Zhongtong bus Company
Randy Alexander
strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM
Tue Mar 1 22:10:15 UTC 2011
On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 5:46 AM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Oh! So "Zhontong" is ~Joengtoeng (~Joe as in "Joe"). I assume stress is
> the first syllable.
That would be the closest English equivalent. In Mandarin stress is a whole
'nother ball game. The tones of the two syllables of zhongtong are both
3rd, but because of tone sandhi they come out as 2nd and 3rd. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Tones
The 'o' sound in Mandarin when it precedes "ng" is monophthongal, so it is
different (a fixed and tighter rounding) from the 'o' sound in English
"Joe".
--
Randy Alexander
Xiamen, China
Blogs:
Manchu studies: http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu
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Language in China (group blog): http://www.sinoglot.com/blog
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