Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands

[PHenry1026]

Greetings,

Can someone provide and authoritative IPA pronunciation for Diaoyu.

(please indicate your source)


The Diaoyu Islands are also known as the Senkaku Islands.

;-) Percy

 

[probus]

We are not political. We teach English.

 

[PHenry1026]

I am not trying to make a political statement but Diaoyu has been occurring frequently in English language coverage of current events and I would simple like to get the correct pronunciation. Please explain what is political about that?

;-) Percy

 

[Raymott]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuAPr1jF0gQ

 

[PHenry1026]

Thanks for the video. From the video, I am hearing /ˈdaʊˈjəʊ/.

But if anyone has something more authoritative it would be greatly appreciated.


;-) Percy

 

[PHenry1026]

If you had asked for English pronunciations of both the Chinese and Japanese names of the islands I would have been less suspicious.

I did not ask for the pronunciation of Senkaku because its pronunciation is readily available in many standard pronunciation references.

;-) Percy

 

[PHenry1026]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Using the Chinese for Diaoyu (钓鱼), which I believe means Fishing and the Google Translate pronunciation of 钓鱼, I approximated the Chinese (Mandarin) pronunciation of Diaoyu as /dɪˈaʊ.i.jiː/ which is radically different from the video pronunciation of /ˈdaʊˈjəʊ/ approximated from the posted video above.


;-) Percy

 

[N Senbei]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Hello PHenry1026,

I’m just a learner and I know little about Chinese language, but according to my Chinese-Japanese dictionary, “Diaoyu” seems to be pronounced as /diào yú/ in Pinyin and, I believe, [tiɑʊ y] (sorry, I’m ignoring the tone diacritics) in IPA (by the way, Chinese /t/ and /d/ are realized as aspirated [tʰ] and unaspirated [t] respectively).
It must be quite tricky for native English speakers to pronounce [tiɑʊ y] correctly, because in English, /t/ is aspirated like [tʰ] in stressed syllable-initial position, and there is no triphthong [iɑʊ] or high front rounded vowel [y] ( with lip-rounding) in English phonemes.
So I don’t think there is a “correct” pronunciation of “Diaoyu” in English in the first place.
I’ve heard a CNN reporter say [daʊ ju] and a narrator of the audio version of The Economist say [di aʊ ju], but both of them are far from [tiɑʊ y].

 

[PHenry1026]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful response: With the great advances with text to speech we can now test any set of phonemes.

When you get a chance please go to the following web site:

http://www.ivona.com/us/

Choose one of the English voices (I recommend Joey) and enter the following:

<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="tiɑʊ y"></phoneme>

then press Play.

Is /tiɑʊ y/ close to what you expected it to sound like?

;-) Percy

 

[N Senbei]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful response: With the great advances with text to speech we can now test any set of phonemes.

When you get a chance please go to the following web site:

http://www.ivona.com/us/

Choose one of the English voices (I recommend Joey) and enter the following:

<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="tiɑʊ y"></phoneme>

then press Play.

Is /tiɑʊ y/ close to what you expected it to sound like?

;-) Percy

Hello,

I tried that Text-to-Speech, but it doesn’t seem to work properly. It pronounces [y] and the same...
I think the pronunciation you can hear in the following website is closer to [tiɑʊ y] (or [tiaʊ yː]?).
http://www.chinaorb.com/index.php?s_word=钓鱼

 

[PHenry1026]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Thanks,

Actually the u sound is the correct pronunciation for the y phoneme in the IPA set and is meant to stand for the French u sound in tu.

I listened to the pronunciation at the web site you suggested and came up with the following modification:

<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="tiɑʊ(.)j"></phoneme>

Please let me know if this is closer.

;-) Percy

 

[N Senbei]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Actually the u sound is the correct pronunciation for the y phoneme in the IPA set and is meant to stand for the French u sound in tu.

Hello,

Maybe because of my limited English skills, I have a bit of difficulty understanding what you are getting at. Could you put <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="y u y u y u"></phoneme> and let Joey pronounce it? IPA [y] is a front vowel and IPA is a back vowel, and they sound completely different, but Joey pronounces [u u u u u u] and no IPA [y].

<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="tiɑʊ(.)j"></phoneme>

That still sounds strange to me (/j/ does not have lip-rounding sound quality), but French Mathieu’s pronunciation of <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="tiɑʊ y"></phoneme> seems to be better than Joey's.

 

[PHenry1026]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Hang in there don't give up: A lot of things are different in practice than in theory.

Here are two examples of the y phoneme representing the u sound:

(French plus - the IPA phonemes are in parenthesis) http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/plus?showCookiePolicy=true


(German Führer) http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/german-english/führer?showCookiePolicy=true


It would make sense that the y phoneme sounds more authentic in French or German since the phoneme y does not really exist in English.


;-) Percy

 

[N Senbei]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Hello,

I know French has /y/ in its phoneme inventory (by the way, it also has the /u/ phoneme), but I don’t think that has anything to do with the fact that “American English Joey” fails to pronounce [y], because the sound he generates is far from not only the IPA cardinal [y] but also the French /y/ phoneme, and it’s just an American English /u/.
The image below is a spectrogram of Joey’s <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="y u y u"></phoneme> and also his “boot.” The first and second formants (F1, F2) of his [y], , and the vowel of “boot” have the same level (if he really pronounced [y] or something similar, its F2 would be much higher than ), so there’s no IPA [y] or French /y/.
I’m sorry but, I still don’t know why you thought “Joey” was a good candidate and his is the correct pronunciation for the /y/…

 

[PHenry1026]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Hi Again,

I never thought any English voice would pronounce /y/ correctly.

Text to Speech voices work by using prerecorded phonemes; since Joey is an English voice, I doubt /y/ would have been prerecorded.

Since we are trying to get an approximation of Diaoyu for English, I recommended Joey.

If you think the phonemes you put forward for Diaoyu is best represented by a French voice then you should not let my suggestion limit your ability to choose the voice that best represents your phonetic transcription of Diaoyu.

;-) Percy

P.S. using Joey, what do you think of <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="tiɑʊ(.)ʊ̈"></phoneme>

The second /ʊ̈/ is different from the first ʊ, put you cannot clearly see the difference here.

Or using Joey or Salli please try <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="tɪˈaʊ(.)ˈiː"></phoneme>

 

[N Senbei]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Since we are trying to get an approximation of Diaoyu for English, I recommended Joey.

Hello,

Partly because you talked about French and German phonemes, I thought you were just trying to get as phonetically close a sound to [tiɑʊ y] as possible. Maybe I misread your posts. I’m sorry about that.

P.S. using Joey, what do you think of <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="tiɑʊ(.)ʊ̈"></phoneme>

I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep using this Text-to-Speech. Clearly something is wrong with it. Joey’s "tiɑʊ(.)ʊ̈" is just the same as his disappointing "tiɑʊ(.)y."
The following image is a spectrogram of Joey’s "tiɑʊ(.)ʊ̈,” "tiɑʊ(.)ʊ,” "tiɑʊ(.)u,” and "tiɑʊ(.)y.” As is clear from its F1 and F2, his [ʊ̈], [ʊ], , and [y] are all the same… (He seems to be able to distinguish between [ʊ] and in sentences, so I don’t know why this happens...)

 

[PHenry1026]

Re: Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands - Revisited

Greetings,

I want to thank you very much for the effort you put forward in helping me to try to get an English transcription for Diaoyu. Your efforts helped me greatly in that goal.

I have been using Text-to-Speech seriously since 2001 and I have total confidence in the technology behind it. One of the biggest problem on the web is so called experts in Phonetics putting forward bad phonetic transcriptions. Since most people using the web have no way to test whether these transcriptions are correct, these bad transcription are passed around the web as correct.

What I have found over the years is that everybody who puts forward an incorrect transcription will not admit that they made a mistake but immediately blame Text-to-Speech instead of working with Text-to-Speech to try to improve their mistakes.

;-) Percy

P.S.

One can test the accuracy of Text-to-Speech by using it to duplicate any one of the thousand of names in the Library of Congress's database of Popular and Newsworthy Names located at:

http://www.loc.gov/nls/other/sayhow.html

You can find a sound file for any of these names at:

http://www.sos.mo.gov/wolfner/SayHow/

 

[PHenry1026]

Final Pronunciation for Diaoyu Islands

Herewith the final phonetic transcription of the pronunciation of Diaoyu from Chinese to English:

Primary approximation: /ˈtɪˈaʊˈjiː/

Secondary approximation: /ˈtɪˈaʊˈiː/

Pinyin approximation (English): /ˈti̯ɑʊ̯ˈjiː/

Pinyin approximation (Ivona French Mathieu Only): /ti̯ɑʊ̯y/

Using 钓鱼 or 釣魚 and a Mandarin voice you can listen to the Chinese pronunciation at:

http://www.nuance.com/vocalizer5/flash/index.html

or

http://www.acapela-group.com/

or

http://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/chinese-english/translation-diaoyu_angle.htm

Which pronunciation do you think most closely matches the Chinese?

;-) Percy