Standard Chinese Phonology - Consonants

Consonants

The following is the consonant inventory of Standard Chinese, transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):

All but /ŋ/ occur in syllable onsets (as "initials"), whereas only /n/, /ŋ/, and /ɻ/ occur as syllable codas. may occur as /n/'s allophone before, when speaking quickly.

1. /ɻ/ varies as (a voiced retroflex fricative), depending on the speaker.
2. These are not always considered independent phonemes. See below.
3. These are commonly viewed not as independent phonemes but as either (1) consonantal allophones of "medial" high vowels (i.e. when another vowel follows); or (2) epenthetic (automatically inserted) glides before "main" high vowels (i.e. not followed by another vowel).

For the retroflex consonants, Standard Chinese speakers "produce the constriction for this sound with the upper surface of the tip of the tongue, making it a laminal rather than an apical post-alveolar." (Ladefoged & Wu 1984; Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:150-154).

The alveolo-palatal consonants arose historically from a merger of the alveolar consonants and the velar consonants before high front vowels and glides. The resulting palatals are in complementary distribution with the other two series, and with the retroflex consonants, none of which now occur in a high front environment. Some linguists prefer to classify as allophones of one of the other three series. The Yale and Wade-Giles systems mostly treat the palatals as allophones of the retroflex consonants; Tongyong Pinyin mostly treats them as allophones of the alveolars; and Chinese braille treats them as allophones of the velars. In Hanyu Pinyin and bopomofo they are considered apart, however.

The collapse of the velar and alveolar sibilant series into the alveolo-palatal in palatalizing environments happened only a few centuries ago. Before then, some instances of modern were instead, and others were . The change took place in the last two or three centuries at different times in different areas, but not in the dialect used in the Manchu dynasty imperial court. This explains why some European transcriptions of Chinese names (especially in the postal map spelling) contain "ki-", "hi-", "tsi-" or "si-". Examples are "Peking" for Beijing; "Chungking" for Chongqing; "Fukien" for Fujian (a province); "Tientsin" for Tianjin; "Sinkiang" for Xinjiang; "Sian" for Xi'an. The complementary distribution with the retroflex series appeared as syllables that had a retroflex consonant followed by a medial glide lost the medial glide.

may be pronounced, which is characteristic of the speech of young women, and also of some men. This is considered rather effeminate and may also be substandard.

The null initial, written as an apostrophe in pinyin word-medially, is most commonly realized as, though, and are common in nonstandard Mandarin dialects; some of these correspond to null in Standard Chinese but contrast with it in their dialect.

Corresponding chart in:

• Pinyin
• Zhuyin
• Gwoyeu Romatzyh