Week Four: Focus on the Consonants

           My original plan for this week's self-training is a focus on vowels in Wuhan dialect, but having compared my own practice demos with my archetype this Monday, I believe it would be better for me to spend more time on the consonants. I asked the provider of the archetype  who is actually my roommate, and she gave me some feedbacks on my pronunciation training content:

1. If you listen to a "Wuhaner" speaking Mandarin Chinese, the most conspicuous feature to identify his or her dialectual origin is the (accent) "hint"  of the nasality and consonants which are different from the counterparts in Mandarin Chinese. 

Feature One-Nasality
 Mandarin /l/ and /n/ are different phonemes, while in Wuhan dialect we only have a nasalized release /lⁿ/ as the phoneme for the counterpart: Wuhan dialect merges  /l/ and /n/, and doese not distinguish meaning via nasal aveolar and lateral approximants. This kind of pronunciation transfer is very obvious in the  speakers' Mandarin pronunciation.

Feature Two-"Front(Aveolar)"Merge
In Mandarin Chinese, we have two groups of diphathongs, one is ended with /n/ (e.g. /ɛn, in/, etc.) and the other kind is eded with velar nasal/ŋ/ (e.g. /ɑŋ, ɪŋ/).  But in Wuhan dialect, there is another merger: /ŋ/ disappear and /n/ takes up the role for all the nasal diphathongs. The similar phenomenon also applies to fricatives Aveolar /s/ and Retroflex /ʂ/, the retroflex counterpart disappears, and /ʂ/ merges with /s/. It seems that all the "back" consonants are merged with their aveolar counterparts. 

Feature Three-"Dentalized" Affricates
We can hear very sonarant /ts, ts', tç,  tç'/ in Wuhan dialect with a dentalized effect (/ts̪, tç̪/). 

So when I practices the poem, I did some practice for the single consonats C+/an, aŋ/. Here is the link for consonant practice:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/comf3spat8udr2j/Consonants%20in%20Wuhan%20Dialect.mp3

2. Apart from the "theoretical" analysis and segamental practice, I also asked for help from the internet, which gave me a general impression on the consonants. First, I found an R&B pop-music sang with Wuhan dielct which helped me to compare the pronunciation rules I discovered with the authentic sample.

From this sample, I found that the whole consonant system seems to move to a more front part compared with Mandarin Chinese, and the pronunciation is not very clear-cut. And even in the song, the consonants shared the "fronted" feature.

3.  Here is the practice session for the poem, I tried to slow down and pronounce each consonant with extra stress. Having tried several times, I gradually gained the "posture" of producing these typical consonants:

Take Three (Normal speed)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v9dfbu12559ob02/Take%20Three.mp3

Take Four (Slower Version with a focus on the featured consonants)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r6ec29z9v8uhfgj/Take%20Four.mp3 

I listened to the two demos and marked some uncertain consonants, then I compared the consonants section with the archetype. I found that I still kepts some velar nasal sound in diphathongs which should not appear in the phonological environment. I also found it difficult to detalize the aveolar fricatives and affricates as long as I started pronouncing it in utterance. The automaticity and fluency is my problem for consonants: I can do better in listening discrimination, but still needs more practice on the target sounds in sentential practice.

5. Plans for next week

•  Keep practicing the target consonants on sentential level;
• Do some research on the vowel section to make sure that the I can make smooth transition from consonants to vowels.
• Try to find more visual aids for pronouncing Wuhan dialect.