The book "Sounds of Chinese" gives the surface representation IPA transcription for the word 冰 as /pjəŋ/ and the underlying representation as /piŋ/ (in section 8.1), while the example at 3.25 seems to use /piŋ/ to my ears.
I've also read online on Skritter that the final "ing" in Pinyin (e.g. "ping") can be pronounced with or without a /ə/. It also suggests that including the /ə/ is more common in Northern China.
The Chinese Pronunciation Wiki states that the "ing" sound can be pronounced as pinyin "yi" + "eng" , which seems to match up quite nicely with the Bopomofo(注音符號) representation of "ing" (ㄧㄥ). It also states that this pronunciation is more common in northern China.
I have a few questions.
- Is there a "standard" pronunciation? The Google and Amazon TTS systems seem to prefer /piŋ/ i.e. without the /ə/.
- Does anyone know what pronunciation is used in Taiwan? I used to use this dictionary a lot, which had bopomofo + audio, but the site uses Flash which is now deprecated. (If someone could suggest an alternative, that'd also be lovely!)
- Is there a place where I could listen to both variants of the pronunciation? The links I've found all seem to use flash, including the Skritter page I found (linked above).