12. Final Practice with the “Fake” i

As you may recall from previous modules, the letter i represents different sounds in the Pinyin system. In this module, we will practice more on recognizing the sounds that i represents.  Let’s start by listening to these exemplars:

Did you hear any differences in the sound that i represents among the exemplars? In the syllables that start with j the i represents a sound similar to the the long “ee” sound in English words like sea, see, he, and she.  But in the syllables that start with z and zh the sound is markedly different.

Following the consonants z and zh (as well as c, s, ch, sh and r) the position of the tongue for the i is not as far forward as it is when pronounced after j.  It is in the middle of the mouth but the tongue is positioned high, creating what is called a high central unrounded vowel. In these syllables, the vowel is a natural continuation of the preceding consonant. Go back and listen to the exemplars and see if you can focus on this sound difference.

To non-linguists, the sound i makes after z and zh may not be recognized as a vowel at all, and there is no symbol in the Latin alphabet for the sound that i makes in this context.  In fact, the developers of Pinyin actually added a vowel letter to these syllables because they wanted to conform to a rule that dictated that tone marks had to be placed above vowels. The developers reasoned that since the vowel usually represented by the letter i (the long “ee” sound) does not occur after z, c ,s, zh, ch, sh, and r, it would be possible to use the letter i to represent the (fake) vowel in those syllables.

Now listen to more exemplars using a variety of initials:

Listening Quiz 1

Dictation Quiz

Listening Quiz 2