Talk:吹功

Phonetic spelling

Without this, the roman equivalent is useless as pronunciation is key in the Chinese language. Also, add an audio version for playback. Make sense? 2604:3D08:4E7C:CC00:E5BC:C174:9A62:F6EE 23:14, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Not really. Mandarin pinyin was invented as a phonetic spelling, so it's surprisingly accurate as a guide to pronunciation. Also, among the seven transcriptions in the "Pronunciation" box is something called "Sinological IPA", which specifies the pronunciation pretty much exactly- if you're a linguist. Mandarin has sounds that don't exist in English, so spelling it out English-style (as in "chway-goong" or "chwee-goong") won't give you enough information- the sounds represented by pinyin "q" and "ch" are both closer to English "ch" than to any other English sound, but different from it and from each other in ways that mean nothing to English speakers without a background in linguistics. Then there are the tones. Audio would be nice, but we're all volunteers here and it's entirely possible that no one will get around to it any time soon. If there are audio files at Wiikimedia Commons, they can easily be integrated into our Pronunciation boxes here, but it's not that easy to check.

For an English speaker who doesn't already know some Chinese, there's no real substitute for some kind of instruction that includes listening to fluent speakers.

That said, there are audio files at the entries for the two characters that make up this word, 吹 and 功. A quick look through Category:Mandarin terms with audio links and Category:Chinese terms with audio links turns up some further examples: here's a two-syllable word that has the same combination of two high/first tones as this word- Shāndōng. Also, the audio at shuì has the vowel quality I was taught for Mandarin "ui" (37 years ago at UCLA). This is different from the audio at 吹, though shuì has the low-falling fourth tone ("ch" and "sh" in Mandarin have the same relationship to each other as the English sounds do, so that's not a problem here). Finally, cháo and qiáo show the difference between "ch" and "q" with the same vowels and tones, but the difference is easier to hear in che1 vs. qī.

Mandarin Chinese has a fairly limited number of possible syllables, so going through the categories above should give you a good idea of most of the language, though the tones in combination in multisyllable words often sound different than those of isolated syllables. I hope this helps, even if it just scratches the surface (Chinese is complicated). Chuck Entz (talk) 01:45, 9 January 2023 (UTC)