Coming back from the dead for an idle digression:
I think "sh" is the most common consonant sound of Mandarin Chinese. Not
counting "x" (a sort of lisping s), which unaccustomed ears could easily
take for a "sh".
More precisely, a typical conversation would be A: Is it so? B: It sure is!
(A: Shi ma? B: Shi de!) generating all of these "sh". A Chinese tongue
twister illustrates the point: "Sishisi shi shizi shuo, shisi bu shi sishi,
sishi ye bu shi shisi" (14 isn't 40, and 40 isn't 14 either, said the 44
stone lions).
Moreover, some speakers of other dialects may affect a "sh" sound when
pronouncing words of Mandarin that should have "s", and say "s" when it
should be "sh". Out of context, it is sometimes hard to tell whether it's
meant to be one or the other.
Saw the film by the way, thought the matte painting of Late Qing "Peking" in
the beginning was amazing. The costumes and architecture were very
realistic, for what I can tell. What disappointed some Chinese friends were,
interestingly, the fight scenes (too many people dangling from strings, and
little display of *real* martial arts).
Carlo
> From: Matt Grimaldi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
>
> Alberto Monteiro wrote:
> >
> > PS: do half Chinese words have _sh_ sounds? I could even learn
> > some Chinese... There's an answer, _shu_ [or something like that],
> > that was rendered as "sure" by the br subtitlers :-)
>
> It's been a long while since I took those Mandarin classes, but
> in that case it was probably the Chinese grammatical convention
> of using the verb to affirm someone else's statement. They would
> have said "shi" as "yes" and "bu shi" as "no." A semi-literal
> translation of this convention would go:
>
> Person A: Do you want this?
>
> Person B: Don't want.
>
> -- or --
>
> Person B: Want.
>
>
> As for the "sh" sound, there's really several distinct versions
> of it that are used, (and what you do with the tone counts!) much
> the same way that someone might confuse "f", "v", and "th" in
> spoken English.
