{"id":412305,"date":"2010-03-10T13:15:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T18:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=2174"},"modified":"2010-03-10T13:15:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T18:15:02","slug":"whither-the-velar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/412305","title":{"rendered":"Whither the Velar?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, Cyndy Ning sent me this Website for learning pinyin pronunciation<\/a>.\u00a0 It has both female and male voices which you can activate by clicking on n\u00e1nsh\u0113ng<\/em> \u7537\u58f0 and n\u00fcsheng<\/em> \u5973\u58f0 just above the initials D, E, and F at the top of the table.\u00a0 I also found similar tables here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is a neat tool, BUT, in playing around with it, I discovered that nearly all of the 4th tone -ANG syllables in the system come out sounding like -AN.\u00a0 A similar phenomenon holds true for all other 4th tone syllables ending in -NG; that includes -ENG, -IANG, -ING, -IONG, and -ONG, -UANG.\u00a0 This is especially the case with the male voice, where I have to strain very hard to hear even a semblance of a [\u014b] at the end, and sometimes I can’t hear it at all.\u00a0 Mind you, this is only on the 4th tone!\u00a0 I can hear the final [\u014b] well enough on all of the other tones spoken by the male voice, and I can even hear it fairly well for 4th tone syllables when listening to the female voice.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked many Chinese-speaking friends their opinion about the phantom velar at the end of 4th tone syllables spoken by the male voice.\u00a0 About half of them said it didn’t bother them and they thought the male voice was adequate as a model.\u00a0 Some colleagues, however, were more critical.\u00a0 For example, here is what Liwei Jiao had to say:<\/p>\n

When I was in China, I was Guo2jia1ji2 Pu3tong1hua4 Shui3ping2 Ce4shi4yuan2 (Tester of Proficiency of Standard Chinese, National Level). According to my training and experience, “bang4, hang4, lang4, qiang4, tang4, wang4, xiang4″ in your link could be judged as “wrong”, while “ang4, jiang4, kang4, nang4, pang4, rang4, zang4″ could be judged as “defective”. Basically your judgement is correct.<\/span><\/p>\n

In truth, there seems to be a range of realizations of 4th tone final -NG according to idiolects, sociolects, and topolects.\u00a0 For example, the final velar of 4th tone syllables ending in -NG is clearer on this site with a female voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wonder, though, whether there may not be some physiological-cum-phonological factors at work that lead to the vanishing velar at the end of 4th tone syllables.\u00a0 In particular, the tonal contour is such that it finishes at the very bottom of the speaker’s vocal register, and this may make it difficult to clearly and fully enunciate the velar at the end.\u00a0 Bear in mind also that the ending point of the female voice is at a much higher pitch than that of the male voice.\u00a0 All of these factors may be significant in the phonological and acoustic realization of the spoken syllable.<\/p>\n

I should also note, along with several of my colleagues, that — particularly with the male voice — the vowel quality changes as the final [\u014b] is reduced.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it seems that velars have a tendency to disappear in many other environments beside Mandarin 4th tone final -NG.\u00a0 Here at Language Log, we have recently been discussing G-dropping<\/a>.\u00a0 And last summer there was an intense debate over whether there really was a velar hidden in the middle of “Uyghur” (here<\/a> and here<\/a>).\u00a0 And that segued into an analysis of the missing medial velar in some renderings of yoghurt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a sort of addendum to the list of English “pronouncers” for Uyghur that were mentioned in those posts from last summer, I may add that, in the University of Washington announcement for an i<\/a>ntensive Uyghur summer program<\/a>, the suggested pronunciation is ooey-GHUR.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, some people seem to think that the medial consonant of “Uyghur” is a voiced uvular fricative [\u0281], while others consider it to be a voiced velar fricative [\u0263].\u00a0 You can listen to the two sounds on this page<\/a> (by clicking on the IPA symbol).<\/p>\n

You can hear the word “Uyghur” pronounced by a native speaker here<\/a>.\u00a0 Most educated Uyghurs I know say that their ethnonym should be pronounced with a voiced velar fricative in the middle, but some of my professional phonetician colleagues say that it sounds like a voiced uvular fricative to their ear.\u00a0 And then there are those who swear that there is neither a velar nor an uvular to be heard.\u00a0 How odd that a sound so muscular and substantial as a -GH- has a propensity to vanish into thin air!<\/p>\n

A tip of the hat to Jiahong Yuan and John Wells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, Cyndy Ning sent me this Website for learning pinyin pronunciation.\u00a0 It has both female and male voices which you can activate by clicking on n\u00e1nsh\u0113ng \u7537\u58f0 and n\u00fcsheng \u5973\u58f0 just above the initials D, E, and F at the top of the table.\u00a0 I also found similar tables here and here. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}