Re: CHAT: Zhongwen (Chinese) Question

laokou <laokou@...> wrote:

> 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.
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
i have a question here: khmer also has two series of nonaspirated and aspirated
stops. the three j~ch d~t and b~p nonaspirated consonants clearly sound
"inbetween" voiced and unvoiced even to my western ears. it's bit like saying
dsh, dt, and bp. how would you write them with SAMPA? i'm interested also
because my conlang has same "inbeween" sounds: gk, dsh, dt, bp --as if saying b
and p at the same time for instance. sorry that i already asked that question
but my post was sooo long that no IPAist noticed :-). i write k, j, t and b for
now but if a better lettering exists... thanks by anticipation (i hope i made it
short enough this time).

Mathias
www.geocities.com/kalatunu/index.htm