16
The standard Chinese dictionary (《现代汉语词典》) lists xuè (fourth, not third, tone) as the official pronunciation and xiě as a colloquial variant. As such, in most compounds and technical terms, xuè is preferred. The pronunciation xiě is acceptable when you just want to say "blood" in casual speech.
There are several exceptions: the two modifiers 血糊糊 (xiěhūhū, "...
15
I suggest you pronounce it like the "r" sound in "brrrrrrrr I'm cold" or "grrrrrrrr I'm angry".
So for Japan you could do it like "rrrrrrr ben".
Don't roll this "r" sound. This will get you about 80% accuracy. To get the rest you need to make the same voiced palato-alveolar sibilant, then you will be there.
Just want to add the palato-alveolar sibilant ...
14
The same happens with other characters with the same "finals":
就 - Jiù
扭 - Niǔ
etc...
From this page of Chinesepod.com:
Mandarin's iu sound can confuse you because what is written is actually an abbreviated form of "iou," a straightforward combination of the vowel sounds i and ou. Thus the iu syllable sounds similar to the "yo" of the English word "yo-...
12
Pinyin, like other written systems, is an arbitrary system, and the corresponding sounds were expressly decided. It seems it was based on preexisting systems: Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931, and the diacritic markings from Zhuyin (also known as Bopomofo).
But the same problem you highlight in your question happens when learning any other ...
11
Actually, such a problem even upsets native speakers, like me. When I was a student, I had to memorize the words for different pronunciatons too.
Unfortunately,there are some characters with two different pronunciations when used in colloquial language (白读) and literary language (文读), while different pronunciations basically mean the same. See the article ...
11
The OP is asking how to type characters, using a pinyin IME, when those characters have a ü in their pinyin spelling. For example, how do you type 绿=lü? This is different than asking how to actually type the letter ü. The answer is to type a v. To follow the example, change to the pinyin IME, type lv and select 绿.
11
The correct one should be bu2 zai4 hu. Unless there is an emphasis for "NOT" CARE, a 4th tone bu4 is then used, but I rarely hear that as a native speaker.
Let's review the tone change rule for 不，
A second tone bu2 is used only when the tone of next character is a 4th tone, i.e. bu2 shi4.
A forth tone bu4 is used if the tone of next character is 1st, 2nd ...
11
Dictionaries, in general, will not incorporate tone sandhi rules into their pronunciations (of which Mandarin has quite a few)
Wikipedia says the following:
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin features several sandhi tone rules.
When there are two 3rd tones in a row, the first one becomes 2nd tone,
and the second one becomes a half-3rd tone. E.g. 你好 (...
10
I have never found a reasoning on how Pinyin was created, but as Alenanno says, there have been predecessors and people working on the Pinyin standard already had some experience with existing systems. Some sounds can probably be mapped to similar IPA notation, while others seem totally off.
From my own reasoning I'd say there are at least two arguments ...
10
I like the pinyinput input method editor. Just type the letters for the syllable followed by a tone number, and it will combine them in the usual way.
10
In the (very) old days, there was a system called 反切 (in English) where two characters were used, one for initial, one for the rhyme (vowel[s] + final), followed by 切 to indicate it was a phonetic notation. For instance, 東 could be represented as 德紅切.
Edit #2
I thought I should insert an example from the canon of Chinese dictionaries, 康熙字典. Here's page 1 --...
10
It seems that Pinyin does this to conform to a former phonetic transcription system 注音符号, which drops u (ㄨ) before o (ㄛ) after b p m f.
注音符号 was originally designed to reflect some old (perhaps not even real) phonetic rules and symbols like uo (ㄨㄛ) uan (ㄨㄢ) were used. However, in most Chinese dialects there's no contrast between rounded and unrounded vowels ...
9
You can find the explanation in page for Pinyin on wikipedia:
Note on y and w
y and w are equivalent to the semivowel medials i, u, and ü (see below). They are spelled differently when there is no initial consonant in order to mark a new syllable: fanguan is fan-guan, while fangwan is fang-wan (and equivalent to fang-uan). With this convention, an ...
9
From wiki: the spelling "Taipei" derives from the Wade–Giles romanization T'ai-pei. "Taibei" is pinyin, which iOS supports as an input method.
Wade-Giles used to be the standard method of romanization so it shows up in a lot of older Chinese names like "Chiang Ching-kuo".
Pinyin has its own disadvantages, especially when spoken by English speakers. ...
8
I wrote the PinyinTones IME a couple of years ago to do exactly what the OP was asking about:
https://www.pinyintones.com/
PinyinTones a Windows IME that outputs Pinyin with tone marks, rather than Chinese characters. Type 1, 2, 3, or 4 after each syllable to add a tone mark -- just as people have been entering Pinyin since the days of ASCII characters.
...
8
儿 in this case indicates the application of 儿化 (er2hua4) or 'r-coloring' to the previous syllable.
To input 哪儿 using a typical Pinyin IME, you would have to type naer or na'er, because nar would be segmented na r, and the IME would then expect further input for a second Pinyin syllable beginning with r.
Outside of keyboard input, however, the correct ...
8
From Wikipedia, before Hanyu Pinyin was introduced, the PRC Chinese learnt Bopomofo or 注音符號 [Zhùyīn fúhào]. It comprises of 37 characters (注音) and four tone marks (符號).
注音 consists of consonants, rhymes and medial (e.g. ㄅ,ㄆ,ㄇ,ㄈ)
符號 is similar to the four tones in Pinyin except there is no marking
for the first tone (ˊ,ˇ,ˋ)
An example: 大 (ㄉㄚˋ, dà) where ㄉ ...
8
All the consonants in the first group are bilabials (articulated with the two lips).
The reason can't be phonemic, since there are no such Pinyin syllables *do, *so, *lo etc. -- as you correctly note Pinyin could be simplified by replacing all -uo syllables with -o.
I expect the reason for the spelling is perceptual -- from the perspective of phonetics, ...
8
/v/ is not an initial found in MSM.
The initial /v/, though, is often found in Northern Mandarin and its branches. In fact, it can still be found, even, in distant branches like Sichuanese.
If you ever saw the 马蜂窝 commercial that aired, ever single night, during the World Cup, you'd certainly notice that 唐僧's "为" is very /v/'d.
You can also refer to the ...
7
I agree with fefe and I would like to show my experience on how to read these acronyms.
A native Chinese speaker will read it as he reads these letters in English. However, there is no standard way to pronounce these acronyms. Different people would read them differently, as every one has his own preference (also affected by his dialects, I believe) to read ...
7
Pinyin is never an established written language. We have a standard, 《汉语拼音正词法基本规则》, but no one actually bothered to learn it. In short, it treats pinyin as if it is a romanized language. You follow what's correct in English. However, 成语 is so special that it has individual chapters for it:
结构上可以分为两个双音节的，中间加连接号。 例如： fēnɡpínɡ-lànɡjìnɡ（风平浪静） àizēnɡ-fēnmínɡ（...
7
There are several libraries for converting Chinese characters to pinyin. If you are comfortable with programming languages (which you probably are if you are asking for an API), your choice will depend on the programming languages you know, the quality of the library and the licence under which it is available. If you need a user interface, you should ...
7
illusional romance
梦幻：梦是睡觉时的妄想，幻是魔术师的表演。二个都是虚假的。
情缘：情通常指男女爱情，缘是缘分(the fate, the lot, the second cause)。
补充：
'梦幻' also means '美好的'(extraordinary, too good to be true)。
For example: 梦幻音乐。 It means wonderful music instead of fake music.
So, it depends on the whole story.
'梦幻情缘' may be a beautiful love when the story is real and good.
7
nvren
'v' replaces 'ü' in Chinese input.
6
Pinyin was designed primarily as a writing system for Chinese speakers to use, and to help children who speak other dialects to learn Mandarin. As such, making it easy for foreigners was not a particular priority.
In any case, different languages use the Roman letters differently, so what would be obvious choice? For example, in different languages J can ...
6
In IPA transcriptions of Chinese, ying is usually written as: [iŋ]. This is exactly like yin, except with an "ng" sound. However, as you noticed, some people pronounce it a little differently. This paper (page 9) transcribes the alternate pronunciation as [iɘŋ]. Wouldn't really call it an "o" sound, but the vowel is different than that of the yin.
6
In standard Mandarin, the pinyin h is pronounced as [x] in IPA, like ch in Scottish English loch -- yes, you're right that there's a tiny g, because [x] is a velar consonant. However, in south China, many simply say [h], although some natural assimilation may happen. For instance, for those speakers, pinyin ha is [ha] while pinyin he becomes [xɤ] (if you get ...
6
Zhuyin is commonly encountered in Taiwan and Taiwan-centric overseas communities. Not sure about its prevalence in other overseas communities a la Singapore, but I've found zhuyin easier to use with vertical text Chinese as is printed commonly in Taiwan and elsewhere, and suspect Zhuyin/bopomofo/bpmf would be more popular in those regions due to the better ...
6
I suggest that you shouldn't do this.
Chinese characters cannot be faithfully constructed backwards from a tone+syllable combination -- the mapping only goes one way (and even then, sometimes characters have multiple pronunciations).
For example, as you know, 馬 is generally pronounced ma3.
However, ma3 could also reference the characters 碼 (number), or 獁 ...
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