Help talk:IPA/Mandarin

I know that [ɨ] is commonly transcribed [z̩] or [ʐ̩], but I have never heard these pronounced as fricatives, like English Zzzz. That is, Mandarin sì "four" sounds nothing like English says when said quickly enough for the vowel to drop out. Rather, they seem to just be very close vowels: We'd at least need a lowering diacritic in addition to the syllablicity diacritic. A transcription of [ɨ] has the advantage that ri is a rather intuitive [ʐɨ] rather than an obscure [ʐʐ̞̩]. kwami (talk) 08:54, 10 July 2009 (UTC)