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stefantaubert / pinyin-to-ipa

Command-line interface and Python library to transcribe pinyin to IPA. The tones are attached to the vowel of the syllable.
https://hf.co/spaces/stefantaubert/pinyin-to-ipa
MIT License
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Wrong IPA for yo1 #3

Open lars76 opened 3 months ago

lars76 commented 3 months ago

哟 = yo1 = /jɔ˥/

>>> pinyin_to_ipa("yo1")
OrderedSet([('w', 'o˥')])
stefantaubert commented 3 months ago

Thank you for your comment.

pypinyin returns no initials in strict-mode for "yo1" (see here). Therefore, only the final "o" remains which is converted to "[wo˥]". The mapping happens according to here (see "Finals" -> "Finals beginning with u- (w-)").

If you think this is incorrect, could you please provide a reference where you got that information from?

lars76 commented 3 months ago

Audio for 哟 is https://forvo.com/word/%E5%93%9F/#zh You can clearly hear a [j ɔ], not [w o].

Transcription from wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%96%B2#Chinese Click on [More]. They transcribe the word as /jɔ⁵⁵/

Three phonemes that are quite similar are [y], [ɥ] and [j]. If I want to pronounce [j y], what comes out is [y] which is \<yu>. This is why it makes sense that we transcribe \<yu> as [y]. I think the reason is that [y] is a close front rounded vowel and [j] is the semivocalic equivalent of the close front unrounded vowel [i] (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_palatal_approximant#Phonetic_ambiguity_and_transcription_usage). If you take two phonemes at the same place of articulation, some reduction should occur.

Therefore, we also transcribe [j i] as [i] (e.g. \<yi>). Check the vowel diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_diagram#IPA_vowel_diagram_with_added_material

When I combine [j] with other vowels, this reduction does not occur. If Mandarin had the combination \<yö> = [j ø], it would not be reduced.

This is my hypothesis but I am pretty sure that I have never heard anybody saying 哟 as [w o]. Maybe you find some concrete literature on that, I am not that familiar with Chinese phonology.

stefantaubert commented 3 months ago

Thanks for the details, I will check it out. Unfortunately, I don't have much time at the moment, I'm not sure when I will be able to fix it.