54884
I've had this question for several months now, and haven't been able to find a
satisfactory answer online.

The Japanese し and the Mandarin "xi", as in 西, are listed equivalently as [[ɕ]
in the IPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolo-palatal_sibilant).

However, my girlfriend and I can fairly clearly tell the difference between
these two sounds, even after trying to isolate the consonant in the above
words. (She is a native Japanese speaker learning Mandarin, and I am the
opposite.)

Are we imagining things, or is there actually a slight difference in [ɕ]
between languages? If the latter, are they marked as identical in the IPA
because no single language differentiates between the Mandarin [ɕ] and the
Japanese [ɕ]?
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2017-12-01T18:18:20.600
54880
2017-12-01T22:46:39.653
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question
phonology phonetics
Are the Japanese し and the Mandarin "xi" really both [ɕ]?
As with all IPA transcriptions, for a consonant to be regarded as the
[voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant
ɕ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolo-palatal_sibilant), it only
needs to fulfil certain conditions (which are listed under the 'Features'
section in that Wikipedia link). This does not mean that the set of conditions
reduce to a unique phoneme; it is highly possible that the variety of actual
sounds fulfilled by the transcription ɕ can be differentiated by someone with
more sensitive hearing abilities. The following is a comparison between
Mandarin **xī** and Japanese **し** :

  * [xī](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Zh-x%C4%AB.ogg)
  * [し](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Ja-Shi.oga)

As a native speaker of Mandarin, I cannot tell the difference between the
consonants, but if you **can** tell the difference, I suspect that you may
hear subtle differences in the pronunciation of ɕ in the other language audio
examples in that Wikipedia link.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-12-01T22:46:39.653
54884
2017-12-01T22:46:39.653
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answer