Teaware and how to pronounce

[Deffy]

Well this is my first post here, just had a few inquires on how to pronounce the names of some Teaware. I'm used to seeing the words in print, never heard them spoken.

Words I'm not sure of:
Gaiwan
Yixing
Gong Fu
Pu Erh
Matcha
Darjeeling
Ceylon

Thanks

[Space Samurai]

oooh, I love these topics.

gaiwan - guy-wahn
yixing - ee-sheeng (I'm kind of guessing here).
gong fu - gong rhymes with long, and fu as in food or foot.
Puerh - I've heard both poo-air and poo-er
Ceylon - say-lawn
Matcha confuses me. Tthere isn't a "mat" "t" or "tch" in Japanese Hiragana, so I'm not sure what a "t" is doing there. I'd guess that it is silent, and the word is pronounced mah-chah.

[SnapshotCat]

I thought Ceylon was pronounced like salon? I've heard it that way at least once.

[Mary R]

According to my dictionary, both are acceptable.

Ceylon |siˈlän; sāˈlän|

[kodama]

oooh, I love these topics.

gaiwan - guy-wahn
yixing - ee-sheeng (I'm kind of guessing here).
gong fu - gong rhymes with long, and fu as in food or foot.
Puerh - I've heard both poo-air and poo-er
Ceylon - say-lawn
Matcha confuses me. Tthere isn't a "mat" "t" or "tch" in Japanese Hiragana, so I'm not sure what a "t" is doing there. I'd guess that it is silent, and the word is pronounced mah-chah.

A double C in Japanese sounds a bit like a T. 抹茶＝まっちゃ＝Ma-c-cha=Matcha. In English something like Motch-chaw.

[Space Samurai]

Thanks, that makes sense.

[hop_goblin]

Thanks, that makes sense.

Space, I loved how you spelled all of it out phonetically!!!

[Phyll]

gaiwan is more pronounced like kai-one. The (g) sounds more like (k) as there is no (g) sound in Chinese mandarin. The (g) sound that I refer to is similar to saying "guy". The (k) sounds more like "kite".

As for matcha, the (t) serves as a glottal stop in phonetic terms. There are 2 main hiragana characters in matcha: ma and cha. But in between those two there is a phonetic insertion (smal tsu character) to indicate a glottal stop. The resulting sound in English is like mutt-tza. Even the character cha is affected somewhat due to the glottal stop. Cha (which sounds like Zhaa...becomes a shorter Tza...like the tza sound in ketchup.

Another example is chotto matte ("wait a minute / wait a little"). Chotto and matte both have glottal stops in them. The characters used are as such: chi (yo) (tsu) to ma (tsu) te. The (tsu) indicates a phonetic glottal stop, hence the extra (t)'s in the romanized spelling.

I'm no linguist. Sorry if that was confusing. Did my best. Do correct me if I'm wrong please.

[scruffmcgruff]

I think this is one of the better explanations I've read. I never realized the g in gaiwan was more of a k sound, I guess it's one of those romanization quirks that really doesn't make any sense. Thanks Phyll!

[teaguy]

The suggestions given are pretty close, although I have 2 corrections for you:

gong fu: this is the same Chinese word we normally spell 'kung fu' (and has the same meaning - hard work!). It isn't the same pronunciation as long - it's more of a long /o/ sound (think 'go'). /g/ and /k/ are 2 separate sounds in Mandarin, by the way.

For Puerh, use the 2nd suggestion given 'poo-er', and make sure to leave a pause between the sounds. In Chinese, it's 2 separate characters put together to (just like gong fu). 'Pu-air' is poor pronunciation or a regional variation, like if you were speaking to someone with a Texan drawl.

I'm not a linguist either, but I have lived in Taiwan for 10 years and speak fairly good Mandarin. (a lot of it was learned over cups of high mountain oolong!).

Hope this helps!