Chinese Phonetics

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The following is a tutorial made for VOCALOID fans by fellow VOCALOID fans.

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About

Within China itself, the Chinese language is divided between 7-10 subgroups each with a variation on "Chinese". Due to the variation caused by the large number of speakers, individuals from one subgroup do not always understand individuals from the other 7 subgroups.

The most common form of Chinese is known as "Mandarin", and is the most major influence of the 7-10 subgroups within China and is considered China's main language for this reason. Mandarin is not Mutual intelligibility and generally most words or sentences are capable of being understood by others who speak a version of Mandarin. The language itself originated from Northern China and spread over time. Mandarin is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world and is spoken by 70% of all Chinese within China. When taken as a whole there are a estimated 1 billion speakers of the language; the most of any language in the world. When a VOCALOID is said to have a "Chinese Voicebank", it refers to having a voicebank in this variant of the Chinese language. Common forms of this language is also considered the Lingua franca of China.

Mandarin Chinese has 21 consonants and 16 vowels. They can be combined together to create more than 400 mono-syllabic sounds. As a tonal language, Mandarin Chinese also have 4 main tones and a neutral tones that distinct different characters by using their tones. However, tones are usually ignored when composing lyrics.

Due to how widespread the language is, it has influenced a number of languages around the area of China, having an influence on both Korean Phonetics and Japanese Phonetics.

Notes on Accents

Despite the general belief that singers completely lose their accents when they sing, this is not the case in every instance and an accent is possible to be heard even in singing vocals.

However, the reason many are led to believe this is that there are several methods of training singers to disguise or otherwise hide their natural accents - they may even adopt an accent that isn't their own for singing. Samples include genres such as western or country, black music such as Jazz or Soul. Singing also uses different muscles to speech, resulting in difference of air pressure and way the throat moves. Genres such as Opera are most likely to make a accent appear almost entirely absent thanks to the impact of the opera vibrato.

VOCALOID will capture any form of accent quite easily at times. It depends on the recording method used on the voicer, type of sound being recorded per sample (accent impact varies per sample and language), and overall number of samples that make up the voicebank (the more samples, the more chance of it slipping in).

Mandarin is noted for having hundreds of variations on the language within different localized areas. This is contributed to the large number of speakers and the widespread nature of the Chinese language and circumstances behind the area.

Mainland Accents

The phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of China, is modeled on Beijing Mandarin. This is the version of Mandarin VOCALOID also uses.

• Luo Tianyi
• YANHE
• Yuezheng Ling
• Xingchen
• Yuezheng Longya
• Zhiyu Moke
• Mo Qingxian
• Zhang Chuchu
• Yuecheng

Taiwanese Accent

Standard Chinese is also spoken in Taiwan. The phonology is slightly different; many Taiwanese usually pronounce retroflex (zh, ch, sh) consonants as alveolar consonants (z, c, s) due to influence from Hokkien. When they do (e.g. in formal situations), they pronounce retroflexes softer than in standard Mandarin.

Due to the meaning of words and changes between the accent, a Taiwanese speaker is not always understood by speakers from Mainland China.

• Xin Hua

Japanese Accent

Japanese-Mandarin accented VOCALOIDs are produced by those who came from Japan. Their voice providers have the Japanese language as their native language, but were used to produce Mandarin-Chinese voicebanks. Therefore the Japanese-Mandarin accent is a non-native Mandarin accent, showing significant and notorious differences in comparison to the native Mandarin accents.

• Hatsune Miku

Phonetic chart

Symbol	Classification	IPA Symbol / Name	Pinyin	Notes
a	Final	ä	ba
o	Final	ɔ / u̯ɔ	po
7	Final	ɤ~ɯ̯ɤ	ke
i	Final	i	ji, yi
u	Final	u	fu, wu
y	Final	y	ju, qu, xu, nü, lü, yu
@`	Final	ɑɻ~ɚ	er
i\	Final	ɨ	zi, ci, si
i`	Final	ɨ˞	zhi, chi, shi, ri
aI	Final	aɪ̯	sai
ei	Final	eɪ̯	fei
AU	Final	ɑʊ̯	hao
@U	Final	ɤʊ̯	hou
ia	Final	i̯ä	xia, ya
iE_r	Final	i̯e̞	jie, ye
ua	Final	u̯ä	kua, wa
uo	Final	u̯ɔ	huo , wo
yE_r	Final	y̯e̞	jue, que, xue, nüe, lüe, yue
iAU	Final	i̯ɑʊ̯	xiao, yao
i@U	Final	i̯ɤʊ̯~i̯oʊ̯	jiu, you
uaI	Final	u̯aɪ̯	kuai, wai
uei	Final	u̯eɪ̯	gui, wei
a_n	Final	an	fan
@_n	Final	ən	fen
i_n	Final	in	xin, yin
iE_n	Final	i̯ɛn	qian, yan
ua_n	Final	u̯an	duan, wan
u@_n	Final	u̯ən	dun, wen
y_n	Final	yn	xun, yun
y{_n	Final	y̯ɛn~yan	xuan, yuan
AN	Final	ɑŋ	pang
@N	Final	əŋ~ɤŋ	beng
iN	Final	iŋ	xing, ying
iAN	Final	i̯ɑŋ	xiang, yang
uAN	Final	u̯ɑŋ	chuang, wang
u@N	Final	u̯əŋ~uɤŋ	weng
UN	Final	ʊŋ	dong
iUN	Final	i̯ʊŋ	xiong, yong
p	Initial	Voiceless_bilabial_stop|p]]	bo
p_h	Initial	pʰ	po
m	Initial	Bilabial nasal|m]]	mo
f	Initial	Voiceless_labiodental_fricative|f]]	fo
t	Initial	t	de
t_h	Initial	tʰ	te
n	Initial	n	ne
l	Initial	l	le
k	Initial	k	ge
k_h	Initial	kʰ	ke
x	Initial	x~	he
ts\	Initial	t͡ɕ	ji
ts\_h	Initial	t͡ɕʰ	qi
s\	Initial	ɕ	xi
ts`	Initial	ʈ͡ʂ	zhi
ts`_h	Initial	ʈ͡ʂʰ	chi
s`	Initial	ʂ	shi
z`	Initial	ɻ~ʐ	ri
ts	Initial	t͡s	zi
ts_h	Initial	t͡sʰ	ci
s	Initial	s	si

Current Usage

As of 2018, Chinese is considered the second most popular language and has the 3rd largest voicebank selection on offer. However, there is still much unknown about the engine at this time.