Re: The pitfall of Chinese/Mandarin

On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 12:16:00AM -0800, Anton Sherwood wrote:
[snip]
> I have heard that the distinction in written chinese between <ta> `he'
> and <ta> `she' is a recent innovation, perhaps inspired by foreign
> languages.
Hmm, interesting. When I was growing up and learning Mandarin, every time
I saw the different glyph for <ta> (fem.) I have this urge to want to
nasalize it a bit more than <ta> (masc.). Probably totally baseless, but
in my (then) childish mind, there's GOT to be a different sound since it's
written differently! Ditto with <ta> (neu./epi.?) - I kinda think of it as
less nasalized than <ta> (masc.).

But of course, then I started coming across stuff like <ta> with the
radical for "divine" or "God", etc., and threw out my nose^H^H^H^Huhhh,
nasalization idea :-P


T

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