I have been told by many people that my pronunciation of these sounds is poor.
I can understand the difference when listening and can easily understand words that use these sounds. However I just cannot get my mouth to pronounce these sounds clearly.
Apparently the z,c,s all come out as s (i’m using HanYu PinYin here). Wu is not too bad but yu is just terrible and words such as 下雨 are completely unintelligible.
I have an excellent teacher who has provided many drills and reading materials about how to shape my mouth but I am still struggling.
Does anyone have any ideas or suffer from a similar problem?
[quote=“Milkybar_Kid”]I have been told by many people that my pronunciation of these sounds is poor.
I can understand the difference when listening and can easily understand words that use these sounds. However I just cannot get my mouth to pronounce these sounds clearly.
Apparently the z,c,s all come out as s (I’m using HanYu PinYin here). Wu is not too bad but yu is just terrible and words such as 下雨 are completely unintelligible.
I have an excellent teacher who has provided many drills and reading materials about how to shape my mouth but I am still struggling.
Does anyone have any ideas or suffer from a similar problem?
Thanks[/quote]
You know the vowel in “bee”? Well, just round it and you’ll pronounce the vowel yu.
[quote=“Abacus”]Isn’t yu similar to ewww (disgusting)? And isn’t wu similar to ooh (like when something is cool)?
[/quote]
huh? ewww and ooh in an accent from what country?!?!@#!@?#!?@#? It is nothing like any of these sounds. Go over to the mdbg dictionary website and use the “Speaker” icon to hear what they should sound like.
Short answer: Get a tutor!
Longer answer: The w and the y are silent, their only role is to allow you to know that the u should be pronounced differently. Be careful to not let a w and y sound get into the way you say these two words.
(w)u is the equivalent to the way australians pronounce the vowel u when its part of a word, i.e. its the same as the way you pronounce “a e i o u” the way you really say it, not the way you read it when your singing the abc song. the wu sound is the same as the sound at the end of “bu” for no. so technically bu and bwu are the same sound
(y)u has no equivalent sound in the english language, you need to hear it and learn the tongue position. yu is the same as the u sound in girl (nu/nv). So technically nv is the equivalent of nyu.
[quote=“pqkdzrwt”]
(y)u has no equivalent sound in the english language, you need to hear it and learn the tongue position. yu is the same as the u sound in girl (nu/nv). So technically nv is the equivalent of nyu.[/quote]
Pinyin yu really is just the vowel in bee but rounded. Look at an IPA vowel chart if you think otherwise…
Why not focus on input, rather than output? I wonder if your Chinese teacher has any children, and if he or she made them sit down and do pronunciation drills or reading.
That has been said a million times. There is no improving steadily when it comes to unfamiliar sounds. One day you can’t say it properly and the next you can. It depends on how often you hear it and how long your brain takes to process it. There are some things you can do to help with forming the sound, which is good, but just saying the wrong sound over and over doesn’t help.
That has been said a million times. There is no improving steadily when it comes to unfamiliar sounds. One day you can’t say it properly and the next you can. It depends on how often you hear it and how long your brain takes to process it. There are some things you can do to help with forming the sound, which is good, but just saying the wrong sound over and over doesn’t help.[/quote]
Right. Learning to make language sounds as an adult is like learning to get good tone on a classical guitar – it takes practice and listening. If you just listen you’ll never be able to do it.
I have to slightly disagree. Its all about tongue position. If you can be taught or learn how to position your tongue correctly, that it, you’ve got it.
If you get a good book on the IPA that shows you exact tongue positions. Some older Chinese books also include tongue positions for some of the harder sounds.
[quote=“pqkdzrwt”]I have to slightly disagree. Its all about tongue position. If you can be taught or learn how to position your tongue correctly, that it, you’ve got it.
If you get a good book on the IPA that shows you exact tongue positions. Some older Chinese books also include tongue positions for some of the harder sounds.[/quote]
That’s more true for consonants than vowels and not applicable at all for tones. It’s also important to remember that the goal of pronunciation practice is to be able to communicate clearly, and this requires stringing many syllables together into phrases. Listening is really important for getting phrases right, I think, especially during the early stages.
In isolation. Not in connected speech, which is the gold standard. Until you can use something without thinking, it’s not mastered.
Good teaching about articulators is a good way to start making the right sounds, but long-term exposure, realizing that substitutions of different sounds DO change meanings, and realizing that one’s accent does not have to be perfect to make one’s language usable are all important as well.
Accent has traditionally been overemphasized because there has not been enough research on foreign accent and what it does (it has positive functions as well) and because segmental phonetics and pronunciation drills are just so easy and alluring. Stick the kids in the lab and you’ve got two or three hours of peace and quiet.
Yu is essentially the tongue position of ee but with pursed rounded lips. Or another way to describe it is to push your tongue up behind your teeth and push your lips forward.
Z is like a combination between d and z try saying them like Dz with no sound in between the c sound is like ts together. So like Dz but unvoiced.
For all intents and purposes, z is the same z as in English, and c is the “z” sound in “pizza.” Close enough for government work (literally, in this case).
LOL.
All this because a guy wants to get his pron better. None of this aspirated tongue position stuff is going to mean a thing to a novice. I was having a class a few nights ago, to get my lazy arse reading the paper better and not just page to the sports. The teacher asked me to say “noisy” in Chinese. For the life of me I could not remember which tone it was. In retrospect I was being an intermediate retard but I could say it perfectly in conversation when combined with another word, but isolated I was unsure. Very noisy, Too noisy, noisy to death etc.
Ironlady doesn’t have a good point. She is spot on. In speech there is a lot more at play than the individual sound.
