Linguistics

Questions tagged [mandarin]

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The official form of Modern Chinese based on the language used in Beijing and Northern China.

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How is the 什么...都 (shénme ... dou) construction in Standard Chinese usually analyzed?

Disclaimer: I am assuming that the example sentences listed here have been vetted by a native speaker, but since I'm not totally sure of this, I'll use a leading @ sign to show my uncertainty. If I am ...
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164 views

pronunciation of [əj]

According to Wiedenhof's A Grammar of Mandarin, page 42, The pronunciation of the final -ui [weı] vary with the accompanying tone for some speakers. With first or second tone, the u sound tends ...
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151 views

What happened to the number of english speakers in february 2018?

I recently noticed that English was in front of Mandarin in the Wikipedia list of languages by total number of speakers, so I wondered when it became first. I didn't find any convenient statistics on ...
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Do North and South Korean accents in Mandarin differ significantly?

I was watching a documentary about North Korean escapees living in China. It mentioned that some of these escapees were worried that their "North Korean" accent when speaking Mandarin would give them ...
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Why is the English phoneme /θ/ pronounced like /t/ in Indian accents but /s/ in Chinese accents?

The dental fricatives (/θ/ and /ð/; spelled with th) often present a challenge to non-native learners of English. Depending on the speaker's native language, different phonemes may be substituted. In ...
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127 views

Is Mandarin understandable by Taiwanese in written context if simplified characters are mapped to traditional ones?

According to Wikipedia entry on Taiwanese Mandarin: The official Guoyu is almost identical to the official language of the People's Republic of China, called Pǔtōnghuà, with the exception of their ...
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252 views

Which Chinese Romanisation system is most intelligible to English speakers?

This may be a difficult question, because I've heard that pronunciation can vary greatly even within Chinese-speaking countries. I'm also not really aware of when Mandarin or Cantonese would be used; ...
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228 views

Can Egyptian hieroglyphs (or other hieroglyphs) be construed as having anything like Chinese radicals?

I wonder if any hieroglyph-like orthographies use semantic radicals in a way comparable to how Mandarin Chinese does, or if the radical is unique to Chinese and other similar languages?
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Transcriptions of Mandarin Chinese into writing systems other than Latin, Arabic and Cyrillic?

I was wondering if Standard Chinese has been transliterated (either officially or unofficially) into writing systems other than the Latin (Pinyin, Wade-Giles), Arabic (Xiao'erjing) or Cyrillic (Dungan ...
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Phonological development of Middle Chinese 學 /hæwk/ to Mandarin xue /ɕye/

學 was /hæwk/ according to Baxter-Sagart transcription of Qieyun, and according to this wikipedia page, -æwk became /Jye/ in modern Mandarin, where J is a palatalized initial consonant. What I'm ...
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Where can I find auditory records of Chinese Mandarin within 1930-1970?

I am doing research on pure Chinese and I need a auditory recording made between 1930-1970. I searched for subject of anthropology in Hong Kong local library and found nothing material in auditory ...
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Is there re-syllabification in Chinese?

I'm reading prosodic phonology, and wondering if there is any re-syllabification process happening in Mandarin Chinese?
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255 views

Chinese 3rd tone: cross-linguistic comparison

I'm wondering about the rate of occurence of complex tone contours like the Mandarin Chinese third tone, the falling-rising tone. By "complex" I mean that its contour isn't simply a rising, falling, ...
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Is there a source that lists English Loanwords into Mandarin Chinese?

Is there a source(database, dataset, etc.) that lists English Loanwords into Mandarin Chinese?
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Differences between Hong Kong Mandarin and southern Mandarin generally?

With Mandarin making more and more in-roads into Cantonese speaking Hong Kong, I'm wondering what characteristics set it apart from Standard Mandarin or other regional Mandarin dialects and/or accents ...
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Besides lexicon and phonology, what are the biggest differences in Mandarin that are hard for Westerners to learn?

I'm dabbling in Chinese lately and of course most of the vocabulary is new and the phonology is difficult, including tones, tone sandhi, unstressed syllables, and even some aspects of the vowels and ...
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Could certain adjectives or adverbs be analysed to function as a type of copula in Mandarin Chinese?

Chinese (I've only had experience with Mandarin so far) has at least one or two equivalents to English to be, such as "在" (zài) and "是" (shì). Now I know that Chinese adjectives are actually verbs so ...
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Does Mandarin Chinese have phonetically voiced plosives, fricatives, or affricates (besides "r" = [ʐ] / [ɻ])?

The various Wikipedia articles covering Standard Chinese all seem to agree that Mandarin does not have voiced plosives, fricatives, or affricates except for [ʐ] / [ɻ], written in Pinyin as "r". But ...
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Could the Mandarin word "要" (yāo) and the Thai word "เอา" (ao), both meaning "to want" be related?

After a couple of weeks in Thailand and learning how to say "I don't want it" I've just realized the word for "want" is very similar to the word for "want" in Mandarin Chinese. I know the coincidence ...
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How do tones work in music sung in tonal languages, such as Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese?

I have not yet studied tonal languages, so it might be understandable, but when I listen to Chinese music, for example, I'm unable to perceive tones. This makes me think they are partially or ...

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