The similarities and differences between Chinese and English phonemes

簡曉婕

It is really amazing that people on this planet have a way to exchange ideas and feelings， not only using the body language but also all kinds of sounds. All the language has its own system to learn how to pronounce. I will separate this essay into two parts.

Firstly， what is the definition of the phoneme？According to Wikipedia， a phoneme is one of the units of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language， so we may say that is the smallest unit of sound in pronouncing a word. For Instance， the English words ‘kill and ‘kiss is a result of exchange of the phoneme /l/ for the phoneme /s/. Two words that differ in meaning through change of a single phoneme.

Then I think the similarity of the Chinese and English phonemes is that both of the languages sentences have strong forms and weak forms. Also they mean differently when we stress different words， like ‘Did you see the yellow jacket？ We can comprehend ‘yellow jacket as a kind of bee， also we can understand it as someone stress the color of the jacket.

Then we talk about the differences between those two. The first is that beside Chinese vowels and consonants， it has a special kind of syllable called a syllable which needs to pronounce integrally. And it has sixteen of this kind， which are zhi， chi， shi， ri， zi， ci， si， yi， wu， yu， ye， yue， yuan， yin， yun and ying. We cannot separate to phonemes to pronounce it. So we can just consider them as integrated syllable and have actual meaning. Compared to the English， it only has vowels and consonants. We can see that English and Chinese as in different groups of language， has many differences.

Secondly， Chinese has five different tones combined with phonemes and this can be composed into thousands of words. The five tones are level tone， rising tone， rising-falling tone and falling tone. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. Though Chinese phonemes can be combined with five tones， each full phonogram can represent countless words. Let me give an example. In Chinese ‘huan， it can mean lots of words， if you combine huan with level tone， that is huān and it can mean ‘joyful， when it becomes huán， it can mean ‘return， when it turn out to huǎn， it can mean ‘slowly， and huàn can mean ‘exchange. The reason why I said ‘can mean instead of ‘mean is that take huán as an example， it not only can mean ‘return but also can mean ‘circle and ‘a large area of land and so on. So you can see that many Chinese words share common phonogram. Though this can be called homonym， it isnt exactly same， for Chinese syllables are very short， so it is very common to see homonyms. Nevertheless， the English pronunciation can just simply combine several vowels and consonants， and the longer it forms， the harder it can be one of the homonyms. And because English is multisyllabic language， it has stress in multisyllabic words， while Chinese doesnt have this. Also Chinese cannot be analyzed at the phoneme level as English can. In English when we meet a new word， we can use the phonemes that we know to guess the pronunciation of this word， which is because we can separate it into several small units. But in Chinese， as a pictographic language， we often dont know how to pronounce when we meet some characters the first time.endprint

Thirdly， Chinese phonemes are complementary. That is some Chinese consonants only connect to regular vowels， and some of the vowels cannot appear at the same time. For example， Chinese consonants， and can only link and <ü>， not connect to ， and . And ， and or ， and can only link ， and ， not connect to and <ü> （the ‘i in zhi， chi， shi， ri， zi， ci and si is not the same phoneme compared to regular ‘i， for they are syllable which need to pronounce integrally.） So we can see they are complementary to each other， while English doesnt have this kind of rules.

As a student who major in English， firstly I think that English as the Germanic group of languages has a huge difference between Chinese. And as a translator， sometimes the English sentences may involve with alliteration， or some English jokes are using puns to make people laugh. We must make up our mind to restore the ingenious part of the sentence. Secondly， sometimes in English it will appear some homonyms that you must analysis the background and choose the right one to translate. Thirdly， Chinese and Englishs grammar is different from each other， so usually you find that words order are not the same， therefore you should make quick response when you hear one sentence and then adjust it in right order.