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How to pronounce 'yin' and 'ying' - like Ear or like Year?

In video 21 - regarding to initial Y - I seem to hear different pronunciations for Yin and Ying. As for the initial sound, should I pronounce these words like Ear or like Year?

The main reason that I ask is that I’ve always heard Yingguoren (英国人 or Englishman) as ‘EEng-guo-ren’, but in the video I hear YEEng, and even one time an EE-Yeng. I asked different sources that gave varied answers, and I would love to hear your ruling :smiley:

Lots of compliments on this well constructed and excellently formulated series! Many greetings from the Netherlands.

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created: J Jun '17 last reply: J Jun '17 2 replies 2.9k views 2 users 0 likes 0 links

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There are 2 replies with an estimated read time of 1 minutes.

It’s a matter of accent. The “year” way of pronouncing is the most correct, Putonghua/Northern style, kinda like the Queen’s English. and the “ear” style is more relaxed, Taiwanese/Southern style. Hope I made it a bit more clear for you :+1:

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Okidoki, thanks for helping out :slight_smile:

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