The article “Pīnyīn is a Good, Workable Writing System On Its Own” has been revised, with the addition of these two paragraphs addressing the issue of whether Pīnyīn unavoidably causes English-speaking Mandarin-learners’ Mandarin to sound like English:
What about the claim by some English-speaking Mandarin-learners that using Pīnyīn causes their Mandarin to sound like English? This can indeed happen if they let the Latin letters of Pīnyīn make them think of English sounds instead of the Mandarin sounds that they actually represent. In such cases, the problem is not with the Latin alphabet letters used by Pīnyīn—the Latin alphabet is used successfully to write many languages besides English, including French, Spanish, Vietnamese, etc., and it is just as capable of being used successfully to write Mandarin. As English-speaking Mandarin-learners get more familiar with the sounds of correct Mandarin speech, they can come to get used to correctly mentally connecting Pīnyīn to correct Mandarin sounds, rather than to English sounds. Then, they can regularly and reliably use Pīnyīn to help them speak Mandarin-sounding Mandarin, just like people regularly and reliably use written French to help them speak French-sounding French.
So, the key to speaking Mandarin-sounding Mandarin is to mentally get familiar with the sounds of correct Mandarin speech, e.g., by hearing the sounds of correct Mandarin speech a lot, by learning how to use the mouth, tongue, etc. to make Mandarin speech sounds correctly, and by practising making Mandarin speech sounds correctly. Turning to Chinese characters and avoiding the Latin letters of Pīnyīn is not the only or best way to go—if you are not familiar with the sounds of correct Mandarin speech, then your spoken Mandarin is still going to sound off, even if you stick with Chinese characters. In fact, rather than being less effective than the hard-to-learn-and-remember characters are at helping people speak Mandarin-sounding Mandarin, once people mentally work out the connections between Pīnyīn and Mandarin speech sounds, Pīnyīn can help them to more easily and more confidently speak Mandarin that is more precisely correct. E.g., with Pīnyīn, no more does anyone need to be uncertain about how in the world “增加” is pronounced, or about whether it starts with a “z” sound or a “zh” sound—the Pīnyīn (“zēngjiā”) makes the correct Mandarin pronunciation clear and obvious!
Also, scripture links have been revised to point to the latest 2018 version of the New World Translation on the WOL.
