How to pronounce the vowel "o"

　　Recently, the pronunciation of the pinyin letter "o" has attracted widespread attention and discussion, with nearly 100 million readings on related topics.

One of them was titled "Did You Know?

Is the pinyin "o" pronounced "ou" or "wo"?

"Weibo said, "Due to the lack of pronunciation notes at the beginning and the lack of professional knowledge of teachers, many people read 'o' as 'wo'. The staff of the Ministry of Education said that according to the current teaching standards, the pronunciation of #pinyin o should be Read ou#."

　　After the author's search, the content came from a tweet published by the official WeChat account of the Beijing Municipal Education Commission "Capital Education", "Pinyin "o" reads "Europe" or "Wo"?

".

The article argues: "At present, the academic community has been arguing about the pronunciation of 'o', and there is no particular consensus. The pronunciation of teachers in teaching is now set according to the teaching standards issued by the education authorities every year. The current standard is to identify 'o' as a single sound and pronounce it as 'ou'."

　　From this, it seems that reading the final "o" as "Europe" is the official opinion.

However, the source of the document "teaching standards issued by the competent education department every year" is not pointed out in the article, and the author has no way of verifying it.

　　The author used to be a member of the research group of the Ministry of Education entrusted by the project "Mandarin Pronounciation Principles and the Revision of "Mandarin Different Pronunciation Pronounciation Table", and naturally I am very concerned about this topic.

Here I would like to discuss how the final "o" should be pronounced from three aspects: the source of the "Hanyu Pinyin Scheme" (hereinafter referred to as the "Program"), the original intention of the developers, and the actual pronunciation of Beijing phonetics.

　　First of all, it is necessary to clarify a concept. The pronunciation of Chinese pinyin letters in the "Alphabet" (called the "name" of the letter in the "Plan") is not the same as the pronunciation of the initials and finals in the "List of Initials" and "List of Finals".

When people ask how to pronounce "o" in "ɑ, o, e", it refers to the pronunciation of the final "o", not the pronunciation of the letter "o" in "n, o, p" in the "Alphabet" (name).

Therefore, what we are discussing here is the pronunciation of the final "o", not the pronunciation of the letter "o", although the pronunciation of the two is the same in the "scheme".

　　The author believes that the vowel "o" in the "List of Rhymes" should be pronounced "wo" instead of "ou".

　　From the perspective of historical origin, the "Plan" comes from the phonetic alphabet developed by the "Pronunciation Unification Association" before liberation (agreed in 1913, announced in 1918, revised in 1920, and renamed "Phonetic Symbol" in 1930) and the National Language Research Association "Several People Association" "The "Mandarin Romaji Pinyin French" developed by it (agreed in 1926 and announced in 1928).

　　Li Jinxi, a famous linguist, was a member of the "Mandarin Romaji Pinyin Research Committee" and a member of the "Several People Association".

In his book "Basic Tools for Chinese Standardization - From Phonetic Alphabets to Pinyin Alphabets", he clearly pointed out that the phonetic alphabet "ㄛ" is the "followed sound of 'wo'", and explained that Beijing has always pronounced the final vowel "ㄛ" as "ㄨㄛ", because it can only spell this "hekouhu" (everyone who spells "ㄨ" is called "hekouhu"), ㄅㄛ, ㄆㄛ, ㄇㄛ, ㄈㄛ are also hekouhu, but the middle is omitted. Go to "ㄨ", because these four initials belong to "double lips", and "ㄛ" is round lips, so the spelling is simplified.

　　Qian Xuantong, a well-known linguist, is one of the members of the "Shu Renhui". He explained the pronunciation of "o" in the Roman character (Latin alphabet) of Mandarin as follows: In fact, there is no vowel o in Mandarin, " Wo, pot, wide, fire, wave, slope, Mo, Buddha, many, camel, no, Luo, left, wrong, so, Zhuo, poke, say, if” are all uo, but because of “wave, slope, and movement” , the sound of the four-tone "Buddha" ㄅㄆㄇㄈ is a bilabial sound (that is, a bilabial sound), and the rounded vowel ㄨ below can be omitted, so these four sounds are not spelled as buo, puo, muo, fuo, but omitted For bo, po, mo, fo; as for other sounds, they must be spelled with uo.

(Quoted from Wang Li's "Chinese Phonology")

　　Mr. Zhou Zumo, a famous linguist and professor of Peking University, once served as a member of the "Acoustic Review Committee" after liberation.

Tongue position is lower than u and rearward.

The back of the tongue bulges toward the soft palate, the tip of the tongue hangs under the lower teeth, the lips are slightly rounded, but not protruding, and the muscles are not tense.

This is the vowel in the words "dial" (bō), "po" (pō), and "touch" (mō).

　　Mr. Zhou Youguang, a well-known linguist who participated in the development of the "Plan", recalled the process of formulating the "Plan" and said: "Beila" (referring to the "Latinized new script of northern dialect") "bo" is written as "bo", and "more" is written as "do". .

In Pinyin (referring to the "Plan"), "bo" is written as "bo", and "duo" is written as "duo".

Some people suggest that all letters should be written in accordance with the north pull method, which can save letters.

Someone else suggested that "wave" should also be written as "buo" to unify the specifications and conform to the principle.

After research by the program committee, it was decided to adopt the traditional writing method of phonetic alphabet.

("Recalling the process of formulating the "Hanyu Pinyin Plan")

　　Mr. Xu Shirong participated in the development of the "Proposal" and served as a member of the sound review committee for two sessions. When explaining the pronunciation of the final "o", he said: [See Figure 1] = o, the latter half of the rounded vowel, [See Figure 1] 1] is [o] with a slightly open symbol.

Appears after the "labial" b, p, m, f and the rounded vowel u ([u] or [w]).

("Brief description of Beijing phonemes").

　　Since the final "o" in the "Proposal" is used to mark the finals of the words "bo" (bō), "po" (pō), "touch" (mō), and "fo" (fó) according to the original intention of the developer. vowel symbols, then, the correct pronunciation of "o" should take the finals of these words, that is, the part of these syllables without the initials "b, p, m, f".

The author is not from Beijing, but has lived in Beijing for more than 20 years.

The author tried to ask a few teachers and friends who were born in Beijing, and they would naturally pronounce the uo sound.

　　The final "o" after the labial initial in Beijing phonetics is a variant of the same final with "uo" after other finals.

　　Famous experimental phonetics, Professor Lin Tao and Professor Wang Lijia of Peking University, when describing the sound value of the Mandarin final "o", pointed out that the tongue position of o[o] is slightly lower than that of the positioning vowel [o] in the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is between half and half. The back vowel between high and half low should be strictly [oт].

Since the tongue position of [o] is obviously lower than that of [u], the degree of rounded lips is also slightly worse than that of [u].

[oт] in Mandarin only appears after a labial consonant, and there is often a very short [u] in front of it, so the strict transcription of [o] should be [uoт], but this [u] is actually just a labial consonant and [ The transition sound between o], the degree of rounding is poor, and it is also the inevitable result of the lower tongue position. Therefore, the strict transcription of o[o] can only be marked as [oт].

("Phonetics Course")

　　Mr. Shi Feng, a well-known experimental phonetician, a member of the research group "Development of the Principles for Pronouncing Mandarin and Revision of the "List of Pronunciations of Different Pronunciations in Mandarin", pointed out when describing the sound value of the Mandarin final "o": the vowel o[o] is in the lips The actual pronunciation behind the initial consonant is [u] with labialization, with a rhyme u, which should be a second-level vowel like uo behind other initial consonants.

("Reanalysis of Mandarin Vowels")

　　The Chinese character added to the final "o" in the "Plan" is "oh".

"Oh" has two readings, one is the interjection ō (also written as "oh"), and the other is the sound of a rooster (wō), so we are not sure how to pronounce the final.

However, according to the descriptions of several scholars who participated in the development of Mandarin Roman characters and the "Plan" above, we know that this final refers to the finals in the syllables represented by the Chinese characters "Bo, Po, Mo, Buddha". Rather than referring to the finals of the interjection ō.

　　Of course, we can't completely rule out that the speculators used the interjection "oh" to express the intention of the unit phonetic finals (going back to Qian Xuantong's "Explanation on the Changes of Phonetic Symbols in the Eighteen Years", we can see that his interpretation of the final "o" The Chinese characters noted are indeed "Oh" in "Oh," which contradicts his own statement about the vowel "o" quoted above).

However, the pronunciation of interjections varies greatly in people's oral pronunciation, or has greater wandering and uncertainty.

The reason why "Ohō" is written as "oh" and the reason why "唷yō" is written as "yo" indicates that the vowel "o" in the interjection pronunciation is closer to the [ɔ] in the International Phonetic Alphabet (see Wu Shuyan's "Hanyu Pinyin Scheme" 〉Pronunciation of the final vowel o"), therefore, the pronunciation of the "o" in the interjections "Oh (oh)" and "唷 (yo)" is called "marginal (pronunciation) sound" by some scholars, which should not be used as a The normal reading of the final (see Wang Hongjun's "Nonlinear Phonology of Chinese" and Shi Feng's "Re-analysis of Mandarin Vowels").

　　To sum up, the final "o" of "Proposal" is used to mark "glass" (bō), "po" (pō), "touch" (mō), "fo" (fó) according to the original intention or original intention of the developer. ) and other vowels.

"o" is only spelled with labial initials, and "uo" is only spelled with other initials other than labial initials. The positions of the two are complementary, so we can think that "o" and "uo" are the same Different variants of finals.

Reading "o" as "wo" is not only in line with the original intention of the developers of the "Program" and the actual pronunciation of Beijing dialect, but also in line with the principles of ordinary phonetics, and can be verified by experimental phonetics. A "misread" as the tweet and post cited above say.

　　Now some people read the vowel "o" as "Europe", which may be influenced by the pronunciation of the English letter "o", and may also be related to the fact that these people do not know the pronunciation of the letters in the "Alphabet" and the vowels in the "List of vowels". Pronunciation is related to two different things.

Reading the final "o" as "ou" not only does not conform to the original intention or original intention of the developers of the "Plan", but also causes the final to be mixed with another final "ou" that has no historical relationship and complementary distribution relationship. An undesirable misreading.

If the vowel "o" is read as "ou", then "bo", "po", "touch" and "Buddha" should be read as bōu, pōu, mōu, fóu, how can it not be funny!

　　Article 18 of Chapter 1 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Language and Characters of the People's Republic of China stipulates: "The Standard Language and Characters of the State shall use the "Hanyu Pinyin Scheme" as a tool for spelling and phonetic transcription. It is a unified standard for the spelling of the Roman alphabet, and is used in areas where Chinese characters are inconvenient or impossible to use. Primary education should be taught Hanyu Pinyin." The "Hanyu Pinyin Plan" is the national standard for Hanyu Pinyin and has the binding effect of laws and regulations.

Reading the final "o" as "Europe" is a mispronunciation and should be corrected.

The author appeals that the media should be cautious when publishing information involving language standards or regulations, and avoid spreading false information, which will have a negative impact on the teaching of Pinyin in primary education and teaching Chinese as a foreign language and the promotion of Putonghua.

　　(Author: Meng Pengsheng, researcher at the Institute of Chinese Language and Literature, Southwest University)