Reading Chinese Menus: Characters: 肉 — ròu — meat

[kake]

肉

One of the first characters I learned when I started teaching myself to read menus was 肉 (ròu in pinyin, pronounced to rhyme with "oh"). It basically means "meat" — and when the type of meat isn't specified, it almost always means pork.

In the context of the Chinese menu, the most important words including this character are:

牛肉 — niú ròu — beef
羊肉 — yáng ròu — lamb

There's also 豬肉 — zhū ròu — which is the explicit way to say "pork", but as mentioned above, the 豬 is usually left implicit

You don't need to worry too much about pronouncing things right at this stage, but if you're interested, the approximate pronunciations are nyoh roh, yang roh, and djoo roh.

Similarly, when you're just starting out with reading Chinese menus, don't worry too much if you have trouble remembering the tone marks. Just bear in mind that they do help determine the meaning of the word; for example, 豬/zhū (first tone) means pig, while 煮/zhǔ (third tone) means to cook, stew, or boil.

Having said that, here's what they mean in terms of pronunciation:

• the macron on the "ū" of "zhū" means you pronounce it with a high, sustained tone — this is the first tone
• the acute accent on the "ú" of "niú" and the "á" of "yáng" means you pronounce them with a rising (questioning) tone — this is the second tone
• the grave accent on the "ò" of "ròu" means you pronounce it with a falling tone — this is the fourth tone

Mandarin has four tones in all; the only one not represented above is the third tone, which is a falling-then-rising tone written with a caron; e.g. ǔ. (See Monday's post for links to a couple of YouTube videos covering tones.)

If you'd like to hear something of how these words sound when spoken, check out this video snippet covering "I like beef; I don't like chicken". Note that while 雞肉 (jī ròu) is used in the video to mean "chicken", on menus you'll often just see 雞 (jī), with the 肉 left implicit.

肉:	ròu	radical 130 (肉/⺼)	Cantodict	MandarinTools	YellowBridge	Zhongwen

If you have any questions or corrections, please leave a comment and let me know (or email me at kake@earth.li). See here for what these posts are all about.

Comments

Fifth tone

[kake]

Fifth tone is coming in week 3! I was in two minds over whether to mention it in this post or not. I've read conflicting things over the best way to think of it — some sources describe it as voiceless or toneless, while others describe it as taking its pitch from wherever the previous tone in the word/sentence ended up.

I've been thinking of fifth-tone syllables as being said in a sort of "throwaway" way, almost not there (but not actually omittable). I also read somewhere (I can't remember where — possibly in a textbook which is sitting in one of these piles of books here) that the syllable before a toneless one is often elongated slightly — some of the videos I've listened to bear this out, but I don't know if it's a regional variation or more widespread.

Re: Fifth tone

[pulchritude]

I learned it as 'toneless' and think of it as pronouncing the word...but with its normal tone less emphasized. I think 'taking its pitch from wherever the previous tone in the word/sentence ended up' does describe some instances fairly well.

I'm not sure I'd agree that it's almost not there because it really is, just less emphasized than normal. I am also pretty sure that Standard Mandarin doesn't advocate the elongation - I think it might be a regional thing that is a product of the way one's native topolect is said.

Re: Fifth tone

[kake]

Makes sense, thanks. I found the textbook I was thinking of, but I can't find anything in there about elongating the preceding syllable, so I suppose I must have read it on the internet — so it has a fair chance of having been completely made up :)

Re: Fifth tone

[pulchritude]

:)

I was thinking about it a bit more - I might also describe it as squeezing the word into half the normal time it usually takes to pronounce it, which because of its nature truncates the sound and causes it to be somewhat toneless.

Re: Fifth tone

[kake]

That makes sense too! This is going to be very helpful when it comes to posting about it explicitly in a couple of weeks' time.