# Pronunication: 夕



## Heidegger

My textbook has the Mandarin word for sunset, xi, in the first tone, but my parents say it is supposed to be fourth tone.  Is my textbook wrong?


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## CapnPrep

Your parents are right, obviously! 

No, seriously, both tones are acceptable (see for example here). It depends a bit on where your parents are from, and where your textbook is from.

Note that Kangxi gives the pronunciation as "祥易切" (that is, it should have the same tone as 易). It also says that 夕 and 席 are pronounced alike… oh well, things have changed since then.


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## fredisaking

I believe you mean 夕.
I would say it in the fourth tone. Been saying it that way since I was born. I am sure your textbook is mistaken.


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## samanthalee

Hi Heidegger,

I have learnt to pronounce 夕 in the first tone (when Singapore followed China's Mandarin standard, Simplified Characters and all that), but my parents learnt it in the fourth tone (when Singapore followed Mandarin standard of ROC, which was the China rep in UN then. Yes, they learnt the Traditional Characters). I guess both are acceptable. It really depends on where your parents are from... I guess they were from Taiwan?

The pronunciation used in Taiwan and in China sometimes differ, as China had "tweaked" the pronunciation (for reasons unknown to me) and Taiwan still retain the pronunciation of before the Nationalist Party got kicked out of China. Plenty of examples are abound.


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## BODYholic

samanthalee said:


> Hi Heidegger,
> 
> I have learnt to pronounce 夕 in the first tone



Same here.


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## fredisaking

samanthalee said:


> Hi Heidegger,
> 
> I have learnt to pronounce 夕 in the first tone (when Singapore followed China's Mandarin standard, Simplified Characters and all that


 
INTERESTING....

I have a Beijing roommate right now. He's 21 years old; that should be comtempoary enough. When he's done with the winter vacation, I'll ask him about this.

夕陽...hmmm...and now it sounds like 西洋, 吸陽...quite horny LOL.


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## brucegee

definitely in first
no doubt


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## fredisaking

Well, accoriding to my Beijing roommate, it's in the first tone.
So, that makes 西洋 and 夕陽 prounounced exacly the same.


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## samanthalee

According to my paperback dictionary (published in Singapore), 夕 is in the first tone.
But according to the online dictionary published by Taiwan's Ministry of Education, 夕 is in the fourth tone.
Therefore both Heidegger's textbook and Heidegger's parents are correct, 夕 is in the first tone as well as fourth tone. 

The choice of which to use will be determined by which Mandarin variant you speak: if you pronounce 垃圾 as le4 se4 (ㄌㄜˋ　ㄙㄜˋ), then you should pronounce 夕 as xi4 (ㄒㄧˋ); if you pronounce 垃圾 as la1 ji1 (ㄌㄚ　ㄐㄧ), then you should pronounce 夕 as xi1 (ㄒㄧ).


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## Lingfan

Stick with the first tone. I suggest.


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## the.yangist

Nah, memorize all of the tones for all of the regions.  That way, you'll be fluent everywhere!


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## cerruti1881

绝对没有第四声这是说。夕阳，这个词里，只能读第一声。


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## fredisaking

I sense some language pride/prejudice here...ease up...bras.


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## samanthalee

cerruti1881 said:


> 绝对没有第四声这是说。夕阳，这个词里，只能读第一声。


这是有第四声的。 在五四运动时代，巴金、鲁迅等人大概就把“夕阳”念做“xi4 yang2”。台湾只不过保留了那个时代的读音。汉语不是中国内地的专利；汉语属于全球华人的。中国内地改变了读音不代表全世界也要跟着改变。
英文能成全球共通语，在一定程度上是因为没有人会坚持自己的英文标准最正宗。汉语要成大器，中国内地的人们也要有如此肚量，接纳不同版本的汉语标准。


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## cerruti1881

samanthalee said:


> 这是有第四声的。 在五四运动时代，巴金、鲁迅等人大概就把“夕阳”念做“xi4 yang2”。台湾只不过保留了那个时代的读音。汉语不是中国内地的专利；汉语属于全球华人的。中国内地改变了读音不代表全世界也要跟着改变。
> 英文能成全球共通语，在一定程度上是因为没有人会坚持自己的英文标准最正宗。汉语要成大器，中国内地的人们也要有如此肚量，接纳不同版本的汉语标准。




你去过内地吗？你知道“夕阳”这几个字在中国有多少个不同标准的发音吗？

巴金和鲁迅会说普通话吗？


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## clamplin

Definitely in first！If you mean the Mandarin Pronunication.
China is a huge country, and there are so many accents. That means the same word may pronouncing different by people from different regions. 
Some famous litterateurs such as  巴金、鲁迅 read the word fourth tone, but they may not say Mandarin, so the first tone is correct.

Language(here Chinese) is a tool, just for communicate, so whether mainland standard or Taiwan standard is OK.


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## DavidCornell

I agree with what you are saying. I treat the kind of "Mandarins" spoken in Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore as different varieties of the same language, just like American English, British English and Australian English. But I am not sure about the point you made that the fourth tone of xi is more correct than the first tone. Language is just a convention; as long as people read it in a certain way, it is correct. I wouldn't say who is correct and who is wrong. If I understand your point correctly, you are saying that your pronunciations are historically correct, but you don't have evidence but only conjectures!

Since you mentioned Lu Xun, I have to say it is common knowledge that he didn't speak Mandarin very well, and his grammar and character usage were often not consistent with Mandarin grammar. That's why you don't give your Chinese students Lu Xun's writings as a standard. Even for advanced Chinese students, you have to make some changes to his writings in order to make them easier for the students to understand.




samanthalee said:


> 这是有第四声的。 在五四运动时代，巴金、鲁迅等人大概就把“夕阳”念做“xi4 yang2”。台湾只不过保留了那个时代的读音。汉语不是中国内地的专利；汉语属于全球华人的。中国内地改变了读音不代表全世界也要跟着改变。
> 英文能成全球共通语，在一定程度上是因为没有人会坚持自己的英文标准最正宗。汉语要成大器，中国内地的人们也要有如此肚量，接纳不同版本的汉语标准。


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## DavidCornell

Ok let me do some real research! 

1. The point is that 夕 is a 古入声字。　Originally it has a -k coda. (Try Cantonese today) It was a different category of tone. Then when all the coda consonants were lost in Northern dialects of Chinese, all the 古入声字 were spread into the other tones including the fourth tone we talk about now. 

2. The above phenomenon is called 入派三声．But the phonological rules for the distribution of these 古入声字 are not uniform. or we can say 规律性不明显，therefore it is common for people to say the same character 夕 in different ways, maybe even fro people who are from the same dialect region.

3. *NOTE that 夕 has never had a fourth tone in terms of its origin! *Of course it has never had a first tone either.  This is called divergence. Now I can't help feeling funny when people say who is correct and who is wrong, or who CHANGED the pronunciation. NOTE also that language is not a toy, and you can't just CHANGE anything.

The above are just some simple explanations, and in the space that follows I'll post something more detailed for those who are interested.

    =================================DETAILS=====================================

According to 汉字古音手册　by 郭锡良，the pronunciation of 夕 at around the time of 诗经 is /ziak/. At around the time of Sui Dynasty, the pronunciation became /ziek/. The actual pronunciation might be an approximation only, but it is clear that 夕 is in a category of tone which is different from the 平声、上声、去声. It is in a category called 入声. Later at around the time of the Yuan Dynasty, with the loss of obstruent codas like -p -t and -k in the Northern Dialects of Chinese, all these formerly -p/t/k words were spread into the other three tone categories, somewhat randomly, although there are some rules of thumb to use. 

Someone above mentioned the 反切　used in 康熙字典，and it is 祥易切．But actually this 祥易切 was taken directly from 广韵, which is a pronuciation dictionary composed at around the time of the Sui Dynasty, which reflected the original pronunciation with the coda -k. So the 易　in 祥易切 is in the same category of tones with 夕. We all know that 康熙字典 is quite conservative in preserving features from old times. So it is no wonder that they took the 反切 directly from 广韵. Also note that although 易 and 夕 were both -k words, they did not have to go into the same tone category later when the -k was lost, as I said earlier that the process was a little random. See William S.-Y. Wang's theory of lexical diffusion if you are interested in this random process.

So what I said above is common knowledge among scholars of historical phonology of Chinese, no matter where these scholars are, be it Mainland China, Taiwan or Singapore. 

Therefore my conclusion is that if you want to study the Mandarin spoken in Mainland China, then use the first tone. If you want to study the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan, then use their tone, maybe the fourth tone, but I am not sure. I think I have heard people from Taiwan say 夕 in the second tone. But follow your teacher if she/he is from Taiwan.






CapnPrep said:


> Your parents are right, obviously!
> 
> No, seriously, both tones are acceptable (see for example here). It depends a bit on where your parents are from, and where your textbook is from.
> 
> Note that Kangxi gives the pronunciation as "祥易切" (that is, it should have the same tone as 易). It also says that 夕 and 席 are pronounced alike… oh well, things have changed since then.


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## CapnPrep

DavidCornell said:


> If I understand your point correctly, you are saying that your pronunciations are historically correct, but you don't have evidence but only conjectures!


There is some evidence in my message #2 above. At the time of the   康熙 dictionary,   夕 and    易 were pronounced with the same "tone". Actually, all of the following words were pronounced with the same tone: 夕 席 易 益 亦 睪 昔 積 息 卽 力 ... I didn't look for all of them, but it seems like all of these words now have either 2nd or 4th tone in modern Mandarin. So 1st tone for    夕 (and maybe for    昔) is almost certainly an innovation. Not incorrect, but more recent.


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## DavidCornell

did you read my other two posts? 

First I said that the Fanqie was taken directly from Guangyun. It was not necessarily a reflection of real pronunciations in Qing Dynasty. In fact there are some rhyming dictionaries composed after the Yuan Dynasty that tried to cling on to the phonological system of the Guangyun time for the sake of peotry.

Second, among the words your listed as homophones,昔绩息 have the first tone now just as 夕. So I don't understand why you said "_it seems like all of these words now have either 2nd or 4th tone in modern Mandarin_". Did you actually look at these words?

Third, as I said the process of 入派三声 was a little random, as you can see from the three different tones for the 11 words you listed as "homophones". All of these tones, be it 2nd, 4th, 1st, or maybe even 3rd, are RECENT INNOVATIONS in terms of historical linguistics. So here I think by "innovation" you meant natural sound change as opposed to "change by human decision" as has been suggested by someone else.

So taking the above three points into consideration, I don't see the logic in your conclusion. You can't just use Kangxi Zidian, because being conservative aside, it contained numerous mistakes, as I suppose you know.　I found the following 在《康熙字典》面世的近300年中，仅有日本学者渡部温和我国著名学者王力对其发表过勘校专著，共进行了万余条校勘。You have to look at other dictionaries composed at roughly the same time for the purpose of the colloquial language, because Kangxi Zidian is for reading the classics and older books.



CapnPrep said:


> There is some evidence in my message #2 above. At the time of the   康熙 dictionary,   夕 and    易 were pronounced with the same "tone". Actually, all of the following words were pronounced with the same tone: 夕 席 易 益 亦 睪 昔 積 息 卽 力 ... I didn't look for all of them, but it seems like all of these words now have either 2nd or 4th tone in modern Mandarin. So 1st tone for    夕 (and maybe for    昔) is almost certainly an innovation. Not incorrect, but more recent.


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## CapnPrep

David, no, I did not read your two messages before posting mine. Normally, everyone posts one message at a time, so everyone has a chance to answer properly. If you choose not to follow this convention, at least try not to get annoyed when the discussion gets messed up because of your three or four messages in a row.



DavidCornell said:


> Second, among the words your listed as homophones,昔绩息 have the first tone now just as 夕. So I don't understand why you said "_it seems like all of these words now have either 2nd or 4th tone in modern Mandarin_". Did you actually look at these words?


Yes, I did.


I mentioned the possibility of 1st tone for 昔.
For me, 息 has second tone. It's just another regional difference.
積 was an oversight. Please forgive me for annoying you once again.


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## cerruti1881

不要再争了。
今天汉语普通话的发音里，夕就是读“西”，没有第二个选择。

至于，唐宋元明的时候，或者是台湾新加坡香港什么地方怎么读这个字，那就谁爱怎么读就怎么读吧。

另外xb一下，俺的普通话发音，按中国大陆政府的标准是甲级b。

明白人见笑了，不好意思。呵呵。


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## DavidCornell

I just went to the Asian Library at my school and looked at some dictionaries published in the Republican China era, i.e. 1911-1949. According to 《辭海》(中華書局印行 1936年版本 以及 1948年版本) 

夕: 習繹切, 音席.

So let's just set the fanqie aside because fanqie is never an accurate way of indicating pronunciations. So let's see the 音席 part, which means the pronunciation is the same as 席. (this way of giving pronunciations is called 直音) Then I looked at a few dictionaries published in Taiwan after 1949. All of them indicate that 席 is pronounced with the second tone, which is the same in Mainland China.

So it seems to me that there is NO ground in saying that the fourth tone on 夕 was standard during 1911-1949.

For the current pronunciation, I looked at a few most current dictionaries published in Taiwan, as recently as in the 2003. All of these post-1949 dictionaries say that 夕 is pronounced with the fourth tone.

In Mainland China, there are some interesting variations! Up until 1954, the 新华字典 still says that 夕 should have the 4th tone, but starting from 1971, the tone changed to 1st. I didn't find a dictionary published between 1954 and 1971 in our library. So I cannot say where the standards have changed.

But one interesting thing in terms of the Mandarin Movement took place in 1949. There had been a debate on the basis of the standards for the pronunciations of Mandarin since 1911. This debate was called 京国之争。京音派 argued that the standards should be based on the pronunciations of the Beijing dialect, and 国音派 argued that standards should be made by a committee taking into considerations of different dialects. Actually the dictionaries published before 1949 all had this problem between the two different standards. But in 1949 the Ministry of Education published a 国音字典, which sort of was a mixture of the two standards. In this standards, 夕 was ruled to be said with the 4th tone. Then after 1949, and at least until 1954, PRC followed this standards. But at some point, which I think should be when the new language reform movement took place in the sixties (in 1963 I think) in Mainland China, the standards of pronunciation were set to be the pronunciation system of the Beijing Dialect. Therefore after so many years of debate, 京音派 won at least in Mainland China, while the standards in Taiwan were still predominantly 国音派，which means that the Mandarin pronunciation system in Taiwan were selected by a special committee to take into considerations of different dialects.

So I think now it is clear where the divergence took place. During 1911-1949, the pronunciation of Mandarin kept swaying back and forth without a real standard. But in 1949 国音派 won, and it was later carried out in Taiwan. In Mainland China, in the 1960s, the standards were set to the pronunciation system of a real dialect, i.e. the Beijing dialect。Therefore 京音派 won in Mainland China. So as far as this goes, I think the pronunciation of 夕 with the 1st tone is based upon a real dialect, while the pronunciation of 夕 with the 4th tone is probably a compromise between different dialectal pronunciations.

If anyone would like to read scholarly research on what I said above, you can refer to books on 文字改革 in China since the late Qing Dynasty. I think there should be such books in your library.

PS: to see how far the 国音派 philosophy can go, you can read the 通字方案 by 赵元任 （Yuen Ren Chao）. The 通字方案 is a system of pronunciation which can be viewed as a common denominator of all the dialects in China. It is an artificial system of pronunciation which is supposed to be easy to learn by people from all dialectal regions. The system can be described as 吴语的声母，官话的元音，粤语的韵尾，吴语、粤语、闽语、官话的四声，还有闽语古舌上音知彻澄三母读塞音的特点。

PS2: Phewwww! I didn't expect to write so much about a minor difference in pronunciation, and it is probably not necessary either. But as someone has pointed out, there are many such differences of pronunciation between Taiwan's 国语 and Mainland China's 普通话. I was not clear why either before this. So after this research I think I am clearer. Of course the different standards of 京国之争 is only one of the sources for the differences between the two varieties of Mandarin. There are other factors as well.


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## samanthalee

Thank you David, for the research. 长见识了。



DavidCornell said:


> But I am not sure about the point you made that the fourth tone of xi is more correct than the first tone. Language is just a convention; as long as people read it in a certain way, it is correct. I wouldn't say who is correct and who is wrong. If I understand your point correctly, you are saying that your pronunciations are historically correct, but you don't have evidence but only conjectures!



And I agree with you totally, David. I too wouldn't say who's correct and who's wrong. In fact I get very pissed when someone insist his convention is the holiest.
For the records, I have pronounced 夕 in the first tone all my life. I only meant that instead of insisting that only the first tone is correct, everyone should accept that there's more than 1 Mandarin standard and that the fourth tone is the correct one in Taiwan's standard.


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## CapnPrep

Excellent information, DavidCornell, thanks for posting.


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## OOOOO

I have something to say,it is xi in first tone..夕阳,in first tone.i haven't fallen across the word 夕 in fourth tone.


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