Reading Chinese Menus: Characters: 魚 — yú — fish

[kake]

魚

Another very common character on Chinese menus is 魚 (yú in pinyin). On its own, it simply means "fish".

魚 rhymes roughly with the French "tu", and is pronounced with the second tone — remember, the second tone is denoted with an acute accent and pronounced with a rising, questioning tone. Here's an example pronunciation of 魚.

Here are some menu words that use the character 魚:

魚	yú	fish
魚片	yú piàn	sliced fish (edit, November 2010: I think "fish fillets" might actually be a better translation)
魷魚	yóu yú	squid or cuttlefish
鯽魚	jì yú	tilapia or crucian carp
鰻魚	mán yú	eel
鱔魚	shàn yú	swamp eel

Approximate pronunciations: I'm having trouble coming up with an explanation of how to pronounce piàn; it sort of rhymes with "yen", and it's a bit like saying the letters "p" and "n" one after the other very quickly — "pee en", but more compressed than that.

The others are a little easier to describe; yóu is pronounced "yo" (not "you"; compare with 肉/ròu from last week), jì is pronounced "gee", mán is pronounced rather like "man" in British English, and shàn rhymes with mán (aside from the tones).

The observant may note that 魷, 鯽, 鰻, and 鱔 have something in common; they all include a sort of squashed version of 魚 on their left-hand sides. This is no coincidence! If you see a character of this form, it's a pretty good bet that it refers to some kind of fish. However, this is not a guarantee; for example, 鮮 (xiān) is of this form, but actually means "fresh" or "delicious". Similarly, many fish-related words use characters of other forms, for example:

墨魚	mò yú	cuttlefish
三文魚	sān wén yú	salmon

墨 means "ink", which is one of the defining characteristics of the cuttlefish, so 墨魚 is literally "ink fish". 三文魚 has a different etymology; sān wén is actually phonetic for "salmon"! (I suspect this is more apparent in Cantonese pronunciation.)

魚:	yú	radical 195 (魚)	Cantodict	MandarinTools	YellowBridge	Zhongwen

Related posts:

• radicals,
• 酸菜魚 (suān cài yú/fish soup with pickled greens),
• 剁椒蒸魚 (duò jiāo zhēng yú/steamed fish with chopped salted chillies),
• 魚香茄子 (yú xiāng qié zi/fish-fragrant aubergine)
,
• 魚生 (yú shēng/raw fish salad),
• 三 (sān/three)

If you have any questions or corrections, please leave a comment (here's how) and let me know (or email me at kake@earth.li). See my introductory post to the Chinese menu project for what these posts are all about.

Comments

[pulchritude]

You might want to clarify that màn is pronounced rather like "man" in English refers to British English! Because màn sure doesn't sound like 'man' in American English XDDDDD

[kake]

Ha, yes, good point! This does all come with a permanent disclaimer of "in Kake's accent" :) I've edited the post to make it explicit.

[afuna]

Very cool -- thank you, I don't know much about the specific kinds of fish in Chinese, so this is all pretty new to me.

There's a slight inconsistency -- in the list, it's mán but in the paragraph explaining the pronunciation it's màn, not sure which is correct.

I'm also afraid I don't really know what the difference between British English man and non-British English man is! *puzzles over that a bit*

[kake]

There's a slight inconsistency -- in the list, it's mán but in the paragraph explaining the pronunciation it's màn, not sure which is correct.

Oops, good catch! It's mán — I've fixed it now.

I'm also afraid I don't really know what the difference between British English man and non-British English man is!

I knew the pronunciations were going to be the hardest part to explain... you're right that there is no standard British accent, but I did find an example mp3 of the vowel sound that I think pulchritude was suggesting should be excluded.

I should perhaps make it more explicit that people wanting to hear the proper pronunciations of the vowels and consonants should check back to the video I linked in my first "concepts" post... the ones I'm giving here are just approximations dreamed up by a non-Chinese speaker with no expertise in phonetics :)

[afuna]

Oh aha! I thought the original distinction that was being made was between a pronunciation of "man" and "mian" (which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me in context), and didn't realize that it was about the more subtle distinction of the "a" sound itself. (Making things slightly more complicated from my end, I know how the words should sound, I'm just horrible at matching up pinyin to what I think in my head *g*)

The mp3 cleared everything up -- thank you!

[kake]

Ah! I misunderstood the misunderstanding :) Glad my answer was useful despite that.