一時手誤後的認真回覆

源起

郭大師的發音理論，史老師探討很久了(關鍵文請見這裡)。
但最近一位外籍教授來表達了一下她的觀點，史老師也很認真的回覆了。
但(登楞~~~)，悲劇來了，史老師不小心在blogger後台誤刪了原始發言以及自己的回應。
為了表示懺悔之意，史老師去常春藤Facebook把原始討論內容節錄至此，並且重新把史老師的回應再貼上一次。
請各位明鑑，史老師已經盡量不要有emotional overreaction了。
You know，史老師以為，古代那篇文章的例子已經夠清楚了的說！
無妨，讓我們看下去。

 

常春藤Facebook原PO

取自：https://www.facebook.com/pages/Karen-on-Ivy-League-Analytical-English/234235001756
A question from former phonetics student Alex Wu:
> Hi, Ms. Chung,
> This is Alex again.
> I was reading an article online: http://scottiiie.blogspot.tw/2010/09/blog-post.html
The writer of this article is trying to rebuke what the author of "翻譯大師教你練口說" says in the book, i.e. the affricates [ʧ] and [ʤ] are similar in quality to [ㄔ] and [ㄓ].
I remembered that you said the same concept as the author of the book in class, so I just laughed at the bloggers criticisms.
> However, I was not quite sure how to rebuke the examples the blogger gave.
For example, if we regard [ ʧ] as ㄔ in the following cases, wouldn't they really sound like what the blogger suggested?
choose [ ʧ u z] = [ 處z ]
chose [ ʧ o z] =[ 臭z ]
charge [ ʧ ar ʤ] =[ 叉r枝 ]
Yet I know that as in "change," we can transcribe it as ㄔㄟ一ㄣㄓ.
I think I am a little confused now ...
Thanks for replying,
Best Wishes,
Alex
Dear Alex,
In fact I also have also encountered someone who couldn't accept the correspondences with ㄓㄔㄕ, and continued to insist on the ㄐㄑㄒ ones. I think there are two big reasons: (1) previous training - we hang on to things learned when young very tenaciously; and (2) the ㄓㄔㄕ correspondence to [ ʤ ]、[ ʧ ]、[ ʃ ] works best with *Taiwan Mandarin*, in which there is very little 捲舌 retroflexion, unlike standard Beijing Mandarin, in which these sounds are much more retroflexed. This writer also offers no evidence or concrete arguments for what he claims, only an emotional overreaction. I can only say, please direct them to this CET article, written by a native speaker of English with phonetics training: http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/pubs/81_hello_et.pdf
Let me know if you have further thoughts on this, and take care!

史老師的回應

Dear Karen:
Since I don't have a Facebook account, I have no choice but to answer your question here.

In case there is any misreading, I have to make clear that the logic behind the article in 2010 is very simple—There are no (Taiwan) Mandarin equivalents for [ʤ ]、[ ʧ ]、[ ʃ ].
And it is definitely problematic to say that [ㄓ]、[ㄔ]、 [ㄕ] are the best equivalents for [ ʤ ]、[ ʧ ]、[ ʃ ].

Let’s just take [ㄕ]and [ ʃ ] for example.

First of all, when we assume that [ ʃ ] is [ㄕ], we miss one of the distinct features, (slight) lip protrusion, in [ ʃ ]. Lip protrusion can’t be found in the making of [ㄕ].

Second, when we say that [ ʃ ] can be replaced by [ㄕ], we are applying a non-existent feature to [ ʃ ]. 
[ ʃ ] is a fricative, not a retroflex. And even if we assume that [ㄕ] in “Taiwan Mandarin” lacks full retroflexion and maybe thus could be categorized as a (semi-)fricative, [ㄕ] and [ ʃ ] still don’t share the same place of articulation. They are still two different sounds.

Still unconvinced?

Let’s add a vowel, say …[o], to make my point. When we assume [ ʃ ] and [ㄕ] can be used interchangeably, we are actually saying that [ ʃ o] and [ㄕo] are the same, aren’t we? But, are they?

Please tell all the English learners in Taiwan that “show” and “受” share the same sound.

Please tell your students that when they pronounce "TV show" as "TV受",  you won't correct them.

Best Wishes,

Scott