Week Seven: Practice and more research on tones

Based on previous practice on the single Chinese characters, I now started to pay more attention to the suprasegmental features on the tonal changes in Wuhan dialect in the archetype. In order to keep track of the tonal changes, I use Pinyin transcription with tones to mark the features. Here is a sample used in my transcription.

I also found a chart with "transition" from Pinyin to IPA for further reference:
http://talkbank.org/pinyin/Trad_chart_IPA.php

In this week's practice, I did several similar demos to compare with the archetype. I noticed that when producing the 3rd tone, the original sound tend to be more flat and the duratio is longer. Then I changed my own speech a little bit to imitate the 3rd tone. As for the whole archetype, even it also share four tones, the general flunctuation is not as obvious as those tones in Mandarin Chinese. In addtion, the general flow of the speech is a little "blurred". I asked my friend who provided the archetype. She told me that the blurred speech is actually an outstanding feature of Wuhan dialect.

Here attached is the Pinyin Transcription and my practice Demo:

In next week, I decide to go back to the whole poem and begin my general practice without transcription's help.







Here is my attempt according to the Pinyin script:

Week Six: More Practice on Vowel Clusters and Tones

As I did more practice on the vowels in Wuhan dialect, I found that one of the key difficulties for me is to match the suitable vowels with the consonants in different phonological contexts. So in this week, I listened to more autentic samples online and try to grasp the "general" feature of these vowels:

In these authentic sample, I found the following features, not limited to the vowels:

1. There are many differences between Mandarin Chinese and Wuhan dialect in the tonal elements. For same word or similar Chinese character, we may have different tones.
 e.g 要  “Yao”  means "to want", which is the 4th tone in Mandarin, while it becomes the 2nd tone in Euahn dialect. To point out a more systematic changes, I found a chart online to distinguish the changes.

声调

声纽	清	次浊	全浊
三十 六 字 母	见溪晓影 知彻照穿审 端透精清心 帮滂非敷	疑喻 娘日 泥来 明微	群匣 澄床禅 定从邪 并奉
平	阴平45 公书天非	阳平213 由人连迷	阳平 鞋常头旁
上	上声42 敢整子本	上声 咬忍里武	去声 下上坐饭
去	去声35 过至四破	去声 异二内望	去声 换树代伴
入	阳平 哭得发式	阳平 欲热力物	阳平 或直夕拔

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AD%A6%E6%B1%89%E8%AF%9D#.E8.81.B2.E8.AA.BF 
 To put the feature in a more straight forward way, we can conclude that 
Mandarin Chinese----Wuhan Dialect:
2 to 3;3 to 4;4 to 2;1 stays as 1.

In addition, as I listen to the autentic example, I noticed some phonological change in some vowels: In 六 （means six, liu, 4th tone）, “iu” in “liu” changes into “ou”, sounding like the English “low”, and the tone in Wuhan dialecy changes into 3nd tone. Then, 北 （means north, bei）changes into "be" plus a shwa sound.As I tried to grasp more changes and features in vowels, I found that it is closely related with the prosody rules in traditional Chinese, which links the vowels with the tonal system.  So I referred back to the chart below and added some tonal changes in the original chart as well.

1ST TONE: 55、44

2ND TONE: 313

3RD TONE: 42

4TH TONE: 35 

Based on this chart, I practiced both Chinese charaters and the poem again:

1. Single Chinese Characters 

2. Poem Practice

In the practice above, I refer to the tonal changes and found that the archetype atually changed some tones which are not listed below, so I think in the next week I will focus more on the tonal changes in connected speech.

开口呼	齐齿呼	合口呼	撮口呼	备注
ɿ子此十支是	i一比力七气	u五不附户古	y女于入主出	ɯ二日kʰɯ去(白读)
ɑ八大乍下撒	iɑ牙甲恰家瞎	uɑ话瓦瓜化刷	ɕya靴(白读)
o窝末多左合	io约若虐学削
ɤ北得克蛇革	ie也别劣邪绝	uɤ说国虢或获	ye月决掘缺穴	“茄”“薛”“劣”开合不定
ai艾拜乃在介		uai外怪快拐衰
ei贝杯最披内		uei瑰未吹锐回		“最”“脆”“岁”开合不定
ɑu奥包刀少早	iɑu巧妖了小苗
ou欧口杜六竹	iou又牛九囚秀
an南安凡旦短	ien言片天千偏	uan丸船官款欢	yen铅沿倦玄软	“全”“癣”“县”开合不定
ən恩硬崩吞存	in印民丁巾心	uən文坤昏横混	yĭn春允永均唇	“倾”“寻”“旬”开合不定
ɑŋ汤方上巷郎	iɑŋ仰两江香羊	uɑŋ王旺窗光狂
oŋ翁中孟木工	ioŋ荣茸穷兄雄			开合不定者多表现为“武合汉开”