3

I am trying to find someone that will help me take words that are spoken in Spanish, such as Hola, and represent the sounds made by hola in Chinese Pinyin so someone who doesn't speak Spanish could speak a few words of greeting etc.

I would also like to have some help doing the same from English into Pinyin and Pinyin into English.

Improve this question
6
  • 3
    Pinyin may not present the sounds properly, use Rome sound instead.
    – zzy
    Commented Jan 29, 2015 at 1:08
  • And really the "la" of 'hola' is not a Mandarin sound either, though Mandarin has sounds close to it. Pedroski is right.
    – Colin McLarty
    Commented Jan 30, 2015 at 18:54
  • While Pedroski is right, there are some legitimate uses for the information Bob is asking for, like phrase books for travelers who are not realistically going to learn the language. Besides, the most important thing to get right in Spanish is not 'rr' or 'z', but the vowels, so while the final result would still sound quite funny I think to a certain extent it can be useful
    – Leo supports Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 31, 2015 at 14:40
  • That said, I think Bob should include the words he'd like to approximate. Otherwise the answer "I can help you" would be perfectly valid, but useless for everyone else
    – Leo supports Monica Cellio
    Commented Jan 31, 2015 at 14:43
  • @NannuoLei Phrase books need to give short explanations of the Spanish sounds, not just try to match them to pinyin spellings. And really, phrasebooks are disappearing fast in favor of i-phone apps.
    – Colin McLarty
    Commented Jan 31, 2015 at 18:15

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

I can help you with this. This process is called "transliteration".

For example. "Hola" would be "哦啦"

Improve this answer
3
  • 3
    This might help someone more than pinyin would. But I wonder if Spanish people would actually recognize the result. Pedroski is right that people usually benefit more from an explanation than just approximate Chinese words.
    – Colin McLarty
    Commented Feb 2, 2015 at 17:53
  • I thought the idea was to teach Chinese people Spanish though. Of course when you are learning Chinese the best way to get the sounds correct it an oral diagram and reviewing the IPA script. (or having someone explain these things to you)
    – PhillyCheesesteak
    Commented Feb 3, 2015 at 3:46
  • The idea in the question is to teach Chinese people Spanish that Spanish people will recognize. So OP wants pinyin spellings that will sound like Spanish. I think 哦啦 might work better than ola or óla or òla since o is not a common initial sound in Chinese. But neither syllable of hola is really a putonghua syllable.
    – Colin McLarty
    Commented Feb 3, 2015 at 7:43

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.