Noncompositional

The rules for combining initials and finals (rimes) in pinyin are not exactly simple, though the complications do sometimes end up being sort of intuitive (intuitive enough for a classrooms full of American schoolchildren to learn fairly quickly). But sometimes things are hidden. Things that people (like me) notice only very infrequently for periods of up to 10 years before finally figuring out.

Of course, if Wikipedia had existed back when I was in high school, I could have just consulted its table of Mandarin finals and noted that what is written ing in pinyin is pronounced [iɤŋ]. Or I could have looked at bopomofo and realized that there is no single symbol for the ing final (though there is one for ang and eng). Instead it is a combination of i and eng [ɤŋ].

This confirmed for me what I heard from time to time, more from some speakers than from others: namely, that words like 聽 ting1 ‘listen’, 請 qing1 ‘request, please’, 性 xing4 ’surname’ do not have monophthongs, but diphthongs. This totally went against what I’d read in textbooks that describe the pinyin writing system (like 中國啊,中国), which do not mention anything about -ing. It also went against pronunciation practice videos that I remember seeing when in Japan, which show a woman (usually) saying to spread your lips as far apart as possible before enunciating the (beautiful Beijing) high front vowel. On the other hand, it went with what I’d heard on various TV shows and in class, where I would sometimes hear a distinctive off-glide before the nasal. What finally convinced me that I wasn’t just hearing things was a period drama that I caught on the international channel, in which a women said something like 不想給他們聽聽 (’I don’t want to let them hear (it)’ or something like that), where the last two characters are ting1 ting1 ‘listen (redup).’ The actress clearly did not utter a simple /i/, letting the vowel move back in her mouth before moving on to the nasal.

The only confusing thing is that it doesn’t always seem to be there. For a sample, listen to the conversation on this page, in particular to the receptionist/secretary. Her second, third, and fourth lines contain two, one, and one instance of -ing respectively (bolded), but only the italicized ones clearly have the bonus vowel.

请问您贵姓? 您请稍等. 张小姐,您这边请.

I’ve also heard it with the -in final, also written “ien” in bopomofo, but it’s not clearly there in the linked dialogue.