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Hi! Why does the Chinese pronunciation sound like 'pa' when it's actually ba? Please help
because it's an unaspirated voiceless [p], like p in "spy", but sometimes pronouced like b. In Mandarin and most other Chinese languages (e.g. Cantonese, Hakka) [p] [b] are the same, but the aspirated one [pʰ] will be marked as a different phoneme.
In some Cantonese dialects there are some phonemes like [ɓ] (=b in Vietnamese) and [ɗ] (=đ in Vietnamese), but it's another story.
Some b words are more likely pronounced as a "p" and the p sound are more likely pronounced as "b"
I don't get the "ne, me, xing" I don't know what they mean, but still they want me to remember the signs to that spelling without knowing the meaning..
I was writing this character this way earlier in the lessons, and was marked correct. Later, I noted that the character changed and had a small horizontal line going left from the top of the right line, so naturally I changed it in my notes. Now, I am seeing this same character as it is here, without the small line at the top. Very confusing, as I am trying to learn characters and it is not helpful when they 'move the lines around'. Not the biggest problem, and too new to this language to comment a lot, but I did notice this. Has anyone else noticed the same thing?
