can hear it clearly - it sounds like “zabelang” or “jidelang”.