Syllable fusion in spoken Mandarin
5mon 22d ago by lemmy.world/u/iopq in chinese
I am trying to get a good list of common pronunciations that fuse multiple syllables together into one. Let me give you some examples:
中央电台 - 装垫儿台
不知道 - 不儿道 / 不绕
告诉你 - 告儿你
这样 - 酱
摄像头 - 上头
西红柿炒鸡蛋 - 胸是炒鸡蛋
老师好 - 老儿好
不好吃 - 抱吃
特好吃 - 套吃
图书馆 - 图儿馆
I have not found a comprehensive list anywhere. Can someone give me some recommendations?
I think that's an example of you hearing it wrong because the native speakers speak too fast. Like.. the other natives will likely be able to pick out the sounds, but you don't have the native ears so you missed it. There is no such thing as "fused pronunciation" that's considered correct to use afiak.
You don't need to go look for a list, you need to slow down the media you're watching, or if its IRL, tell the person to talk slower.
The 儿 you think you hear is probably the result of the mandarin heavy "r" sound that northerners use that messes up how you hear it, it's an accent that'll make it much harder for you as a non-native to hear it.
There are plenty of characters that arose from phonetic fusion of other characters
See:
不用 - 甭
不要 - 嫑
什么 - 啥
不可 - 叵
不要 - 别
无有 - 没
还有 may also be the origin of the reading hái in Mandarin as the reconstructed form is /ɦˠuan/ which leads only to huán
I didn't come up with these examples
Here's one of my sources: https://www.sohu.com/a/330334629_120047053
Here are some academic sources:
https://www.ling.sinica.edu.tw/upload/researcher_manager_result/e2a77c2d20f0d50a1475710a3eeaa999.pdfhttps://image.hanspub.org/Html/20-2913178_87166.htm
Here’s one of my sources: https://www.sohu.com/a/330334629_120047053
Ah maybe that's a unique Beijing Accent phenomenon.
In the south, I don't think this phenomeon exists. Southern China doesn't have the heavy "r" sound that make some words sound like 儿
I never heard of this sound fusion in overseas diasporas in the US, from the few times I heard Mandarin being used.
Also I don't think I ever heard it on the many Mandarin TV shows I watched.
Pretty sure it's not considered a standard. Its more like the equivalent of the "Gen Alpha" speech where kids say "no cap" to mean "no kidding" type of thing.
Edit:
In your link, it says:
「
北京话≠普通话
很多人总误以为北京话就是普通话
其实真不是！
」
It's talking about the Beijing Dialect, not Standard Mandarin.
Did you miss that part? xD
I was never talking about standard speech, but more colloquial
In the south, I don’t think this phenomeon exists. Southern China doesn’t have the heavy “r” sound that make some words sound like 儿
这样 - 酱 this one is from Taiwan I think
also 喜欢 - xuan
I have no idea then, must be a regional slang
Taiwanese fusions go something like
知道 - zao
那样 - 酿
https://escholarship.org/content/qt6kj264nh/qt6kj264nh_noSplash_89141fb42d8051d8af0fb1e1539d1f44.pdf
but it seems that they are not exactly equivalent to non-contracted variants
https://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung//pubs/Contractions_Chung.pdf
this one also mentions
不一样 - biang4
That sounds similar to the 懶音 (lazy sounds) phenomeon in Cantonese
as in: n ---> l
like, some people, pronounce the n sound like in 你 (nei³) as (lei³)
But I wouldn't purposefully pronounce it that way until like it becomes standard.
I would still correct people when they mispronounce the n as l
Sure, maybe in 50-100 years, the "l" sound is what everyone uses that then it becomes standard, but until then, I will continue my attempt to correct the pronunciation
Language is evolving, I get it. But I don't think we should just go along with the wrong pronunciations just because somebody else starts doing it.
If this "fusion of sounds" phenomenon isn't officially being taught, I wouldn't intentionally use those pronounciations.
But disclaimer: I don't really talk to Maindarin speakers often since I'm overseas (where Cantonese is much more common) and only have 2nd grade education in China, so maybe this phenomeon you're describing already became the norm.
In Hong Kong it is basically the standard, I've never heard nei³, only lei³. But my exposure to Cantonese is just incidental so of course I could have missed it
The official Jyutping still uses (nei³) so... 🤷♂️
Also I don't like the idea of mixing n and l because 旅遊 leoi⁵ jau⁴ sounds too close to 女友 nleoi⁵ jau⁵
I don't like the idea of losing the number of different syllabels, I mean soon we'd lose the n sound if people keep pronouncing it that way. It's gonna be like with Japanese peopel and that's why they have a harder time learning foreign languages since they can't distinguish n and l
I'm from Guangzhou, I'm pretty sure my parents use the n sound... but as soon we we start talking to our relatives who are from Hong Kong (like in-laws I mean), suddenly it becomes a half-way between the n and l sound like nlei³
And it's called 廣州話, not 香港話 so I think the Guangzhou sound should be considered the standard
I am wondering how much Cantonese is used in Guangzhou. Do newspapers use it, do you have local television in Cantonese?
Cantonese was never used in school.
2 generations ago, they used Taishanese (ancestral home is in Taishan)
1 generation ago, i.e. my parents, only spoke Cantonese to me, never Taishanese.
I remember hearing bus/subway announcements in both Cantonese and Mandarin and a foreign language which I assume is has to be English.
I don't remember much TV but I think there's a weather/news channel in Cantonese.
There is: 外來媳婦本地郎 which is some weird reality-tv/soap-opera thing that uses Cantonese with some parts mixed with Mandarin and other Chinese variants (aka: "dialects")
Mostly its just Hong Kong TV Drama that allowed me to learn Cantonese outside of my parents talking. Which is why non-Cantonese variants are dying so quickly. There is no Shanghaiese version of the Cantonese TV Drama. Without Hong Kong's influence, I'd probably have much less knowledge of Cantonese.
I don't have much memories of Guangzhou. Nonr of my peers spoke Cantonese, they are all migrant children from all over the place. I didn't have Guangzhou Hukou so I wasn't allowed in those Public Schools that Guangzhou natives went to. Had to go to some private school thing was was worse than Public School according to my mom.
The adults mostly spoke Cantonese except like the teachers. Like out on public, I remember hearing a lot of Cantonese.
白雲區 btw Baiyun District, like near 梅花園。
My mom took me to work sometimes where nobody was home and my grandmother was busy to take care of us, and I think I remember hearing a lot of Mandarin in her workplace.
It was an electronics store she worked at, so I just played video games on a Portable DVD player. Like you had DVDs with games on it, you put in in the DVD player, it loads the games. You plug in controllers, you plays the games. Probably all bootlegs lol
Omg that meory was so nostalgic. I remember feeling so alone and like nobody was with me. Mom occasionally checkon me to make sure I was okay. She makes commissions on selling electroniv devices. The pay was like monthly I think. There wasn't much time to eat, she had to work so hard.
I think there was foreigners sometimes. Mom learned a bit of English I think. (She used to be a teacher btw, before she had me, violating the One Child Policy means no more government jobs allowed ever again, not allowed in governemnt-owned enterprises).
I remember one time I had a fight with my brother at home, I just ran away, and like I managed to find my way to my mother's workplace. But she already got notified by grandmother so she left work so I didn't find her there.
I was so fucking scared. Idk what 6-7 old me was doing. What the fuck was I thinking?
But I eventuallly found my way home.
Bus drivers didn't even care that I was an unaccompanied child, in fact, nobody batted an eye, nobody said anything.
I could've gotten kidnapped that day lol.
If this was in the US, someone would probably have been like: "where are your parents", and probably called the police, but in China, nobody cared.
Anyways sorry I got off on a tangent xD.
That's why Hong Kong is pretty much shaping to be the prestige dialect of Cantonese. When speaking Chinese I usually refer to it as 粤语.