SynthV Wiki:Sandbox/Cantonese Chinese phonetics

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About

Within China itself, there are many different languages that are members of the Sinitic Language Family, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Yin, and so on. Despite these acting as different languages, they are known in English as "dialects." There are many regional dialects of the official "dialects" of Chinese.

The second most spoken language in China is Cantonese, which originated from Guangdong province and Hong Kong. It is also widely used by overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, North America and Europe. Cantonese has a complex history and legal status in China, as it was once banned by the Communist government after 1949 but later revived by the cultural influence of Hong Kong. Cantonese is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin or other dialects/languages of Chinese. It is spoken by about 60 million people within China and another 20 million abroad.

Cantonese has 19 consonants and 7 vowels. They can be combined together to create about 1,760 syllables that cover the pronunciations of more than 10,000 Chinese characters. As a tonal language, Cantonese has 6 main tones and 3 additional tones that change the meaning of a word depending on the tone. Unlike Mandarin, tones are very important when composing songs in Cantonese, as they largely preserve the tonal contrasts of the lyrics. Some studies have shown that Cantonese singers tend to match the pitch contours of the melody with the lexical tones of the words.

Synthesizer V and the Cantonese Chinese language

(We can talk about the spelling, usage, and modifications of X-SAMPA, and other technical stuffs)

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.

Synthesizer V will capture any form of accent quite easily at times. It depends on the recording method used by the voice provider, the type of sound being recorded per sample (accent impact varies per sample and language), and –in the case of Standard voice databases– overall number of samples that make up the voice database (the more samples, the more chance of it slipping in). (Types of voice database produced: "Standard" concatenative by "chanting" the scripts contains almost all possible phoneme transitions in particular pitches and tempos; or AI-based by actually sing, apparently also impact the accent.)

Native accented

• Wei Shu
• Ling Wan

Non-native accented

Synthesizer V Studio version 1.5.0 introduced the Cross-Lingual Singing Synthesis feature, which allows all AI voice databases to sing in all languages supported by the software, regardless of the language(s) in which they're recorded. Cantonese Chinese was made officially available on April 18, 2023 with the release of Synthesizer V Studio Version 1.9.0b1. All voice databases recorded in languages other than Cantonese Chinese are considered to be non-native accented, due to a deliberate decision to leave subtle accents in place.

Phonetic list

Symbol	Classification	IPA symbol/name	Example	Notes	Related phonemes
ts	initial consonant	ts voiceless alveolar affricate	字 zi
tsh	initial consonant	tsʰ aspirated voiceless alveolar affricate	次 ci
f	initial consonant	f voiceless labiodental fricative	⻛ fung
h	initial consonant	h voiceless glottal fricative	可 ho
s	initial consonant	s voiceless alveolar fricative	雪 syut
l	initial consonant	l voiced alveolar lateral approximant	哩 le
m	initial consonant	m voiced bilabial nasal	茗 ming
n	initial consonant	n voiced alveolar nasal	年 nin
N	final consonant	ŋ voiced velar nasal	外 ngoi
w	initial consonant	w voiced labial–velar approximant	泳 wing
j	initial consonant	j voiced palatal approximant	⼀ jat
p	initial consonant	p voiceless bilabial plosive	不 bat
ph	initial consonant	pʰ aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive	伾 pei
t	initial consonant	t voiceless alveolar	代 doi
th	initial consonant	tʰ aspirated voiceless alveolar	禿 tuk
k	initial consonant	k voiceless velar plosive	九 gau
kh	initial consonant	kʰ aspirated voiceless velar plosive	期 kei
kw	initial consonant	kʷ labialized voiceless velar plosive	⽠ gwaa
kwh	initial consonant	kʷʰ aspirated labialized voiceless velar plosive	夸 kwaa
a	vowel	a open front unrounded vowel	责 zaak
6	vowel	ɐ near-open central vowel	周 zau
E	vowel	ɛ open-mid front unrounded vowel	些 se
e	vowel	e close-mid front unrounded vowel	伾 pei
i	vowel	i close front unrounded vowel	兒 ji
I	vowel	ɪ near-close front unrounded vowel	升 sing
O	vowel	ɔ open-mid back rounded vowel	开 hoi
o	vowel	o close-mid back rounded vowel	數 sou
u	vowel	u close back rounded vowel	潰 kui
U	vowel	ʊ near-close near-back rounded vowel	⽤ jung
9	vowel	œ open-mid front rounded vowel	约 joek
8	vowel	ɵ close-mid central rounded vowel	摔 seot
y	vowel	y close front rounded vowel	雪 syut
m=	vowel	m̩ syllabic voiced bilabial nasal	唔 m
N=	vowel	ŋ̍ syllabic voiced bilabial nasal	五 ng
:i	final	yː long close front unrounded vowel	⼥ neoi
:u	final	u: long close back rounded vowel	好 hou
:m	final	m: long voiced bilabial nasal	闪 sim
:n	final	n: long voiced alveolar nasal	新 san
:N	final	ŋ: long voiced velar nasal	⻛ fung
:p_}	final	p̚ applosive voiceless bilabial plosive	汁 zap
:t_}	final	t̚ applosive voiceless alveolar plosive	雪 syut
:k_}	final	k̚ applosive voiceless velar plosive	责 zaak