Re: Zhonghuaornis, Perpiaoornis, Weiyuornis and other things on Hou's site

[NJPharris@aol.com]

In a message dated 6/15/02 3:01:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time, qilongia@yahoo.com writes:


> One notes the
> same thing in "Boluochia", which is pronounced with a terminal "r" sound
.

"chi" in pinyin transcription sounds kind of like "chur" in English.  The reason for this is the effect that the retroflex consonant written "ch" (which is pronounced with the tip of the tongue pointing backwards, toward the hard palate) has on the quality of the following vowel.  This won't account for "perpiao"/"beipiao", since there is no retroflex consonant to trigger retroflexion of the "i" in this case.

--Nick P.