Help talk:IPA/Mandarin

Conflicting information between 中文 and English version of this article.

For instance, the Chinese IPA page gives ɤ̞͗w for pinyin "ou" or zhuyin ㄡ which sounds more accurate than oʊ to me, but I'm not a linguistics expert. It certainly doesn't sound like it ends in ʊ based on recordings.

Metzkorn (talk) 06:20, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree m8. I think that fits much better. ReelmsyWiki (talk) 12:42, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

for some reason [oʊ] has become a very popular transcription of the english "oh" sound (which is total nonsense), and the pinyin "ou" sound is quite similar, which is likely where the transcription came from. [ɤ̞͗w] is definitely more accurate. Ametalbaby (talk) 00:01, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

zi, ci, si

The pronounciation of "i" in "zi, ci, si" is shown as being "ɹ̩" but shouldn't it be "ɯ"? Eduardoadl (talk) 18:55, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

It's kind of hard to transcribe these narrowly. Personally, I prefer the analysis of -i in zhi, chi, shi, ri, zi, ci, si as underlying /i/ (which makes sense from historical Chinese phonology), but the one used here conventionally also has a point. Double sharp (talk) 19:50, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with /ɯ/, as a native I agree with the transliteration as /ɹ̩/, it has always seemed to be close to the approximant R. I compare /ɯ/ with the u in Japanese. ReelmsyWiki (talk) 12:41, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

open-o sound ɔ

The open-o is missing from this list, as well as from the article "Standard Chinese phonology" but appears in transcriptions of the diphthong (?) "uo" in the entry for 捉 on wiktionary, for example: /ʈ͡ʂu̯ɔ⁵⁵/ (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%8D%89). Should we add the diphthong /u̯ɔ/ to this help page, or to the chinese phonology article? In what context does it appear? Recognitor (talk) 21:01, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Confused by a

The first row of the vowel table says the "English approximation" for a vowel transcribed as /a/ is "cat", which in every English dialect is pronounced with [æ]. Is the table claiming that these are allophones in Mandarin, or is it just a very imperfect approximation? (Most English speakers have [a] as a rare realization of /ɑ/.) 207.180.169.36 (talk) 03:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

External site does not have free conversion to IPA, it seems.

The external links section links to a site and says that there is free conversion to IPA there, but that seems to be untrue. Please prove me wrong. I would be delighted. Polar Apposite (talk) 23:32, 9 August 2025 (UTC)