Pronouncation of "to be born" (生) on Memrise

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1

Hello,

I’ve heard this word pronounced on memrise both as “shung” (as in, rhymes with tongue) and “sheng” (rhymes with men). Is one of these pronunciations more correct than the other, do both work, or is it dependent on the word preceding/following it? Thanks in advance for any help!

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@Hydroptere

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The pronunciation is a bit between shēng and shūng I think, sometimes closer to one or the other. In Chinese these sounds are quite close to one another though.

It will never rhyme with the English “men” though, as you wouldn’t be able to pronounce the “ng” (tongue at the top of the mouth) directly after the English “e,” or if you could it would sound too much like “shen”.

You can link the sound files here to see if we agree. Right click on the audio icon and click “Inspect (Element)” and copy and paste it here, like so.

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I would use text to speech in Google translate and play the sound for 梦，成，生，冷… I think after that you will see how it sounds. It is an interesting mixture between the e and u sound. But with repeated exposure the differences will become clear !

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(sircemloud, what is it? why do you tag me???)

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I thought you could help. You like to share your wisdom usually.

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Thanks for the help! Here is an example of the first way I learned it, and the way I’ve been pronouncing it http://static.memrise.com/uploads/audio/32000101116170513.mp3 However, in other phrases, it seems more common to hear it like this: http://static.memrise.com/uploads/audio/32000101211105636.mp3. So, anyway, knowing now that it’s sort of in between the two I’m wondering, if I stick to pronouncing it the first way would that be incorrect?

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I’d advise you to stick to the first pronunciation. The second pronunciation, according to the people I’ve asked because it bothers me too, isn’t that the vowel sounds different, it’s that the 后鼻音 (ng) is said very quickly in connected speech. I can’t hear the difference between this sheng and shen either, or maybe barely. You’ll just have to guess from context whether they’re saying shen or sheng.

Some places might also not really pronounce the ng.

These kinds of question will get more knowledgeable replies at https://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/index