Mandarin Words in an IAL

[Nachtswalbe]

Normally IALs favor simple syllable structures of (C)(C)V(C)(C) and relatively small phonetic inventories. The issue with Mandarin words is that the relatively complex phonotactics would result them being altered heavily. For example take the following inventory:
/p b t d k g/
/f v w s S tS dZ h/
/m n N l r j/
/a e E i o O u @/
The strucutre
(C)(C)V(C)
Relatively phonotactically simple words like bingqi can be represented as <binSi> but more phonologically complex words like /S_jwan3dZ_jy2/ would be mangled as /SwanSi/

[Kuchigakatai]

The things Mandarin speakers are used to as it is are useful to take into account: many speakers haphazardly distinguish [n] and [ŋ], so -n might generally be okay. And speakers from eastern and southern China may not be necessarily good at tones either (I've heard Cantonese speakers failing at saying a falling tone, using a mid-level flat tone instead), grabbing words in a polysyllabic form always helps. Including [tʃ] and [dʒ] also helps a lot for Mandarin ch zh q j /ʈʂʰ ʈʂ tɕʰ tɕ/. The pronunciation [bintʃi] seems alright for bingqi...

For your [ɕɥan˧˥tɕy˨˩] 'an election, to elect sb' example, it may be desirable to restrict stems with [y] unless [y] is an option... That might be a good candidate for [eleksjon] as a noun and verb.

[Qwynegold]

Normally IALs favor simple syllable structures of (C)(C)V(C)(C) and relatively small phonetic inventories. The issue with Mandarin words is that the relatively complex phonotactics would result them being altered heavily. For example take the following inventory:
/p b t d k g/
/f v s S h/
/m n l r j/
/a e i o u/
The strucutre
(C)(C)V(C)
Relatively phonotactically simple words like bingqi can be represented as <binSi> but more phonologically complex words like /S_jwan3dZ_jy2/ would be mangled as /SwanSi/

You have no /w/ in that phoneme inventory. I would suggest /ʃvenʃi, /ʃuenʃi, /ʃvenʃu/ or /ʃuenʃu/. But yeah, I also have an auxlang project, and Mandarin is a huge problem. I don't have any good way to deal with it.

[cedh]

Two other options for [ɕɥan˧˥tɕy˨˩] might be /ʃjonʃi/ or /ʃjondju/. Not sure if they're really better though...

[Moose-tache]

Does this pose any more problem than loans from English or Russian? I doubt any IAL is equipped to transcribe "strength" or "zdravstvujtje" accurately. The bigger question would be what are Chinese speakers listening for when they try to understand foreigners speaking their language? If the IAL can reflect those distinctions, the words will still be recognizable.

[Nachtswalbe]

Why not loan more heavily from languages w CCVC structure like Hindi (with modifications), Italian/Portuguese/Spanish?
e.g joko for game from gioco, kella from quella and so on

[zompist]

Just to be slightly contrarian: if it's that hard to borrow Mandarin words, your phonology is probably too Eurocentric, or even Romance-centric.

Auxlangs all too often really want to be romlangs. It looks like many of phonological choices you've made are unhelpful not only for Mandarin but for other widespread source languages, including English, Hindi, and Arabic.

If you added /w tʃ ŋ/ you'd do a lot better with Mandarin and English words, and some of those are also heavily used by other major languages. (E.g. tʃ is used in English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and could be used for Arabic j.)

If you're hung up on not making people learn new sounds, I'd point out that you're already making Romance speakers learn /h/, and Mandarin speakers will confront consonant voicing and a wider range of final consonants.

[Nachtswalbe]

Plenty of people from all linguistic backgrounds manage to learn English (complex phonotactics, lots of vowels) and French (nasal vowels, liason) so phonological simplicity of romlangs isn't necessarily a realistic goal.

[Nachtswalbe]

Just to be slightly contrarian: if it's that hard to borrow Mandarin words, your phonology is probably too Eurocentric, or even Romance-centric.

Auxlangs all too often really want to be romlangs. It looks like many of phonological choices you've made are unhelpful not only for Mandarin but for other widespread source languages, including English, Hindi, and Arabic.

If you added /w tʃ ŋ/ you'd do a lot better with Mandarin and English words, and some of those are also heavily used by other major languages. (E.g. tʃ is used in English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and could be used for Arabic j.)

If you're hung up on not making people learn new sounds, I'd point out that you're already making Romance speakers learn /h/, and Mandarin speakers will confront consonant voicing and a wider range of final consonants.

Excellent pts! Another thing that bugs me is the 5-vowel system; English, Hindi, Mandarin, Portuguese all use /E/ and /O/, and a shwa wouldn't hurt to approximate "e" in Mandarin

[Ares Land]

A suggestion: how about borrowing from Middle Chinese instead? Since the words are going to be mangled without tone anyway, why not mangle them in a way that'd make sense for as many speakers as possible?
For instance, kwok for 'country' could be familiar to a Mandarin speaker and more than familiar for Cantonese speakers. Koreans might see the connection with Hangguk, Japanese with koku- and Vietnamese with quốc.

[Nachtswalbe]

A suggestion: how about borrowing from Middle Chinese instead? Since the words are going to be mangled without tone anyway, why not mangle them in a way that'd make sense for as many speakers as possible?
For instance, kwok for 'country' could be familiar to a Mandarin speaker and more than familiar for Cantonese speakers. Koreans might see the connection with Hangguk, Japanese with koku- and Vietnamese with quốc.

Good idea

[Kuchigakatai]

That is honestly an excellent suggestion I hadn't heard before when it comes to IALs.

Ideally, even the specific Middle Chinese forms used would be guided by what Korean and Japanese actually retain. It doesn't have to be outright Middle Chinese if it is pointlessly confusing to Korean and Japanese speakers too.

Chinese words are easiest to borrow in multisyllabic form too. Ideally an auxlanger would look into what multisyllabic words, especially disyllabic ones, Korean and Japanese have in common with modern Mandarin.

[Moose-tache]

Most IALs try to have a very "generic" phonology. Even leaving aside the question of Euro-centrism (i.e. let's assume that we are infinitely cosmopolitan in our views of what is phonologically generic), we will always have a dilemma between phonological simplicity and loan words, at least loans from any language other than Tok Pisin or Hawai'ian. Most languages have some feature that is far from common cross-linguistically, but also not terribly ambitious for new learners. For example, if our IAL has a voicing distinction for plosives, then it is no longer maximally generic, since hundreds (possibly thousands?) of languages lack this feature. But it would make borrowing from those languages that do have this distinction awkward, and in many cases more opaque, if we did not have this distinction.

Personally I think the goal of making the most generic IAL phonology is a bit wrong-headed. I think an IAL should not be afraid to make distinctions that one only made by most or a large fraction of the world's languages, and this certainly make loans easier. But if it is impossible to borrow words without importing the whole phonology, don't bother. If English speakers cannot understand loans that flatten the tense-lax distinction, or Mandarin speakers cannot understand a word that levels all the tones, then you can't win. The goal is to make the words recognizable, but you have to trust that speakers can actually pull off some minor feat of inference no matter what.

tl;dr: Jan Misali's recurring segment "Let's shame any language that has more phonemes than /k/ and /a/" is dumb.

[Qwynegold]

Does this pose any more problem than loans from English or Russian? I doubt any IAL is equipped to transcribe "strength" or "zdravstvujtje" accurately. The bigger question would be what are Chinese speakers listening for when they try to understand foreigners speaking their language? If the IAL can reflect those distinctions, the words will still be recognizable.

English and Russian still have plenty of words with a simple structure, so you can just borrow the simpler words and avoid the complicated ones. The problem with Mandarin is that basically every word becomes unrecognizable.

[masako]

A suggestion: how about borrowing from Middle Chinese instead? Since the words are going to be mangled without tone anyway, why not mangle them in a way that'd make sense for as many speakers as possible?
For instance, kwok for 'country' could be familiar to a Mandarin speaker and more than familiar for Cantonese speakers. Koreans might see the connection with Hangguk, Japanese with koku- and Vietnamese with quốc.

This is what I have done with a few of my projects. Most of the more common Hanzi have expanded pronunciation/etomylogical drop-downs that contain good info for phonological borrowing. This is very useful for diachronics and direct borrowings.

tl;dr: Jan Misali's recurring segment "Let's shame any language that has more phonemes than /k/ and /a/" is dumb.

Like any widespread IAL, Tokipona has its fanatics. I've seen Klingon enthusiasts that think they should be recognized by the UN as an ethnicity. It's a wild world.

The problem with Mandarin is that basically every word becomes unrecognizable.

Well, that depends greatly on the phonotactics and sounds changes that are applied.

[Nortaneous]

could look at loans from mandarin into phonologically different (toneless etc.) languages - wutun, qiang, japhug, geshiza etc