"Play" the form

[Xiaobian]

[Mig]

I didn't want to go thru about the whole language history and linguistic paraphernalia. The correct term is zhuyin fuhao but it makes more sense if people understand the opposition of consonants and how to pronounce those sounds as in pobomofo etc.. PINYIN is the closest, economic and easy way to understand when you know the b = p, j=ch, so beijing is [peiching]. If we get out of box thinking European or English, you can easily adapt to pinyin and can learn faster than using all the other transliterations. As far as phonetics or phonemics I won't there as chinese languages (dialects) are quite diversified with a long history just like Cantonese and other southern languages that has helped to reconstruct the archaic Chinese language.

Thanks,

Mig

[bailewen]

[Xiaobian]

[markt]

To say that Mandarin does not have a 'd' sound is a bit misleading I think.
There has been a lot of work done to formally classify the language - and they differentiate between aspirated/unaspirated syllables, etc, etc. I have formally studied Mandarin for a short time also.

Take the two characters :
da - 大
tai - 太

One of my friends is a native speaker, who went to university in Beijing - his pronunciation of 大 sounds very much like the romanization 'da' with a d sound, whereas 太 has a very clear 'T' sound to me.

Keep in mind also that the formal rules do not necessarily apply to all Chinese language you will encounter. Mandarin is the standard - the Beijing dialect. But it is just one of many dialects in China, and as people from each region learn Mandarin, their region has an effect on their pronunciation. Some Chinese from the south for example cannot distinguish 是 (shi) and 四 (si) very well, though for those in the north the distinction may be very obvious.

To make things more complicated, English has many dialects - depending on where you learned English, you could have a slightly different sound than many others. In western Canada, we do not pronounce exactly like eastern Canada, which is also different from southern US, and different from Britain and Australia.

I do not believe you can map a Chinese sound so directly to an English one being so many variations on both sides. But pinyin is a pretty good system to help us learn the language more quickly...

[PM]

markt - i was talking about Putonghua and Gwongdungwa - i have no idea about Chinese in Fujian, Heilongjiang or elswhere.

if you go through any good grammar or phonology book, you will see similar info i have posted above about aspirated and non-aspirated initial consonants. b, d, g both in pinyin and Yale are not voiced.

Mandarin, pyinyin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin#Initials

Cantonese, Yale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_Romanization#Initials

[markt]

I am aware of the formal language study ideas - as I mentioned, I have studied Mandarin formally for a short time.

I believe you missed my point, as I am not talking about the dialects, I am talking about the effect of the dialect on putonghua pronunciation.
My point is that in China the standard language, beijing dialect, is a standard. Not many will speak exactly the same pronunciation, though they can understand each other.

I have many friends and coworkers from china, from many different areas - such as beijing, kaifeng, harbin, shanghai, xi an, as well as shandong and guilin. Though they are all speaking putonghua, they do not speak the same. There are subtle differences in pronunciation, as well their pronunciation of english words is affected differently as well. As you say often, two do the same thing, but it is not the same thing.

If you learn putonghua from people in each of these areas, you will actually be learning a version influenced by the region they came from.
So, there is a so-called standard or rules for the language. You can say it is 't' not 'd'. But the rule is not accurate because we don't even use 't' and 'd' consistently in the English language. It is just a rule for learning, but in reality it is actually not perfect.

Xiaobian above said :
"In English, however, there is no phoenetic difference between 'd' (as in "dad") and 't' (as the second 't' in "tested"). "

This is not necessarily true. The word 'tested' could be pronounced differently by different people. Some might emphasize the second 't', while some might make it sound more like a 'd'. Both can be understood easily, and both would be correct.
So, now you have two versions of the same word in English.. how now do you map the Chinese sound to the English sound, when the English sound itself is not even consistent ??
When you say 'd' in 'dao' is like the second 't' in 'tested', it now means different things to different people.

My point is the only way to really understand the sounds is to speak to a native speaker, and map those sounds to your own understanding. You will have to adjust the some of the pinyin-to-english examples a bit, depending on the native speaker you are listening to and your particular flavour of english.

Make sense?

[PM]

well, makes sense, but... never mind i am no linguist/sinologist, i understand well when somebody says [bay ching] or [tai chi] or [hang garrrrr] - if a Chinese guy understands, well, different story

let us discuss more about Hung Kyun, standard or not

[Mig]

my bad, I should have not made a comment about some misleadings opinions and BTW this is not the place to talk about general linguistics as there are other forums where one can post about linguistic related issues. End of the story.
As far as play a form:

Spanish: practicar una forma (practice a form)

Best,

Mig

[markt]

[Xiaobian]

[bailewen]

You're missing the point. The spealling "tao" has absolutely nothing to do with pinyin. It is simply NOT an artifact of English speakers not distinguishing between and voiced or unvoiced labio-dental plosive.

At the beggining of a word in a stressed syllable, as is the case in the term "dao de jing" the voiced and unvoiced labio-dental plosoves are minimal pairs.

The difference is that early translations of the dao de jing were made before widespread use of pinyin was in existence and, for that matter, among non-Chinese students, it is still not the most common way of transliterating Chinese terms. Earlier translations of the Dao De Jing were made when the Wade-Giles system of transliteration was still the most common and so the term 道德经 was transcribed using that other, earlier system with no real connection to pinyin. In that system, the most accurate transcription available was "Tao Te Jing".

As a final note, it makes sense that the ealiest translations would use the Wade-Giles system as one of the ealiest translations of the text was done by none other than Lionel Giles himself. (his father was one of the inventors of the Wade Giles system of transcription)

[Xiaobian]

Bailewen:

This whole started from a comment made that some Chinese people were getting mixed up and pronouncing "道" with an aspirated 't' sound, as a result of western people getting confused over the Wade-Giles "tao" and "t'ao".

The Wade-Giles system, however more-or-less phonetically accurate (it is alright), presented itself in a way which was obfuscating to people used to Western languages. As a result, people mispronounced "chu" and "tao" exactly as they looked, instead of as (in pinyin) "zhu" and "dao". Pinyin fixed some of that, although not all of it. Wade-Giles is now less commonly used than Pinyin (as both the Mainland and Taiwan have officially adopted it), although the majority of writings are still in Wade-Giles, since Pinyin is relatively new.

No one is debating that. This whole thing is just a grand misunderstanding based on poor communication among all of us. Sigh.

[bailewen]

Just one more reason why Wade-Giles sucks.

[Xiaobian]

Personally, I think Chinese students should be introduced to zhuyin fuhao early on, because that not only eliminates any pronunciation confusion with Western phonetics, but helps students learn radicals, which are the basis for characters. That is MY opinion. Zhuyin is not useful for transliteration, though, which makes it cumbersome for Western students. I also think that students should learn traditional first, before learning simplified which is why I love hung gar (what a magical segue), because it's a rough bottom-to-top system, but provides a great foundation.