User:損齋/Archive 4

How to pronounce Standard Mandarin. It is definitely a pain in the arse for you lot. I can't let you suffer longer, here is what I can do for ya.
 * Standard mandarin is a Sino-Tibetan language. So Tibetan and Burmese are its biological relatives.
 * The Latin alphabet of Standard Mandarin doesn't accurately reflect its actual pronunciation.
 * For example: Zhang Xi. To pronounce this guy's name, Zh and X are crucial. An English speaker does not, usually, know how to say "Zh" and "X". What the heck is Zh anyways, What the heck is X???
 * Zh is a Voiceless retroflex affricate, ʈ͡ʂ, something like a slavic ч sound.
 * X is a Voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant, ɕ, exactly the same as the Scandinavian sj sound (by coincidence, they are not related).
 * So a more ideal spelling of Zhang Xi would actually be Czang Sjrh.
 * i in Mandarin is not a Palatal approximant, it's a Retroflex approximant. Something like the λ and the Russian Ы sound.
 * In the 2016 Olympics, I heard a Canadian broadcaster pronounced a name of a Chinese athlete. Her name was Yaxin. The broadcaster's pronunciation of this name was Yakssin. It is not his fault, our spelling system is fucked up. We should spell that as Yasjin.
 * E in Mandarin is a Close-mid back unrounded vowel, ɤ.
 * When you see "yi", the i becomes a Palatal approximant, so an English i or "ee" as in "Knee" will do. the same in "Xi"(sji, before "an","in") and "ji, "mi", "ni".
 * q in Mandarin is a Aspirated consonant of Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate. So.....er....pronounce Ch with aspiration.
 * If you see "g" in the end of a word, please do not pronounce it. In fact, you can ignore the difference between "en" and "eng" as well as "in" and "ing". We don't care. The g there only signifies that these sounds are open back sounds.
 * Ang, Eng, and Ing in Mandarin is very tricky because you may pronounce them the way you pronounce the word "Bang" or "Gang" or two of them together....... Ang as in the word "Bang" is not the way of pronoucing "Ang" in Mandarin. A Mandarin "ang" is an Open back unrounded vowel, something like an "aa" in Dutch.
 * The problematic spelling of Mandarin in Latin alphabet is really.....well, problematic. Let's see this one: "Xian". To pronounce "Xian" you say "Sjyan". But when you pronounce Xi'an, you will think it's just a separation between y and a. No....this i in Xi'an is not a Palatal approximant at all, there should not be an i at the first place. The Retroflex approximant i should be replaced by a letter like ṟ or rh. So, although Xian and Xi'an look very similar, one should be spelt as Sjyan and the other should be spelt as Sjrh An.
 * Now, the R sound in Mandarin is actually a Retroflex approximant too!! So pronounce it like a Russian Ы. Not R in English.
 * "Sh" in Mandarin is easy. Pronounce it like an English "Sh" is fine.
 * Z in Mandarin is not a Z in English. Rather, it is something like"Dz", a "Ts" without aspiration.
 * Old Chinese, like Chinese 4000 years ago sounds like Circassian languages(link here). Possibly related but there is not proof, plz do not take this point seriously. I personally believe that Sino-tibets originated from the Caucasus. More info see Dené–Caucasian languages. However, it seems my point is instantly invalidated by the fact Sino-Tibets and Austronesian peoples do share a common ancestor with Uralics. See Haplogroup NO.(Sorry Estonia, you're more Asian than you thought lol). Old Chinese sample vid(it does somehow sounds like Uralics, again, this is not a proven.This vid explains what happened after Haplogroup N, the Uralics, arrived in Europe. )
 * Obviously the Sami were the first ones from Haplogroup N that entered Europe. Then Finns came and took their lands. Then another group of people called Magyar who allied themselves with Turks migrated along with them. The break point of Haplo O and Haplo N is probably very early. And that's in the middle of nowhere, North western China, that's deserts. I guess they just had a monkey fight over what the heck is wrong with their migration route that only leads them to deserts.
 * The difference between Chinese, Japanese and Korean is not that large so it is very natural that people can't distinguish by simply observing. They all are marked by Haplogroup O while Japanese have a big chunk of Haplogroup D which Chinese and Korean do not often have. Vietnamese is also marked by Haplo O.
 * Japanese words borrowed from Middle-Chinese sounds like Chinese in the 8th century. Japanese language is not a Sino-Tibetan language. However, both grammar and Words of Chinese influenced Japanese language extensively so it has a great number of Sino-Tibetan traits.
 * The current Latin spelling of Mandarin is created by Mr. Zhou Youguang who lived for 111 years from Qing dynasty to People's republic of China. He is a legend but, the spelling system is problematic.
 * Japanese language should not be linked to the so called Altaic languages. the Altaic language is the lamest supposition i have ever seen. Simply because they put suffixes to signify something doesn't mean they are related languages. Good to hear that this supposition is increasingly discredited.