Pinyin "h" sound, pronunciation I notice that the pinyin &quot;h&quot; is in many books just the same as in English.
But when I listen to people, some people stress the &quot;h&quot; and there is a tiny gggg, and some gurgling sometimes (hope this is the right word, my native tongue is not English).
My question is, is this how it should sound, a pretty pronounced H sound or is it a dialect that I shouldn't pick up and should my H be really clean?
In standard Mandarin, the pinyin h is pronounced as [x] in IPA, like ch in Scottish English loch -- yes, you're right that there's a tiny g, because [x] is a velar consonant. However, in south China, many simply say [h], although some natural assimilation may happen. For instance, for those speakers, pinyin ha is [ha] while pinyin he becomes [xɤ] (if you get [ɤ] right, then [hɤ] simply doesn't work, you would do [xɤ] unconsciously). Therefore [h] and [x] are allophones in this sense, so don't worry about your pronunciation.