I saw that the Chinese submissions for “cat” (貓/猫 and 小貓/小猫) for the @words-for-cat-bracket didn’t have IPA transcripts according to the Google Sheets file, so I’m here to write about the IPA! This was originally going to be an ask but it got kind of long, so I thought it deserves its own post.
Annotation #1: I only speak Cantonese (Hong Kong dialect) and Mandarin (was taught Standard/Northern dialects for 9+ years, personally speak with a Southern/Cantonese accent), so I sadly cannot provide pronunciations for other Chinese varieties or their words for “cat”.
Annotation #2: I am adding the specific vowel names because of Tumblr desktop ask/post font limitations when I initially wrote the post.
貓/猫 (“cat”)
- Standard Mandarin: māo (pinyin) → [mɑu̯˥]; the first half of the diphthong is the open back unrounded vowel, at least that is how I pronounce it
- Cantonese: maau1 (Jyutping) / māau (Yale) → [maːu˥]; the first half of the diphthong is an open central unrounded vowel
小貓/小猫 (“little cat; kitten”)
- Standard Mandarin: xiǎomāo (pinyin) → [ɕjau̯˩ mɑu̯˥]; same vowel diphthong notes as above
- Cantonese: siu2 maau1 (Jyutping) / síu māau (Yale) → [siːu˧˥ maːu˥]; not colloquial Cantonese, refer to additional linguistics notes for details
Additional linguistics notes
The diminutive prefix 小 is actually not commonly used in Cantonese; we have a bit of diglossia going on in Cantonese-speaking regions, where colloquial Cantonese is Low and Mandarin/Std. Chinese is High. (Technically, both Mandarin/Std. Chinese and English are High, at least in Hong Kong, but in the context of the conversation, Mandarin/Std. Chinese is High.)
Us Cantonese speakers only really say 小貓/小猫 if we are reading a text written in Written Standard Chinese, which is based on Mandarin. In colloquial Cantonese, we say 貓仔/猫仔 [maːu˥ tsɐi˧˥]; maau1 zai1 (Jyutping) or māau jái (Yale), with a different diminutive suffix instead of a prefix.
Mandarin also has a diminutive suffix, 兒/儿 (IPA can change depending on the syllable it’s used on); it is usually ér in pinyin but in the context of the diminutive, it is shortened to an -r suffix and there is a whole set of rules surrounding it regarding pronunciation. This érhuà system is only really used in North China, rarely in the South (including Taiwan).
Both 貓兒/猫儿 [mau̯˞˥] (pinyin: māor) and 小貓兒/小猫儿 [ɕjau̯˩ mau̯˞˥] (pinyin: xiǎomāor) are valid forms of the word-phrases in Northern dialects of Mandarin. Heck, if you look at the dialectal synonyms chart on the Wiktionary page, you will even see that the latter version (小貓兒/小猫儿) is the preferred variant for "kitten" used in Beijing.
Conclusion
This got really unexpectedly long, which is why I split this into its own post. I know that @/words-for-cat-bracket no longer accepts submissions into the bracket for the Chinese words for “cat” I wrote about in the “Additional linguistics notes” section of this post, and I am fine with it.
I will, however, request that 小貓/小猫 be described in the bracket to be the word-phrase for kitten in Mandarin specifically, not in Cantonese or Chinese in general.
TL;DR: Submitted pronunciation IPA for the Mandarin and Cantonese word-phrases for “cat”. The Sinitic languages mostly share a writing system but are linguistically Complicated.
