# Pronunciation: 一, the number 1



## Zindex

From several websites (youtube, random, forvo) I hear they all pronounce 1 as "e", like the first syllable in the word "evening".
But when I said "e" (1)  to a native Chinese he said it is pronounced like "ji".
I showed him forvo, and he said they all said "ji", and I heard them all say "e".

So now I am confused.


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## yuechu

I often hear a "y" sound [j] in yú 鱼 (by some or most people), for example, but not in "yi" 一.
Let's see what native speakers say about this!

It's possible the native speaker you talked to was influenced by the pinyin spelling.


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## AquisM

You might find this thread useful.

It seems that many native speakers don't perceive a /j/ sound, while many non-native speakers (myself included) do.


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## dojibear

yuechu said:


> It's possible the native speaker you talked to was influenced by the pinyin spelling.



English-speaking may influence this too. Speakers of English may "hear" a Y sound with an /i/ sound. An English speaker would spell pinyin "bian" as either "byen" or "bien". The same is true for many vowel pairs. Yo = io. Ya = ia. Yao = iao. They are pronounced the same. In English, Y isn't a consonant sound. It is either a transition between two vowel sounds (where the first is /i/), or it is the vowel sound /i/ ("happy"; "pretty").

But it doesn't seem likely that English has such a strong influence in China. Pinyin is more likely. Or maybe this I/YI sound difference happens in some dialects of Chinese, like it happens in some dialects of English.


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## pimlicodude

Zindex said:


> From several websites (youtube, random, forvo) I hear they all pronounce 1 as "e", like the first syllable in the word "evening".
> But when I said "e" (1)  to a native Chinese he said it is pronounced like "ji".
> I showed him forvo, and he said they all said "ji", and I heard them all say "e".
> 
> So now I am confused.


I don't think it is /ji/, but it is a very close vowel. The "yin" syllable is also pronounced /in/, but the vowel is close too. The same thing with the w shown in pinyin in words like "wu". There isn't really a w there. The vowel is rounded from the start, and so there is no consonant.
[This is true of yi, yin, wu, but there is a /j/ and /w/ in words like you, wei etc]


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## Chowyoung

1. 在拼音/yi/中，y的发音是/i/的，i的发音也是/i/，这时候整体的发音还是/i/。
2. yi=i
ya=ia
ye=ie
yao=iao
you=iou
yan=ian
yin=in
yang=iang
ying=ing
yong=iong
3. 汉语的拼音中，y是不做声母的，由于y和i的发音相同，把i改成y。汉语拼音，本来不需要用上y，但为了体现26个字母都能用上，就把以韵母i开始的拼音，用y代替i(因为发音都是/i/)，并占了声母的位置。


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## SuperXW

AquisM said:


> It seems that many native speakers don't perceive a /j/ sound, while many non-native speakers (myself included) do.


Right. So far I don't know what is the /j/ sound you are talking about. 
The followings are all the same in my ears: 
i: (IPA) 
e (English letter) 
yi (Pinyin) 
i (Pinyin) 

I'd be glad if you can send me some material to let me know what is /j/...


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## AquisM

SuperXW said:


> Right. So far I don't know what is the /j/ sound you are talking about.
> The followings are all the same in my ears:
> i: (IPA)
> e (English letter)
> yi (Pinyin)
> i (Pinyin)
> 
> I'd be glad if you can send me some material to let me know what is /j/...


/j/ in IPA is the sound the letter _y_ makes in English. The difference between /ji/ and /i/ is the difference between _*ye*ar_ and _*e*ar._


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## SuperXW

AquisM said:


> /j/ in IPA is the sound the letter _y_ makes in English. The difference between /ji/ and /i/ is the difference between _*ye*ar_ and _*e*ar._


Ah! I thought year and ear are the same before!
After carefully listening, I think I can get the difference.
Thanks!

Then I think the native pronunciation of 一 (yi) should be more like /ji/, rather than /i/.


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## ovaltine888

AquisM said:


> /j/ in IPA is the sound the letter _y_ makes in English. The difference between /ji/ and /i/ is the difference between _*ye*ar_ and _*e*ar._


It's because "ear" /ɪə/ is using a short vowel /ɪ/ which is quite different from /jɪ/ in "year"/jɪə/. It is easy to perceive the /j/ sound in "year" when /j/ is combined with the short vowel /ɪ/.

However, when it comes to long vowel /iː/, I think the difference between "yeast" /ji:st/ and "east" /i:st/ is much less distinct.

Many Chinese speakers cannot tell the difference between short voewl /ɪ/ and long vowel /i:/ as in ship/sheep or shit/sheet, bit/beat etc. But actually only the long vowel /iː/ is close to the sound "i' in pinyin. It is understandable that native Chinese speakers tend to say pinyin "yi" and "i" are the same sound.


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## dojibear

I agree with ovaltine888 that "east/yeast" is less distinct than "ear/year".

Note that the words "ear, year, east, yeast" all use the /i/ vowel ("ee"), not the /ɪ/ vowel ("ih").



ovaltine888 said:


> Many Chinese speakers cannot tell the difference between short vowel /ɪ/ and long vowel /i:/ as in ship/sheep or shit/sheet, bit/beat etc. But actually only the long vowel /iː/ is close to the sound "i' in pinyin.


I don't consider /ɪ/ a short vowel and /i/ a long vowel. /ɪ/ and /i/ are completely different sounds. These sounds distinguish dozens of word pairs. A few are: ship/sheep, shit/sheet, bit/beat, bin/bean, pill/peel, kin/keen, hill/heel, hip/heap, hid/heed, pick/peek, slip/sleep, bid/bead, slick/sleek. None of these word pairs are distinguished by vowel duration.

Mandarin has /i/. My American "ear" is /iɚ/ (where /ɚ/ is an erhua), and sounds like 已儿. My "tear" sounds like 体儿.

Mandarin does not have  /ɪ/ or /e/ or /æ/.


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## benjamin zhong

In Chinese pinyin, /y/ is used: 1) to differentiate /u/ from /ü/, because we never use the two dots when /ü/ occurs in syllable. If you see /yu/, you shall know it is pronounced as /ü/. By the way, /u/ after /j,q,x/ is also pronounced /ü/; 2) to mark the onset of a syllable when its first sound is /i/. That's why we have /yi/ for "一". But when a diphthong begins with /i/, we will simply use /y/, like /yan/. 
In terms of the pronunciation of /y/, it is the same as /i/ phonologically. But it does sound like /e/ or /ʝ/ phonetically in many occassions. This is due to contextual, personal or dialectical variation. In pinyin, we do not have /ʝ/, a glide in IPA, although /y/ in diphthongs like /yan/ is pronounced /ʝ/.
 Dojibear mentions that  "bian" can be phonetically transcribed as either "byen" or "bien". He is right. What is interesting is why /a/ is pronounced as /e/ here. That is because there are not enough vowel letters for Chinese vowels. One principle that was followed when designing pinyin is that we use only English letters, no diacratics or other letters, so that the system can fit the typewriter or computer key boards. So /a/ is used to substitute /e/ in /ien/ or /yuen/ (Their pinyin are yan and yuan.) 
There is another tricky sound found in 知、吃，师， 日. Their pinyin are /zhi/, /chi/, /shi/ and /ri/. Here /i/ is not pronounced the same as "一“. It is used to substitute the sound /ʉ/, a sound like /u/ but pronounced with the lip unrounded. But don't panic for confusion. It is used only after /z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, r/. By the way, /zh, ch, sh/ are also created to solve the problem of shortage of English letters.


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## SuperXW

dojibear said:


> I agree with ovaltine888 that "east/yeast" is less distinct than "ear/year".
> 
> Note that the words "ear, year, east, yeast" all use the /i/ vowel ("ee"), not the /ɪ/ vowel ("ih").
> 
> 
> I don't consider /ɪ/ a short vowel and /i/ a long vowel. /ɪ/ and /i/ are completely different sounds. These sounds distinguish dozens of word pairs. A few are: ship/sheep, shit/sheet, bit/beat, bin/bean, pill/peel, kin/keen, hill/heel, hip/heap, hid/heed, pick/peek, slip/sleep, bid/bead, slick/sleek. None of these word pairs are distinguished by vowel duration.
> 
> Mandarin has /i/. My American "ear" is /iɚ/ (where /ɚ/ is an erhua), and sounds like 已儿. My "tear" sounds like 体儿.
> 
> Mandarin does not have  /ɪ/ or /e/ or /æ/.


Now I'm even more confused.
So, /i/ /ɪ/ /i:/ are three different sounds? I thought /i/ /ɪ/ are the same mark, just in different writing styles.

By the way, I found this in Wikipedia, but I don't understand:
_Phonemic transcriptions, which express the conceptual counterparts of spoken sounds, are usually enclosed in slashes (/ /) and tend to use simpler letters with few diacritics. The choice of IPA letters may reflect theoretical claims of how speakers conceptualize sounds as phonemes or they may be merely a convenience for typesetting. Phonemic approximations between slashes do not have absolute sound values. For instance, in English, either the vowel of pick or the vowel of peak may be transcribed as /i/, *so that pick, peak would be transcribed as *_*/ˈpik, ˈpiːk/ or as *_*/ˈpɪk, ˈpik/*; and neither is identical to the vowel of the French pique which would also be transcribed /pik/. By contrast, a narrow phonetic transcription of pick, peak, pique could be: [pʰɪk], [pʰiːk], [pikʲ].
_
在记录音素时，语言学家习惯上使用更简单的字母，而没有过多的变音符号。国际音标字母的选择可能反映了作者的理论主张，也可能仅是为了排版上的便利。例如，在英语中，_*pick*_*或peak的元音可以记为/i/（即写作/pik, piːk/或/pɪk, pik/）*，而此二者都和法语单词 _pique_的元音不同，尽管后者也写作/i/。也就是说，以斜线夹注的宽式标音，其音标并没有绝对的音值；但以方括号夹注的严式标音则会对其区分：[pʰɪk]、[pʰiːk]、[pikʲ]。


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## dojibear

SuperXW said:


> So, /i/ /ɪ/ /i:/ are three different sounds?


These are two different sounds. In IPA notation, ':' after a vowel means a longer duration (but no sound change). Some dialects of English use a longer duration for /i/. This is written /i:/, but it isn't a different sound than /i/.

I think the wikipedia quote means that different writers (dictionaries, etc.) use IPA notation in different ways. Often, IPA notation is not a phonemic transcription by a linguist.

For example, most English dictionaries use */r/ *to represent the English R sound, which is */ɹ/* in IPA notation. The IPA sound */r/* does not exist in English. "Pick/peak" is another example. Dictionary IPA is not very accurate.

I like to use this website for the sounds of English, because it has audio clips to let you listen to the sample words. But it uses the IPA symbols used in modern dictionaries, not correct IPA notation:

The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet | Antimoon


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## hx1997

dojibear said:


> I don't consider /ɪ/ a short vowel and /i/ a long vowel. /ɪ/ and /i/ are completely different sounds.


Ovaltine888 wrote /iː/, with a symbol indicating longer duration. I think that's what they meant by long vowel. I remember reading that AE doesn't pay as much attention to the duration of vowels as BE does.



SuperXW said:


> So, /i/ /ɪ/ /i:/ are three different sounds?


/i/ /ɪ/ 是不同音位，前面是 see 的末尾那个音，后面是 it 开头那个音。/iː/ 只是 /i/ 拖长一点。

Edit: 想了下可能用 seat (i)/sit (ɪ) 做对比更合适点，这样就只有元音不同。

Edit 2: 刚反应过来你的意思是不是你知道这两个音不同，只是不知道 /i/ 不是 /ɪ/ 的另一种写法



SuperXW said:


> _*so that pick, peak would be transcribed as *_*/ˈpik, ˈpiːk/ or as *_*/ˈpɪk, ˈpik/*;_


真的可以这么记吗？有没有懂的人来解释下
虽然是宽式记音，但也是按音位记啊，两个不同音位怎么会用同一个符号？


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## dojibear

Good point. Sometime I mistakenly think: 每个人都像我一样说英语。

BE speakers may pay more attention to vowel duration.


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## SimonTsai

dojibear said:


> Sometime I mistakenly think: 每个人都像我一样说英语。


每個人都像我一樣說英語。 ==> Everyone speaks English, as I do.
大家說的英語都和我說的一樣。 ==> Everyone speaks the English I speak.


AquisM said:


> The difference between /ji/ and /i/ is the difference between _*ye*ar_ and _*e*ar._


As a native speaker of Mandarin, I must say that distinguishing the pair by their sounds is quite challenging.


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## dojibear

It is probably difficult for native speakers of English too. I think people rely on context:

My son is thr*ee* *yea*rs old.
I ate thr*ee ea*rs of corn. 

I probably produce the /j/ sound between "three" and "ears", so both sound like /iji/.

Context is what I use in Mandarin. My ear can't distinguish some initials in speech (sh/xi, zh/ji, ch/qi).
So I rely on context.


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