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So, I know a fair amount of Mandarin speaking people, and I notice that for some of them they do not pronounce the silent initials like:
'y'i 'y'ing 'y'in
however, my other Mandarin speaking friends actually do pronounce the initials.
I've read through my textbooks and it says they should be silent so I'm a bit confused here.
I am then assuming that for example that it is correct to pronounce 意思 is
"ee se"
not
"yee se"?
I am not sure if you meant the English or Chinese pronunciation of 'y'.
y, in Chinese, is just pronounced as 'ee'.
So, 意思 should be pronounced as 'yi4 si', like 'ee se' in English.
Pinyin is just a guide and cannot be taken literally. Most initials should be taken fairly straightforwardly though.
Y on the other hand shouldn’t.
If you look at the ipa for 意:
/i⁵¹/
there is only an: i.
Y basically equals i.
Next look at the ipa for 因:
/in⁵⁵/
Again y basically equals i.
So, yi is easily said that the y is silent but if you take something where the final doesn’t start with i like 羊/阳/洋 ipa becomes:
/i̯ɑŋ³⁵/
It still maintains this i sounding initial.
