IPA for dialects of Mandarin

I’m looking for IPA tables for any major dialects of Putonghua/Guoyu. The Beijing dialect would be fine, but I’m also interested in any IPA representations of other “high” dialects of Mandarin or Taipei Mandarin. I’ve seen such tables on the internet and in books before, but I can’t seem to find them now that I need them. I found this chart, but I’m not sure what code to use so that the IPA shows up properly. Any advice from our phonology scholars?

Hi,
I would guess that it’s a font issue – you might need to have an IPA font installed.

That said, why not just e-mail Prof. Moran and ask? His e-mail is moran @ DONOTSPAMTHEGUYwfu.edu

(You know what to do)…

IPA fonts from sil.org

But aren’t they all in Unicode these days anyway? Dunno, just tried copying from the page you found to this post tʂʰɑŋ
without much success!

Maybe put it in technology forum?

that site is in unicode, and if you have any unicode font that includes the IPA extensions, and that font is working in your browser, you should be able to view it.

Here’s a test page that should also have a list of fonts you can use.

In mainland China there is a journal called Fangyan 方言(Dialect). I used to read it…well, glance through it…in the library of the Beijing Languages Institute/University. Plenty of IPA in there. I guess some institution somewhere in Taiwan probably has a subscription - but it might be a job to find it. Maybe the department of linguistics at the Academia Sinica would have it.

Can someone please explain to me what IPA is in plain English please?

IPA stands for “International Phonetic Alphabet”, an extended set of symbols capable of accurately expressing the sounds of all the world’s languages (including tones, clicks, nasals, gutterals, coarticulated stops, ad nauseum). When I was an undergrad we used to have to listen to phonetics tapes (2 semester required course!) recorded by a Professor Smalley in his NYC lab – complete with traffic noises in the background.

It depends on how “narrowly” (in how much detail) you choose to transcribe the sounds you hear as to how complex the transcription becomes.

Well, I can read none of the characters from your link except the schwa. I could read all of Jive Turkey’s link, but could not paste the unusual IPA symbols into this forum. Any idea what’s happening in my case? :help:

[quote=“ironlady”]IPA stands for “International Phonetic Alphabet”, …

It depends on how “narrowly” (in how much detail) you choose to transcribe the sounds you hear as to how complex the transcription becomes.[/quote]

Exactly.

Pinyin (and bpmf and Wade) are examples of very broad transcription schemes, mostly because they’re only used to transcribe a particular language (ie Mandarin) in its standard pronunciation. So e.g. ㄕ is written in Pinyin as “sh”. The sound’s not a million miles from the English “sh”, or the “sh” in other languages, and that no doubt is the reason “sh” was chosen.

But as we all know :sunglasses: English “sh” and Chinese “sh” aren’t pronounced exactly the same. What’s more, not all Mandarin speakers pronounce “sh” in exactly the same way. To illustrate precisely how these sounds differ, even though they’re all examples of a “sh”-like sound, we can use a narrow transcription, in IPA symbols, with lots of diacritics and squiggly bits, like you saw in the links above.

[Can we change the title here? There are not “dialects” of Mandarin.]

Uh, yes there are. It’s no different from any other language that’s spoken by a large number of people. Plenty of scholarly books on Mandarin refer to different dialects of the language. Why would you say that there are no dialects of Mandarin?

Uh, yes there are. It’s no different from any other language that’s spoken by a large number of people. Plenty of scholarly books on Mandarin refer to different dialects of the language. Why would you say that there are no dialects of Mandarin?[/quote]

I’m curious too. I am under the understanding that Mandarin is a Chinese dialect.

Beijing Mandarin, Taibei Mandarin, Shanghai Mandarin, etc are accents of the Mandarin dialect.

Please tell me the difference between (regional) accent and dialect.

There is a huge amount of controversy about “what is a dialect” and “what is an accent” and “what is an ideolect” (the latter being the charitable description of my efforts to speak Chinese :smiley: )…it is a linguist’s minefield. I was never so annoyed as when I got into my MA defense last July and some smart-a$$ asked, “Well, what do you mean ‘native speaker’?” My thesis had very little to do with the precise definition of that term, btw – just one of those “we’re going to be annoying” questions.

(I’m not saying that asking about dialect/accent is annoying, just for the record.)

For my money, however, I wouldn’t waste a lot of bandwidth on debating the topic (unless you derive pleasure from that sort of thing). There are plenty of thick books and weighty articles in linguistics journals that have already done the same thing – and generally failed to come to any conclusion that everyone agrees on.

The OP seems to be asking, “Are there resources that will give me a list of syllable pronunciations as speakers in certain areas tend to pronounce them consistently?” Call it dialect or accent, that’s what he wants. And he’d like to see the IPA symbols used to represent the sounds. Seems pretty simple, really…??

Thank you for the explanation, ironlady.

I wanted to understand the OP’s intent for choosing “dialect” in the title of this thread. I never knew Mandarin could be separated into different dialects. But if the OP chooses that word, I am sure there is a good reason for it. I don’t think I’m the only with that question, but thanks for making me feel silly that I didn’t think of going to the library first to look it up.

Keep in mind, I’m learning things about the Chinese language too. But not studying the language like you are, so some things are not as “obvious” to me as they are to you. :wink:

914

That’s the fun thing about Chinese - Cantonese and Mandarin are far more different from one another than are Spanish and Portugese, and yet the former are considered dialects, not languages, while the latter are language, not dialects.

It was not my intention to make you feel like you should have gone to the library. I’m just saying that everyone has a different opinion on the matter, so unless you really enjoy a debate for the sake of debate, it seems to me it’s a question of terminology rather than substance.

It’s a good example of why I never made it in theoretical linguistics. I just don’t have the patience to argue about that kind of thing. I’d rather go out and learn two or three dialects/accents/whatevers in the time it would take me to review all the scholarly opinions on why they are dialects and not accents or whatever. But that’s just me.

[quote=“smithsgj”][quote=“TaiOanKok”]

that site is in unicode, and if you have any unicode font that includes the IPA extensions, and that font is working in your browser, you should be able to view it.

Here’s a test page that should also have a list of fonts you can use.

[/quote]

Well, I can read none of the characters from your link except the schwa. I could read all of Jive Turkey’s link, but could not paste the unusual IPA symbols into this forum. Any idea what’s happening in my case? :help:[/quote]

yes, this means you do not have the right font set up. First, make sure you have one of these fonts installed; then follow directions for setting up your browser.

[quote=“914”]I’m curious too. I am under the understanding that Mandarin is a Chinese dialect.

Beijing Mandarin, Taibei Mandarin, Shanghai Mandarin, etc are accents of the Mandarin dialect. [/quote]

Mandarin dialects should be regarded as far more divergent from each other than Beijing Mandarin, Taipei Mandarin etc. Think of “Mandarin” in this term to mean languages closely related to Standard Chinese.

This map of Chinese dialects lists 9 Mandarin dialects across northern China.

This page is on Mandarin dialects and has details on more than 20 varieties of Mandarin.

Uh, yes there are. It’s no different from any other language that’s spoken by a large number of people. Plenty of scholarly books on Mandarin refer to different dialects of the language. Why would you say that there are no dialects of Mandarin?[/quote]

Well, define “Mandarin Chinese” for a start. The fact that some people pronounce Modern Standard Chinese differently doesn’t make those variant pronunciations separate dialects. Without defining what “Mandarin” is or what a “dialect” is, I have no idea what this thread is about.

One of the websites quoted below seems to think that many Chinese languages are “dialects” of the same language. Bizarre. Presumably then, Irish is a dialect of English. As is French. Or the other way round. Or something!

Hi hexuan,
The problem comes about partially from the dual nature of Chinese.

If French, Irish, etc. shared a common written form, then the parallelism of the argument would be stronger.

I think a lot of people consider Mandarin, Taiwanese, Shanghainese…etc. dialects rather than separate languages despite their mutual unintelligibility in speech because of the common written forms they share. I can read written Taiwanese fairly easily (if it’s written in characters, and it can be), or written Cantonese, etc. Naturally it’s easier to read if it’s a fairly formal piece of writing, because that eliminates the words that are more slang-like. But the common writing system / unintelligible spoken form is the stumbling block for classification (that, and probably the idea that “Chinese is Chinese” which has to do with ethnic or nationalistic ideas, too.)