Re: CHAT: Zhongwen (Chinese) Question

From: "Patrick Dunn"

> Okay, so I have a pile of Chinese grammars, dictionaries, and phrase
> books, and roughly half of them say that
> b,g,d
> are voiced stops and roughly half of them say that
> b,g,d
> are simply unaspirated stops.
>So my question is -- how do I know if they're going
> to be voiced, and how do I know if they're going to just be unaspirated?
They're simply unaspirated stops. [p] vs. [p']
etc.

Some dialects have a [b], [p], [p'] distinction (Min and Wu), but that
doesn't apply to Mandarin. To Western ears, the [p]/[p'] distinction of
Mandarin sounds like [b]/[p'] so those letters (b,d,g,) make sense since
they're available (for pinyin) and are close enough for government work. If
a given dialect has the three-way, you have to do something like:
b, p, ph     or    bb, b, p.

Kou

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