Pains pronouncing 政治學

Language Learning Chinese
21

Woo-hoo! I’m getting close to 100% recognition now. Divide and conquer:

  1. Getting the “zhe4” sound right: I practiced saying zhe4li 這裡, which was quite easy to get right (while however being careful not to vibrate the vocal chords during the zh).
  2. Having gotten the zhe4 sound right, I just added an ng the end. Tada: zheng4 政 has been pronounced.
  3. zhi4: Just say shi4 是, but change the sh to zh by removing the aspiration (no exhalation).
  4. xue2: My pronunciation here is generally recognized OK by Google (by practicing saying da4 xue2 大學 repeatedly), though I am trying to be cautious to emphasize the rising second tone here and not be lazy.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I see that I was pronouncing zheng4 政 like “jung” in “jungle”, with a voiced j at the start. So I was getting both the zh wrong (voicing it) and the falling e4 sound wrong (u like in jungle, instead of the distinctive e sound as in zhe4li). With both of those features wrongly pronounced, Google (and probably native speakers too) couldn’t understand what I was trying to say.

Mission accomplished! All hail our overlord Google Translate.

3 Likes
22

Here’s a quick hack: You just need to spend a few days feeding Google voice sentences about uncles, emergencies and rescues. It will then recognize that this is an important matter to you and spell the sentence out correctly.

1 Like
23

I wonder what kind of ads he will be getting the next couple of weeks.

5 Likes