CM 0102 S

¹ STANDARD CHINESE

A MODULAR APPROACH

RESOURCE MODULES:

PRONUNCIATION and ROMANIZATION

NUMBERS

CLASSROOM EXPRESSIONS fl

TIME and DATES

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STANDARD CHINESE

A MODULAR APPROACH

RESOURCE MODULES:

PRONUNCIATION and ROMANIZATION

NUMBERS

CLASSROOM EXPRESSIONS

TIME and DATES

AUGUST 1979

PREFACE

Standard Chinese: A Modular Approach originated in an Inter-agency conference held at the Foreign 5ērvice Institute in August 1973 to address the need’ genera! ly felt in the U.S. Government language training community for Improving and updating Chinese materials to reflect current usage in BēljTng and in Taipei.

The conference resolved to develop materials which were flexible enough Tn form and content to meet the requirements of a wide range of government agencies and academic institutions.

A Project Board was established consisting of representatives of the Central Intelligence Agency Language Learning Center, the Defense Language Institute, the State Department’s Foreign Service institute, the Cryptologic School of the National Security Agency, and the U.S. Office of Education, later joined by the Canadian Forces Foreign Language School. The representatives have Included Arthur T. McNeill, John Hopkins, and John Ēoag CCIA); Colonel John F. Elder Hi, Joseph C. Hutchinson, Ivy Glbian, and Major Bernard Mulier-Thym (DU); James R. Frith and John B. Ratliff III (FSI); Kazuo Shltama (NSA); Richard T. Thompson and Julia Petrov (OE); and Lieutenant Colonel George Kozorlz (CFFLS) .

The Project Board set up the Chinese Cora Curriculum Project in 1974 in space provided at the Foreign Service Institute. Each of the six U.S. and Canadian government agencies provided funds and other assistance.

Gerard P. Kok was appointed project coordinator, and a planning council was formed consisting of Mr, Kok, Frances LI of the Defense Language Institute, Patricia O’Connor of the University of Texas, Eari M. RIckerson of the Language Learning Center, and James Wrenn of Brown University. In the fall of 1977, Lucille A. Barale was appointed deputy project coordinator. David W. Dellinger of the Language Learning Center and Charles R. Sheehan of the Foreign Service Institute also served on the planning council and contributed material to the project. The planning council drew up the original overall design for the materials and met regularly to review their development.

Writers for the first half of the materials were John H. T. Harvey, Lucille A. Barale, and Roberta S. Barry, who worked in close cooperation with the planning council and with the Chinese staff of the Foreign Service Institute. Mr. Harvey developed the instructional formats of the comprehension and production self-study materials, and also designed the communication-based classroom activities and wrote the teacher’s guides. Lucille A. Barale and Roberta S. Barry wrote the tape scripts and the student text. By 1978 Thomas E. Madden and Susan C, PoI a had Joined the staff. Led by Ms. Baraìe, they have worked as a team to produce the materials subsequent to Module 6.

All Chinese language material was prepared or selected by Chuan 0. Chao, Ylng-chlh Chen, Hslao-jung Chi, Eva Dlao, Jan Hu, Tsung-ml LI, and Yunhul C. Yang, assisted for part of the time by Chleh-fang Ou Lee, Ylng-ming Chen, and Joseph Yu Hsu Wang. Anna Affholder, Me I -1 I Chen, and Henry Khuo helped In the preparation of a preliminary corpus of dialogues.

Administrative assistance was provided at various times by Vincent Basclano, Lisa A, Bowden, Jill W. Ellis, Donna Fong, Renee T, C. Liang, Thomas E. Madden, Susan C, Pola, and Kathleen Strype,

The production of tape recordings was directed by Jose M. Ramirez of the Foreign Service Institute Recording Studio, The Chinese script was voiced by Ms. Chao, Ms. Chen, Mr, Chen, Ms. Dlao, Ms. Hu, Mr. Khuo, Mr. Li, and Ms. Yang. The English script was read by Ms. Barale, Ms. Barry, Mr. Basclano, Ms. Ellis, Ms. Pola, and Ms. Strype.

The graphics were produced by John McClelland of the Foreign Service Institute Audio-Visual staff, under the general supervision of Joseph A. Sadote, Chief of Audio-Visual.

Standard Chinese: A Modular .Approach was field-tested with the cooperation of Brown University? th"e~~Def ense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center; the Foreign Service Institute; the Language Learning Center; the United States Air Force Academy the University of Illinois; and the University of Virginia,

Colonel Samuel L. Stapleton and Colonel Thomas G. Foster, Commandants of the Defense Language institute, Foreign Language Center, authorized the DLIFLC support necessary for preparation of this edition of the course materials. This support Included coordination, graphic arts, editing, typing, proofreading, printing, and materials necessary to carry out these tasks.

CONTENTS

_Sffl                    Preface.....................

PRONUNCIATION AND ROMANIZATION

Introduction ....

⁽>                    Tape : Workbook (Tones).........,

Tape 2 Workbook (Consonants and Vowels I) ...... .

Tape 3 Workbook (Consonants and Vowels II)

Tape 4 Workbook (Consonants and Vowels III)

Tape 5 Workbook (Consonants and Vowels IV)

Tape 6 Workbook (Tones In Combination) ........ 19

El Tone Card

ⁱⁿ                   Summary

Tones

Consonants and Vowels ..... ..........

I .   Finals

i I .   initials .....

Sentence Intonation

Is,                Appendices

I: List of initials

•               II: List of Finals

NUMBERS I ntroduct Ion

h                   Tape I Workbook (Numbers 1-6)

-                  Tape 2 Workbook (Numbers 7-10 and 0)  ...

Tape 3 Workbook (Numbers 11-99)........... , 57

my                 Tape 4 Workbook (Numbers 1-99, Review)

Tape 5 Workbook (Numbers 100-999)

Tape 6 Workbook (Numbers 1,000-99,999) ........ 63

Summary .

CLASSROOM EXPRESSIONS

TIME AND DATES Introduction ...........

Tape 1 Workbook (Dates) ..... ...........

Tape 2 Workbook (Years and Days of the Weak)

Tape 3 Workbook (Clock Time)

Tape 4 Workbook (Ciock Time and Parts of the Day) ... 64

Summary

PRONUNCIATION and ROMANIZATION (P&R)

INTRODUCTION

Your chief concern as you start this course Is learning to pronounce Chinese, The Orientation Module, which plunges you right Into trying to say things in Chinese, naturally involves a certain amount of pronunciation work. This resource module is designed to supplement that work with a brief, systematic Introduction to the sound system of Standard Chinese, as well as to Its written representation in PTnyTn roman 1zation,

The essential part of this module consists of the Pronunciation and Romanization CP&R) tapes and the accompanying displays and exorcises in the workbook section of this module. You should work through at least the first four of these tapes, and preferably the first six, while you are studying the Orientation ModuIe .

Following the workbook section of this module, you will find a summary of pronunciation and romanization. You might want to glance at this before starting the tapes, particularly to locate certain charts and lists which could be helpful for reference. But it would probably be better to put off studying the summary until after you have finished the tapes. The tapes are Intended as an introduction, while the summary is not. For one thing, text discussions of the sounds of the language cannot equal the recorded presentations and your teacher’s oral presentations. For another thing, the summary provides considerably more Information than you wíi! need or want at first,

Both the tapes and the summary contain discussions of the sounds of the language and their spellings. You may find that these discussions offer useful hints, allowing you to put your intellect to work on the problems of pronunciation and romanization, However, particularly in pronunciation, most of your learning must come from doing. it Is important to practice . reading and writing the romanization, but it is vital to practice recognizing and producing the sounds of the language. Serious and sustained attempts to mimic, as fa 1thfuiIy-as possible, either your Instructor or the speakers on the tapes will allow you to pick up unconsciously far more than you can attend to consc i ous I y.

The most Important thing for you to do Is to abandon the phonetic '’prejudices" you have built up as a speaker of English and surrender yourself to the sounds of Chinese, Being less set than adults Tn their ways, children are quicker to pick up a proper accent. Try to regress to the phonetic suggestibility of childhood, however hard it is to shed the safe and comfortable rigidity and certainty of adulthood. Ths most your intellect can supply is a certain amount of guidance and monitoring.

Be sure to repeat the words and sentences on the tapes In your full normal speaking voice, or even louder, as If you were speaking to someone at a reasonable distance. When you speak to yourself under your breath, you are considerably less precise In your pronunciation than when you speak aloud. This Is all right In English, since you can already pronounce the language. But, In Chinese, you would not be practicing that skill which you are trying to develop, and you would find yourself at a loss when you tried to switch to full volume in class.

One of the advantages an adult has over a child In learning a language Is the ability to make use of e written representation of It. In this course you learn the PTnyTn system of romanization at the same time that you are learn i ng the sound system of Standard Chinese. (The nona Iphabet I c system of written characters Is taught as a separate component of the course.) You will find that PTnyTn is not the simplest possible phonetic transcription. Some of the letters and combinations of letters chosen to represent the sounds of Chinese are not the most obvious ones. While consonant letters generally stand for fixed consonant sounds, vowel letters can stand for various vowel sounds, depending on what letters precede them and follow them. Some of the abbreviation rules are more trouble than they are worth at first. These drawbacks--whI ch are actually relatively minor compared with those of most spelling systems--stem from the fact that PTnyTn was designed for speakers of Chinese, not for speakers of English. The primary consideration In devising the system was the most efficient use of the letters of the Roman alphabet to represent the sounds of Chinese. The drawbacks to learning PTnyTn are considerably outweighed by the advantage that PTnyTn is widely taught and used as a supplementary script In the People's Republic of China. You are learning PTnyTn not merely as an aid during the first few weeks of the course, but also as one of the ways Chinese Is actually written, and as what may well represent the wave of the future.

NOTE: A number of surnames used in this module are rare. Some may even be unfamiliar to most Chinese, although all are authentic. These rare surnames are used to Illustrate various contrasts In sound and spelling.

♦

TAPE 1 WORKBOOK (TONES)

DISPLAY I: THE FOUR TONES

HIGH

mǎ, "horse"

mà, ^,T+o scold"

Exercise I: F5ng vs. Fáng

I . Fang      2. Fang      3.

• 6. Fang     7. Fang     S.

Fang    4. Fang 5. Fang

Fang     9. Fang    IO. Fang

TAPE 2 WORKBOOK (CONSONANTS AND VOWELS I)

DISPLAY I: SINGLE VOWELS

Exerclse 1

Exercise 2

DISPLAY II: DIPHTHONGS

DISPLAY III: SEMIVOWELS

Exercise 4

DISPLAY IV: IRREGULAR COMBINATIONS OF SEMIVOWEL AND VOWEL

Exercise 5

Exercise 6

Exercise 7

TAPE 3 WORKBOOK (CONSONANTS AND VOWELS II)

Exercise I

DISPLAY I: STOPS

Exercise 2

ExercIse 3

DISPLAY it: AFFRICATES

DISPLAY III: /r/ AND THE RETROFLEX POSITION

DISPLAY IV: THE PALATAL POSITION

Exercise 7

Exercise 8

TAPE 4 WORKBOOK (CONSONANTS AND VOWELS lit)

DISPLAY I: AFFRICATES AND FRICATIVES

Exercise í: ShSng vē. X ISng

Pi

Exerclse 4

I. Zhao   2. XI3o   3. Cáo     4. Shào    5. Qiáo    6. JiSo

• 7. Cháo   3. Suǒ    9. Zuò    10. Càl    II. ShQ    12, XTn

• 13. ZSng  14. Chú    15. JTn    16. Song   17, Zh3u   IB. Qfn

DISPLAY II: FRICATIVES

ShT                   XT                    ST

DISPLAY III

Rì běn

Exercise 6

Exercise 7

Exercise 8

TAPE 5 WORKBOOK (CONSONANTS AND VOWELS IV)

DISPLAY I

DISPLAY H

Yòu l r ìj

DISPLAY III

DISPLAY IV

DISPLAY V

DISPLAY VI

TAPE 6 WORKBOOK (TONES IN COMBINATION)

f 51 le

DISPLAY I: THE NEUTRAL TONE

ExercIse I

DISPLAY II: THE HALF THIRD TONE

Té ì běI

BělJTng YSngp I ng BSodlng

DISPLAY III: THE RAISED THIRD TONE

NánhSl             BělhSl

Exercise 2

DISPLAY IV: TWO-TONE SEQUENCES (1)

Exercise 3

*ihis is the name of a former province.

DISPLAY V: TWO-TONE SEQUENCES (2)

Exercise 5

SUMMARY

TONES

Every syllable In Standard Chinese has one of four distinctive "tones" or patterns of pitch. The only exception to this rule is that a syllable loses Its inherent tone when It Is unstressed. The tone is just as much a part of a syllable as the consonants and vowels and performs the same function--sīgnaling the meaning of the syllable* In other words, difference In tone between two syllables can signal a difference In meaning, Just as a difference In consonants or vowels does.

It will be difficult at first to appreciate fully that a tone Is something that belongs to a syllable rather than something that merely happens to It. This Is because the only use of pitch patterns In English Is for Intonation of entire sentences, affecting only the meanings of whole sentences. For example, the rising pitch at the end of "Spinach Is delicious?" has nothing to do with the meaning of the word "delicious" but tells us that the whole sentence should be Interpreted as "Are you saying that spinach is delicious?" It may be difficult at first to remember the tone of a syllable as well as you remember the consonants and vowels. This Is because you have to develop the completely new habit of marking tones In your mental dictionary.

The Four Tones

Display I diagrams the pitch patterns of the four tones and gives their descriptive names and traditional numbers. As examples, four single-syllable words with completely different meanings but different to the ear only in their tones are pronounced at the beginning of the first P&R tape.

The tone diagrams may bo read as musical notations. The vertical dimension stands for pitch, with the top of the diagram slightly above your normal pitch range In English and the bottom slightly below. The horizontal dimension stands for duration. The thickness of the curve stands for loudness. These diagrams show the tones as they are heard In isolated syllables.

The High tone (or First tone) has a steady high pitch and average length. You may find It somewhat uncomfortable to pronounce at first, since a steady high pitch is seldom used In English—your only relevant experience comes from music. Notice that the accent mark which represents this tone In the romanization captures the level contour rather than the high pitch.

The Rising tone (or Second tone) rises from the middle of the pitch range to the top. it too has average length. Unlike the rising Intonation used In English for questions, the Rising tone gets louder as It rises. Notice that the tone mark In the romanization rises from left to right.

The Low tone (or Third tone) starts low, dips to the bottom of the pitch range, and then rises. The lowest part of this tone is the most distinctive, the part to focus on both when you are trying to pronounce the tone and when you are trying to recognize it. The lowest part takes the greatest effort and is the most, prominent, despite the fact that it Is actually not quite as loud as the rest of the tone. This part Is exaggerated, both in length and In pitch, when the syllable 1$ stressed for emphasis. Particularly with male speakers, it may have a harsh, scraping quality. The Low tone has greater than average length. In English a similar Intonation is sometimes used for "Well?” when you have been waiting to hear something. Notice that the tone mark captures the dipping pitch pattern.

The Falling tone (or Fourth tone) starts at the top of the pitch range end drops sharply to the bottom, diminishing in loudness as it drops. It has shorter than average length. In English the falling Intonation used for exclamations, as in "Well!” is similar, but the Falling tone starts higher and ends lower than all but our most emphatic exclamations. Notice that the tone mark falls from left to right.

The Neutral Tone

A syllable loses Its inherent tone when It Is unstressed. An unstressed syllable, besides being weak and hurried, will have a pitch that Is not something of Its own but rather something that Is imposed on It by the tones of the surrounding syllables, particularly by the tone of the preceding syllable. In such cases we say that the syllable has tost its full tone, that Its tone has been neutralized, or that it is in the Neutral tone, ⁵ (Th© Neutral tone Is taken up at the beginning of P&R Tape 6.)

DISPLAY II: THE NEUTRAL TONE

fBi le              fél le              fěi I e

fèl le

Display II shows the pitch of the Neutral tone after each of the four tones. The examples are four verbs which differ only In their tones, each followed by a grammatical element In the Neutral tone, (Notice that ths Neutral tone Is indicated In the romanization by the absence of a tone mark.}

After the Falling tone (4), the pitch of the Neutral tone amounts to the end of the fall. After the other three tones, It amounts to a Jump back to, or slightly beyond, the middle of the pitch range. In the case of the Low tone (3), the Jump Is from the low point, since the Low tone has lost Its rising tail. The pitch of the Neutral tone may also be affected by the tone of a syllable which follows, moving the Neutral tone in the direction of the start of the following tone. However, a sequence of Neutral tones will stay at the same pitch or will drop gradually.

There are a few syllables, most of them grammatical elements, which are always unstressed in normal speech and, therefore, are always In the Neutral tone. These syllables are exceptions to ths rule that every syllable has a basic full tone, a tone that may be neutralized but will reappear under stress. To make a comparison with English, it Is hard to say what the ’’neutral vowel¹’ In the word ’’given” has been reduced from, since the ending -en is never stressed.

Tone Changes

The Low tone pronounced in isolation has a dipping-rising pitch pattern. This is the shape It always has before a pause. But the Low tone loses Its rising tall before a Neutral tone, and Display III shows that the Low tone also loses its tail before any non-Low tone. This display further shows that something even more unexpected happens to a Low tone before another Low tone* It changes to a Rising tone, or at least to something so close to a Rising tone that even native speakers cannot tell the difference. A Low tone which has lost Its rising tail before a different tone Is still recognizable, or Is even more recognizable, as a Low tone. But a Low tone which has changed to a Rising tone before another Low tone is no longer recognizable. What you will hear for ”i’m fine¹¹ Is Wó hSo. The only way you can tell that the first word Is reaI Iy w& Ts by hearing It when It is not followed by a Low tone. Another quirk of the Low tone Is that ft sometimes changes to a Rising tone before a neutralized Low tone. Whether this happens or not depends on considerations of grammar and word formation. It always happens, for example, when the syllables are separate words, as with the words qTmg j " + o ask,” and nl, ’’you,” In the expression Qí ng n I . . ., which means ”(1) ask you (to do such-and-such)¹’ or ”Rlease (do such-and-such).” ft does not happen in J 1SJ ie (from J i ěj i S), "older sister.” (The exceptional behavior of the Low tone is taken up In the sixth tape of this module, right after the section on the Neutral tone.)                                      .

DISPLAY HI: THIRD TONE BEFORE FULL TONES

Bè!JTng

YSngp íng

BāThĚI

Bāodlng

There are certain other tone changes that take place in longer sequences of syllables. The main example of this is that a Rising tone changes to a High tone when 1+ follows a High tone or Rising tone and is fol lowed by any fuI I tone. For Instance, J I5ná dà, ’’Canada,” Is pronounced J ISnSdà. Using tone marks, the rule may be expressed tike this:

” ' ” becomes - - -         * becomes

~   ‘ becomes ~ ~                ■ becomes

” ' * becomes * * ^v          ' * becomes

" ' ' becomes - - *            * becomes

However, these tone changes will be studied only after you have gained control of two-syilable sequences.

There are also cases where particular words change their tones under the Influence of following tones. The number I Is y T when It Is pronounced alone or as one of a series of digits. It Is yt before a Falling tone or neutralized Falling tone, and yì before any other tone. The numbers 7, qT, and 8, bS, are q f and bá before a Falling tone for most speakers. The negative marker bǔ Is bú before a Falling tone or neutralized Falling tone. in this course you will find bú quite a few times before you find bù, but keep in mind that bù is the more basic form. "No," for example, Is bù.

Tone Weakening and Strengthening

in addition to the dramatic tone changes discussed previously, there are certain minor automatic changes which affect all full tones In words of two or more syllables. These Involve all three factors shown in the tone dIagram--Ioudness, pitch, and length.

Let's start with a similar phenomenon In English, In an English word of two or more syllables, the syllables vary In how forceful they are and how much emphasis they receive. We normally think of these levels of "stress" In terms of the loudness of the syllable, but other factors, Including syllable length and pitch, are even more Important. The one thing you need to know about the stress pattern of an English word Is which syllable has the main stress. This syllable will have the same weight as a single-syllable word pronounced alone. The stress levels of the other syllables, down to the level we call "unstressed," will then fall Into place almost automatically.

-dà- -11

The subordinate status of -guó In the names of countries Is most clearly seen by the fact that some speakers treat It almost as a suffix, pronouncing It Tn the Neutral tone, so that "Germany" becomes Oéguo.

As with English levels of stress, these differences are fairly subtle. You may not be able to hear them too clearly, and you can make yourself understood well enough even without getting them quite right, although you are likely to sound like a computer. You should be able to learn stress patterns without even thinking about them If you will try to mimic Chinese speakers as closely as possible.

After learning more about consonants and vowels In the next section of this summary, you will be Introduced to sentence intonation in the last section, where you will find that there are further modifications In the pitch patterns of the tones. If you are reading this summary as you begin the course, new Information Is piling up too fast. Don’t try to keep everything In mind at once. As a first approximation of the tones, for example, try giving your syllables Identifiable and correct tones. When you have mastered that, work on one or two more points. Meanwhile, your ear will have begun to lock Tn on what Chinese sounds like, and you will begin to reach the point of automatic control.

CONSONANTS AND VOWELS

Much of the structural simplicity of the Chinese language is made evident by traditional analysis of syllable structure. Start with the syllables which are different to the ear. There are only about 1,300 such distinguishable syllables, not nearly as many as In English. (Many syllables which sound alike carry more than one meaning and are written with different characters for each meaning, much as the same English spoken syllable carries the three meanings represented by the spellings "two," "too," and "to.")