Tonal variation and reading pronunciation
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From Zeyao Wu:
I am intrigued by how the pronunciation of my nickname changed when I moved to Guangzhou [VHM: in the far south, formerly Canton] from Dongbei [VHM: the Northeast, formerly Manchuria].
In Dongbei, all my relatives and my friends called me Yáoyao 瑶瑶, with the second tone of the second syllable becoming neutral. [VHM: the base tone of yáo 瑶 ("precious jade") is second tone]
When I moved to Guangzhou, my friends call me Yǎoyáo 瑶瑶. It seems that this sort of pronunciation is not standard. I think Cantonese speak in this way because they pronounce Mandarin with the tones of Cantonese.
Here are some other examples (the first column is Pekingese [note the pattern of base tone on the first syllable and neutral tone on the second syllable] and the second column is Guangzhou-style Mandarin [note the pattern of base tone on the first syllable and full base tone on the second syllable, not neutral tone as in Beijing]).
dōngxi | dōngxī 东西 ("thing")
máfan | máfán 麻烦 ("trouble; bother")
shítou | shítóu 石头 ("stone")
yīfu | yīfú 衣服 ("clothing")
Judging from Zeyao's evidence, Cantonese-style Mandarin doesn't favor neutral tone for the second syllable of words. Conversely, northerners, especially Pekingese, seem to favor a very reduced neutral tone on the second syllable of words. When Zeyao said "déxing 德行" ("virtue; virtuous behavior; moral honesty / integrity / conduct; shameful; disgusting" — yes, in Pekingese colloquial, in its most mordant form as a condemnation, déxing 德行 means the exact opposite of its overt signification ["virtuous conduct", etc.]), there was hardly any vocalic quality left to the second syllable at all. So it came out sounding like "désh". I walked up right next to Zeyao and had her say it about five times in front of the whole class, and each time it came out sounding like "désh", with even nary a trace of nasalization. Already over 35 years ago, when I first heard it spoken by Beijing shopgirls, I was intrigued by this Pekingese colloquialism, both for the fact that they used it to convey an antonymous meaning, but also for the very unusual pronunciation. Dripping with vitriol, they would begin quite low in the register for a second tone, and then gradually glide upward — in a haughty, drawn-out way — on the first syllable to a rather high, attenuated pitch, then clip it off with a dismissive sibilant: deeéééé↗sh↓.
Comments by Neil Kubler:
Much of Southern China, also Taiwan, uses the pronunciations cited for Guangzhou. There are at least two reasons for this, I think: (1) Cantonese and Southern Chinese topolects in general don't have nearly so many neutral tones as Mandarin; (2) since Mandarin was learned as a second (foreign, non-native) language by these folks, and typically through character texts — which were often recited by the (typically herself not native) teacher with exaggerated tones, they picked up "reading pronunciations."
However, while I think the preceding is true, I think it's also true that (sadly, from my non-Chinese linguistic perspective), the number of neutral tones in Beijing speech is decreasing. More and more younger Beijing residents are speaking Putonghua rather than Beijinghua, and the emphasis of character texts ("reading pronunciations") is strong there also.
Your student said:
"my friends (in Guangzhou) call me Yǎoyáo 瑶瑶".
In Taiwan also there is a curious phenomenon where some personal names and also kinship terms — like baba, mama, gege, jiejie, didi, meimei — all change from their normal tone patterns (with the 1st syllable one of various tones and the 2nd syllable a neutral tone) to this pattern:
TONE 3 + TONE 2 (just like what your student described for her name in Guangzhou. So "daddy" becomes ba3ba2, and so forth.
I haven't been able to find a satisfactory explanation for why this happens.
Judging from Zeyao's evidence, Cantonese-style Mandarin doesn't favor neutral tone for the second syllable of words. Conversely, northerners, especially Pekingese, seem to favor a very reduced neutral tone on the second / final syllable of words. As I pointed out in my analysis of déxing 德行 ("virtuous / shameful conduct") above, when Zeyao pronounced this word à la Pekingese, there was hardly any vocalic quality left to the second syllable.
michaelyus said,
September 24, 2017 @ 5:12 pm
Tone change? 变音 as opposed to 变调 (tone sandhi). A feature of vocatives (direct address) as well as certain derived nouns (糖 tong4 sugar > tong4*2 candy) in Yue topolects. There ought to be some investigation into this in Mandarin.
Chas Belov said,
September 24, 2017 @ 8:18 pm
"When I moved to Guangzhou, my friends call me Yǎoyáo 瑶瑶. It seems that this sort of pronunciation is not standard. I think Cantonese speak in this way because they pronounce Mandarin with the tones of Cantonese."
My Cantonese is admittedly dreadful to non-existant, but my understanding has always been that, unlike Mandarin, it has no tones that change direction, so that Yǎo could not be based on a Cantonese tone.
Lai Ka Yau said,
September 25, 2017 @ 1:53 am
@Chas Belov: I think this is definitely a case of using Cantonese tones in Mandarin. In Cantonese, 瑶瑶 would be pronounced (roughly, with jyutping romanisation and Chao tone letters) jiu21jiu25. There is indeed no such 214 in Cantonese, but in Mandarin the 4 is frequently not (obviously) pronounced anyway, so the pronounciation would be similar to yao21yao35 – not unlike the Cantonese tones.
Guy_H said,
September 25, 2017 @ 9:43 am
Pronouncing 瑶瑶 as yao3 yao2 or daddy as ba3 ba2 in Taiwan (and I guess in southern China too) is…baby speak. This is stereotypically how young children talk and it's not just limited to names. For example, banana (香蕉) can be pronounced jiao3 jiao2. Of course, with the "cute-ification" of everything in Asian culture, speaking like this has now spread to adults (particularly young women). Its adorable when kids do it, adults not so much.
Chris Button said,
September 25, 2017 @ 10:34 pm
My guess would be that what is surfacing as tone 2 here is not actually a lexical tone 2 but rather a rising shift in intonation to demonstrate affection as Guy_H alludes to.
I was asked to give an English pronunciation class to a group of native Mandarin speakers last week. This neutral tone was actually very useful in terms of being able to help the students get their heads around the idea of "schwa reductions" in English. We were also able to extend the analogy beyond word stress to phrase stress (e.g. "to" /tə/ versus "too" /tuː/ etc.) by showing how many grammatical particles (嗎, 了, 的, 吧, 着 etc.) are also in the neutral tone.
Lai Ka Yau said,
September 29, 2017 @ 1:55 pm
@Guy_H: In Cantonese I don't think this is baby speak, at least not synchronically. It could be derived historically from baby-speak, but it's the standard way to pronounce names with repeated syllables now. Even if we refer to historical figures like Chen Yuanyuan, we will use those tones. They are not used for objects in the way you describe; for example, a child would call a banana ziu1ziu1, not ziu4ziu2…