A Comparative Study of the Phonology and Phonetics of Chinese and German Vowels

Ningjing Sun

University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Email: selena0528@126.com

[Abstract] Phonology is the foundation of language learning and teaching. German and Chinese are very different languages, and it is difficult for Chinese students to pronounce German accurately. Taking vowels as the research object, this paper conducts a comparative study of German and Chinese vowel systems from the aspects of phonetics and phonology, looking for commonalities and differences, to improve Chinese students’German speaking ability effectively.

[Keywords] phonology; vowel; German; Chinese

Introduction

Foreign language learning is influenced by the first language and other language acquisition experiences. Contrastive observation is used to highlight the similarities and differences between the source and target languages in foreign language learning to master the target language better. German and Chinese belong to different language families. The German language belongs to the Indo-European language family, while the Chinese language belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, which is why there are significant differences in the pronunciation of the two languages.

Pronunciation is considered an important component of communication competence and plays a significant role in language acquisition. It includes individual sounds as well as their combination and representation in phonetic transcription, word as well as sentence accent, intonation, and the connection of several words in connected speech (Doff, 2017, p. 11). To improve speaking ability, learning vowels is essential. However, it is difficult for Chinese students to pronounce German vowels accurately because of the differences between the vowel systems of the two languages. Therefore, to further improve pronunciation, a comparative analysis of the vowel systems of the two languages is essential.

Vowel Systems of German and Chinese

German and Chinese are languages in common use around the world. The basic information of both languages is presented below, describing their vowel systems and distinctive features.

Vowel system of German

German is a West Germanic language and is the native language of about 90 million speakers. It is considered a pluricentric language, as it is spoken as the sole official language in Germany, Austria, and Lichtenstein, as a national language in Switzerland and Luxembourg, and as a regional official language in eastern Belgium and South Tyrol. In German, a phoneme is the smallest meaning-distinguishing phonetic unit (Altmann & Ziegenhain, 2010, p. 72). Phonemes in German can be divided into vowel and consonant phonemes. In“Duden - Die Grammartik”, it is discussed that there are 16 German vowel phonemes used to describe the vowels in the core vocabulary, where the vowel phoneme Schwa occurs only in unstressed syllables (Eisenberg, 2016, p. 35). The figure below shows the German vowels and their distinctive features.

Five distinctive features are used to characterize the individual vowels in German: quantity, quality, lip rounding (labiality), degree of tongue elevation and direction of tongue elevation (Hirschfeld & Reinke, 2018, p. 96). Quantity refers to the duration of the articulation, which should be described as long or short. Vowel quality is related to the tension of the tongue muscles during articulation and is determined by the position of the organs of speech. The quantity is related to the quality: the short vowels are formed with slightly less tension, larger mouth opening, less lip involvement, and less tongue protrusion, as opposed to long vowels, so the pronunciation of long vowels is usually tense, while short ones are lax (Krech et al., 2009, p. 25). So e.g. /i:/, /y:/, /u:/, /e:/, /ø:/ and /o:/ are long tense vowels and /ɪ/, /ʏ/, /ʊ/, /ɛ/, /œ/ and /ɔ/ are short lax. However, there are two characteristics of the German vowel system: first, the short A differs from the long one, but the quality remains the same, which is recorded in the transcription as /a/ and /a:/; second, in addition to the long, tense /e:/ and the short, lax /ɛ/, there is also a long, lax /ɛ:/ (Hirschfeld & Reinke, 2018, p. 69). The shape of the lips can be described by the parameter lip rounding. In this parameter, two levels are present: rounded and unrounded. The distinctive feature degree of tongue elevation can be used to differentiate whether the tongue arches high or medium high or flattens out (Krech et al., 2009, p. 24). The last distinctive feature is to describe the horizontal position of the highest point of the tongue during pronunciation. It can be front, central, or back.

In addition to monophthongs, there are also diphthongs in German, which are combinations of two vowels as well as monosyllabic vowel compounds. In German, there are three falling diphthongs: [aɛ̯], [aɔ̯], and [ɔœ̯]. In addition, the vocalized R [ɐ] pronounced after the vowels essentially approximates the formation of diphthongs, thus diphthongs realized in the phonetic.

Vowel system of Chinese

The mandarin, an official language in China a nd Singapore, belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family. In Chinese, the pronunciation of a Chinese character is a syllable, which is usually divided into shengmu (initial), yunmu (final) and tones according to traditional Chinese phonology. Shengmu is the initial consonant of a syllable. Yunmu refers to the part after the initial consonant in a syllable and can consist of one or more vowels as well as the vowel and the final consonant (Liu & Zhao, 2011, p. 120).

A single vowel in Chinese can be described by three parameters: degree of tongue elevation, direction of tongue elevation and lip rounding (Hirschfeld & Reinke, p. 102). [i] and [y] belong to the high front vowels, but [i] is unrounded and [y] is rounded. There are no rounded front vowels in the Chinese vowel system, except for /y/. [ɛ] is an unrounded medium-high front tongue vowel. The schwa sound [ə] is a central tongue vowel and is also called a reduction vowel. [ɚ] in Chinese is like the vocalized R [ɐ] in German and is a cenral tongue vowel. [a] is a central tongue vowel, with the tongue flattening out. [u], [o], and [ɣ] are back vowels, but their degrees of tongue elevation are different.

In addition to the nine monophthongs shown in Figure 2, there are nine diphthongs and four triphthongs. There are four diphthongs in the nine diphthongs can be characterize as falling diphthongs, which are [ai̯], [au̯], [ɛi̯], [əu̯] and five of them can be characterize as rising diphthongs, [i̯a], [i̯ɛ], [u̯a], [u̯ə], and [y̯e]. Four triphthongs consist of the falling diphthongs and the transitional vowels [i, u]: [u̯ai̯], [i̯au̯], [u̯ɛi̯] and [i̯əu̯] (Hirschfeld & Reinke, p. 103).

Figure 1: Vowels of German according to their distinctive features (Krech et al. , 2009, p. 24)

Figure 2: Vowel system of Chinese (Hirschfeld & Reinke, 2018, p. 102)

Figure 3: Sound-letter relationships of e-sounds (Hirschfeld & Reinke, p. 218-219)

Vowels of German and Chinese in Comparison

From the previous description and presentation of the vowel system of the German and Chinese, it is stated that there are differences in the distinctive features between the two languages. Therefore, these characteristics are compared below. Furthermore, German vowels are structurally divided into monophthongs and diphthongs, and the Chinese vowel system also has these two groups, but they differ in both languages. The two vowel systems are also compared in terms of monophthongs and diphthongs. It is worth noting that Chinese has the triphthong, which is briefly explained below.

Distinctive features in comparison

German and Chinese vowels differ in their distinctive features. Although in both languages the vowels can be described in terms of degree and direction of tongue elevation and lip roundness, two key distinguishing features of German vowels, quantity and quality, are not considered in Chinese.

Quantity can describe the length of the vowels. The two levels of quantity, long and short, can lead to differences in the meaning of German words. For example: Miete [mˈi:tə] (rent), Mitte [mˈɪtə] (middle); Bahn [ba:n] (train), Bann [ban] (ban); Ofen [ˈo:fn̩] (oven), offen [ˈɔfn̩] (open). In addition, the characteristic of quantity in German is usually related to the characteristic of quality. If a long vowel is pronounced, the tongue muscles are tense, if a short one is pronounced, they are lax. In Chinese, the length of the vowels and the tension of the tongue are not considered in pronunciation. Hirschfeld & Reinke (2018) believe that in Chinese, the characteristics of quantity and quality depend on the tone and the consonantal conditions. If the vowel phoneme and consonantal initial are the same, the meaning depends on the tone, e.g. mā (mother), mǎ (horse). When the vowel phoneme and the tone are the same, the meaning of the word changes with the consonantal initial, e.g. mā (mother) and bā (eight).

Monophthongs

A single vowel is called a monophthong. There are 16 German vowels (monophthongs), namely: /a/, /a:/, /ɔ/, /o:/, /ɛ/, /e:/, /ɛ:/, /ɪ/, /i :/, /ʊ/, /u:/, /ʏ/, /y:/, /œ/, /ø:/ and /ə/. There are only nine vowels (monophthongs) in Chinese: /a/, /o/, /ɛ/, /ɚ/, /ɣ/, /i/, /u/, /y/ and /ə/. The Chinese vowel system is not as extensive as the German one.

In the German vowel system, there are some phonemes that do not exist in Chinese. The e-sounds are unrounded medium-high front tongue vowels, of which there are three variants in German: /e:/, /ɛ/ and /ɛ:/. In Chinese, on the other hand, there is only one unrounded medium-high front tongue vowel, namely /ɛ/; also, the pinyin e is pronounced as [ɣ]. For the long tense e-sound [e:], the dorsum of the front tongue raises slightly, the tension is slightly stronger, and the opening of the mouth is smaller than that of the lax e-sounds [ɛ:] and [ɛ] (Krech et al., 2009 , p. 58). The [ɛ] is not usually used as a monophthong in Mandarin, but often appears in a diphthong or triphthong, e.g. in èi [ɛi̯] (interjection), wèi [u̯ɛi̯] (stomach). The ü sounds are rounded high front vowels and their realization variants are different in German and Chinese. The long, tense ü-sound [y:] and the short, lax [ʏ] are among the German vowel phonemes. These two phonemes are pronounced according to certain rules. For example, when <ü> is accented in open or potentially open syllables, it is pronounced as a long tense ü sound [y:], e.g. blühen [blˈy:ən]; if <ü> exists in a closed syllable that does not become an open syllable by transformation, it is pronounced as a short lax ü sound [ʏ], e.g. fünf [fʏnf] (Krech et al., 2009, p. 62-63). In Chinese, the ü sound is realized as [y], e.g. lǜ (green). It is also worth noting that in Hanyu Pinyin spelling, ü becomes u after j, q, x, and y (Cao, 2002, p. 60). For example, in , , , and is pronounced [y] instead of [u]. The ö sounds are rounded medium-high front vowels and do not exist in the Chinese vowel system. The long tense ö sound is [ø:] and the short lax one is [œ].

There are also some vowel phonemes that exist in the Chinese vowel system but not in German, e.g. /ɚ/ and /ɣ/. While the syllable is pronounced as [ɚ] in the Chinese language, the suffix <-er> is realized as a vocalized R [ɐ] in German, e.g. the Chinese word ěr dūo (ear) or the German word Vater [fˈa:tɐ] (father). When pronouncing [ɚ], the speaker’s tongue tip is bent upwards slightly, and the syllable is pronounced by adding a tongue-rolling effect to the central tongue vowel [ɐ] (Cao, 2002, p. 61). In Mandarin, some words are supplemented with the suffix -r (Chinese: er 儿), this phenomenon is called erhua. Erhua is pronounced [ɚ]. /ɣ/ is a medium-high unrounded back vowel. The is pronounced [ɣ] only when it is used alone as the yunmu (final) of a syllable, e.g. é (goose). If is followed by a <-n> or <-ng> suffix, is realized as [ə], e.g. shū běn (book), lěng (cold).

Diphthongs and triphthongs

A diphthong is formed from two vowels. Compared to the monophthong, the position of the tongue in the diphthong moves: it slides from the position of the first sound to the second, although this is usually not reached (Dahmen & Weth, 2018, p. 37). Diphthongs exist in both German and Chinese. The differences between the two languages become apparent when comparing them.

In German, diphthongs can be divided into primary and secondary diphthongs (Dahmen & Weth, p. 37). The formation of the primary diphthongs in German, as in Frau, frei, Freude ([aɔ̯], [aɛ̯] and [ɔœ̯]), is characterized by a continuous transition from the first to the second vowel, with the intensity decreasing, which is why these also called falling diphthongs. Chinese also has falling diphthongs: [ai̯], [au̯], [ɛi̯], [əu̯]. The secondary diphthongs, also known as centering diphthongs, occur exclusively through the vocalization of the R-phoneme /ɐ/ in the syllable coda, e.g. Ohr, Uhr, für (Altmann & Ziegenhain, 2010, p. 47). However, the centering diphthongs do not exist in the Chinese vowel system. German has no rising diphthongs, while Chinese has five: [i̯a], [i̯ɛ], [u̯a], [u̯ə], and [y̯e]. When making these sounds, the tongue moves from top to bottom and the intensity increases.

There are four triphthongs in Chinese: [u̯ai̯], [i̯au̯], [u̯ɛi̯] and [i̯əu̯]. In these, the second vowel is pronounced more clearly than the other vowels, e.g. when pronouncing [u̯ai̯], [a] is pronounced more clearly and phonetically. However, there are no triphthongs in German.

Phoneme-grapheme Relationships

German script is a letter script and uses Latin letters. Orthography, refers to the standardized writing of words in the corresponding language and the associated scientific script (Mertens, 2017, p. 272), is closely related to spoken language in German. At the orthographic level, the phoneme, the smallest distinctive unit of spoken language, corresponds to the grapheme, the smallest distinctive unit of the writing system (Hirschfeld & Reinke, 2018, p. 82). Moreover, the letter is the graphic representation of a grapheme. Therefore, corresponding letters are assigned to vowel phonemes. The quantity of vowels can be distinguished according to certain rules: Long vowels can be recognized by the double spelling of one vowel letter; and <ß> are also preceded by a long vowel; short vowels precede double-spelled consonants and often occur before two or more consonants within the syllable (Hirschfeld & Reinke, 2018, p. 84). The three falling diphthongs in German have their corresponding graphemes: , , and are pronounced as /aɛ̯/, and as /aɔ̯/, and <äu> as /ɔœ̯/.

Chinese writing is written from left to right and the total number of characters in use is between 10,000 and 20,000 (Hirschfeld & Reinke, 2018, p. 104). Since Chinese writing is a character script, it is impossible for pronunciation and sound to be recognized by the character itself. To be able to express the pronunciation of the Chinese character, Hanyu Pinyin, an official transcription system based on the Latin writing system, has been applied since 1958 (Liu & Zhao, 2011, p. 24). The correspondences of pinyin and phonemes are reflected in the vowels, e.g. when Yunmu is only a single vowel, the pinyin characters a, o, e, i, u, ü are pronounced as /a/, /o/, /ɣ/, /i/, /u/, /y/ respectively. The four falling diphthongs /ai̯/, /au̯/, / ɛi̯ / and /əu̯/ correspond to pinyin ai, ao, ei and ou, respectively; the five rising diphthongs /i̯a/, /i̯ɛ/, /u̯a/, /u̯ə/ and /y̯e/ correspond to pinyin ia, ie, ua, uo and üe; the four triphthongs /u̯ai̯/, /i̯au̯/, /u̯ɛi̯/ and /i̯əu̯/ correspond to pinyin uai, iao, uei and iou.

Didactical Tips

Since German and Chinese belong to different language families, there are differences in pronunciation. When learning foreign languages, the interference of Chinese is inevitable for Chinese native speakers. The following teaching and learning focuses can help learners improve their pronunciation.

The previous comparative analysis found that there is no distinction between long and short vowels in Chinese, which will bring difficulties to Chinese students learning German. In addition, the combination of quantity and quality, consisting of the two pairs long and tense, short and lax, must also be considered. Therefore, learners should always practice recognizing and realizing vowel length in connection with vowel tension (Hirschfeld & Reinke, 2018, p. 217).

In German there are three variants of the e-sound: long are [e:] and [ɛ:], short is [ɛ]. For Chinese students, it is difficult to distinguish them. This focus can be conveyed in two ways. First, the auditory and articulatory differentiation of the e-sound should be recognized: [e:] is long and tense; [ɛ] is short and lax; [ɛ:] is long and lax. Second, the learners should understand the rules for the sound-letter relationships of all three e-sounds. These can be seen in the figure below.

The ö sounds do not exist in the Chinese language. Learners should recognize the way it is formed: the front of the tongue is raised, at the same time the lips are rounded and protruded, and the mouth is slightly more open than with the high vowels (Krech et al., 2009, p. 64). There are two aspects of pronunciation that should be considered by learners: one is the rounding of the lips in ö sounds, which must be distinguished from e sounds, e.g. [œ] and [ɛ], [ø:] and [e:]; on the other hand, the front part of the tongue is brought closer to the palate, not the back, e.g. [œ] and [ɔ], [ø:] and [o:].

The pronunciation of falling diphthongs can be influenced by Chinese. , , and are pronounced differently in German and Chinese: and are pronounced as [aɛ̯] in German, but as [ai̯] in Chinese pinyin ai, ei as [ɛi̯]; is pronounced as [aɔ̯] in German but as [au̯] in Chinese pinyin. Therefore, learners should pay attention to the rules about the phoneme-grapheme relationships of the falling diphthongs to avoid confusing their pronunciation.

Conclusion

In the field of linguistics, there is an increasing emphasis on research from a comparative perspective, where general rules can be determined by comparing two languages. Contrastive analysis is also relevant to the linguistic disciplines of phonetics and phonology and plays an active role in promoting foreign language teaching and bilingual learning. A comparative analysis of Chinese and German vowels revealed many differences. Quantity and quality are elementary distinctive features in German, but not in Chinese. There are also different vowel phonemes in the German and Chinese vowel systems, e.g., three variants of the e-sound as well as short and long ö-sounds in German, /ɚ/ and /ɣ/ in Chinese. For diphthongs, the direction of movement of the tongue is different: In German, diphthongs are divided into falling and centering diphthongs; there are no centering diphthongs, only rising diphthongs in Chinese.

Pronunciation teaching is the basis of foreign language teaching. Comparison between foreign and native languages enables learners to use their existing knowledge and experience to acquire new languages, so that they can learn considering their personal conditions. By analyzing the similarities and differences, learners can correct pronunciation errors resulting from the influence of their native language effectively.