We’ve been talking about transcription a few posts back and the rather unorthodox method used in some sources. Logically “bh” seems like it ought to correspond to [bʰ], not [b], but as we’ve seen, that’s not really the case in some texts. So I’ve thrown together a quick comparison of four different methods of transcription for Wu, as well as including pinyin for Modern Standard Mandarin.
I didn’t include endings in this, though really that’s where the biggest differences are. For example depending on the source cases y could be [y], [ẓ] (aka [ɿ]) or [i], not to mention the extreme variation for something as simple as [ã]. But that would be incredibly time consuming and this is really just to get a general idea of the variety.
Top row is International Phonetic Alphabet, Shanghainese Pinyin*, Standard Mandarin Pinyin. Second row is Long-short transcription and the Wu Association transcription.
| [m] m m | [n] n n | [ɲ] n | [ŋ] ng ng | |
| m m | n n | gn ny | ng ng | |
| [p] b b | [t] d d | [k] g g | [ʔ] k ` | |
| p p | t t | k k | * ` | |
| [pʰ] p p | [tʰ] t t | [kʰ] k k | ||
| ph ph | th th | kh kh | ||
| [b] bh | [d] dh | [g] gh | ||
| b b | d d | g g | ||
| [ts] z z | [ʨ] j j | |||
| tz ts | c j | |||
| [tsʰ] c c | [ʨʰ] q q | |||
| ts tsh | ch tsh | |||
| [dz] | [dʑ] jh | |||
| dz | dj j | |||
| [f] f f | [s] s s | [ɕ] x x | [h] h h | |
| f f | s s | x sh | h h | |
| [v] v | [z] sh | [ʑ] xh | ||
| v v | z z | j z | ||
| [l] l l | [ɦ] hh h | |||
| l l | r gh | |||
Now you see why I’m such a big supporter of using IPA. Standard IPA. Even though I really do like [ɿ] for [ẓ], having an internationally accepted standard is a pretty big convenience. The only reason I even use things like [ɿ] and [ȵ] are because they’re so widely understood in terms of Chinese topolects, even if a little obsolete.
It’s like the Esperanto of transcription, except that it’s actually useful to learn.
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* as used by 上海辞书出版社 in their pinyin Shanghainese dictionary.
I thought the voiced stops actually murmured stops, in which case , etc makes a lot of sense.
hurray for IPA!
Lucien: to which are you referring? It looks like some letter of your comment got eaten.
Robin: so glad I’m not alone
Oops. Yeah, I meant to say:
I thought the voiced stops are actually murmured stops, in which case ‘bh’, ‘dh’, etc make a lot of sense.
After reading a few of your blog entries…ok, I’m a convert. I’m interested in language enough I should get off my lazy butt and learn IPA! Where do I start? Any suggestions for learning?
You can find phonetics books at most bookstores, but I’d also suggest taking a look at the Wikipedia article on IPA and go from there. Find a language with which you’re familiar and take a look at the phonetics of that language. That way you’ll be able to link symbols with sounds you already know. The article on Pinyin on wikipedia has IPA for standard Mandarin. Otherwise if you’re on the IPA article page you can click on any of the letters and it will take you to a page with examples of that sound in different languages, as well as recorded samples of someone making those sounds.
You could also take a class in linguistics or speech pathology at any university in the West, but who has time for that?
Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll start with Wikipedia.