pronunciation help

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

Here's a Harvard site that is intended for language students rather than those simply trying to avoid butchering pronunciations. It uses RealPlayer, a free downloadable program to play short sound clips to illustrate the tones that are so important to Chinese.

http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~pinyin/

A text-only guide:
http://www.chinasageconsultants.com/html/pronunciation.html

About.com offers a guide with sound clips for each sound. Many will like the "sounds like" descriptions provided here.
http://mandarin.about.com/od/pronunciation/l/blsounds.htm

This page provides a comparison between romanization systems. You can see the pinyin form that is most commonly used these days and the Wade-Giles system as well (there are other schemes but these are the most common). There is also a link to a table with many famous names laid out in both systems.
http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinlng1.html

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

Japanese is fairly straightforward with many similarities to Spanish. It's not a tonal language.

Here's a Harvard page with pronunciation tips.

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~bestor/easy_pronunciation.htm

About.com has an "audio phrasebook" that will help you get the knack of Japanese sounds.
http://japanese.about.com/library/blphrase.htm

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

Korean is a bit trickier, because the South Korean government recently embraced a different romanization system, which may be a better fit with the International Phonetic Alphabet but isn't a great fit with English.

Here is a YouTube video which as clear graphics and negative examples. The opening is cheesey. And - since I don't speak Korean, I can't tell you if "Professor Oh" is steering you in the right direction. Prof. Jennifer Jung-Kim can help with this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdiR-6e1h0o

[Anonymous]

Professor Dube,

Thank you for showing all useful links. They are quite interesting.
julie

[Anonymous]

These sites are very valuable! In our cultural exchanges, picking up on the correct pronunciation can go a long way in cementing relationships. That is true even of political exchanges!

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the links to help in the pronunciation of East Asian languages. I believe this may be a reason that myself and others tend to overlook Asian historical applications due to the language barrier. A friend also loaned me a computer program on learning Chinese. This would be fun to introduce the language to my students when we cover the 5 themes of Geography to illustrate a section in the lesson.

[Author]

Posts