Chinese phrasebook - Traditional consonants · Consonants in Chinese phrasebook - Traditional
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Consonants in Chinese phrasebook - Traditional
Consonants in Chinese phrasebook - Traditional
Chinese stops distinguish between aspirated and unaspirated, not voiceless and voiced as in English. Aspirated sounds are pronounced with a distinctive puff of air as they are pronounced in English when at the beginning of a word, while unaspirated sounds are pronounced without the puff, as in English when found in clusters.
Place a hand in front of your mouth and compare pit (aspirated) with spit (unaspirated) to see the difference.
| |
Unaspirated |
|
Aspirated
|
|---|
| b |
as in spot |
p |
as in pit
|
| d |
as in do |
t |
as in tongue
|
| g |
as in skin |
k |
as in king
|
| j |
as in jeer |
q |
as in cheap
|
| zh |
as in jungle |
ch |
as in chore
|
| z |
as in zebra |
c |
as in rats
|
Here are the other consonants in Chinese:
m�
as in mow
f�
as in fun
n�
as in none or none
l�
as in lease but pronounced like a Spanish "r" in "rojo"
h�
as in her
x�
as in sheep
sh�
as in shoot
r�
as in fair, but can be "zh" as in "pleasure"
s�
as in sag
ng�
as in sing
w�
as in wing but silent in wu. Before a, ai, ang, eng, and/or o, this may sound like the English v/ German w.
y�
as in yet but silent in yi, yu
If you think that is a fairly intimidating repertoire, rest assured that many Chinese people, particularly those who are not native Mandarin speakers, will merge many of the sounds above (especially q with ch and j with zh).
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Chinese phrasebook - Traditional Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.