Putonghua as a local (street) language?

[zippy]

Hi,

Can anyone please tell me, which city dialect, most closely resembles the Putonghua required for the HSK exams? I've searched, but have been unable to find any definitive answer.

I'd like to study Mandarin in China, and want to live where the dialect used in HSK is used most locally.

[Dvdcnz]

First time making post here, you made me register ;)

North east china is not a bad shot, I can recommend Beijing and the cities around there. I myself lived a year in Tianjin, which were relatively close, a train trip to Beijing takes 30 mins

When I was to pick my location, I was strongly advised to go to Beijing, for learning Putonghua, "the real chinese" they said. I would have gone to Shanghai, but decided then to take Tianjin close to Beijing, a decision I am happy for today.

My advice is to not go for a city you have heard about before, as cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing etc have lots of foreigners, making you less special, making you miss out on all the finger pointing in streets and children hiding behind mothers whispering "lao wai" ;)

[anonymoose]

Which level of HSK? The advanced listening has people speaking with different accents.

Still, the Beijing dialect is not what is usually considered to be standard Mandarin*. Harbin is probably the place with the closest to standard Mandarin.

* Before anyone wants to start arguing about what "standard" is, this has been discussed to death on several other threads here, so let's not start that up again.

[Scoobyqueen]

I myself lived a year in Tianjin,

Doesnt Tianjin have different tones from Beijing. The way they say Tianjin for example isnt standard

[renzhe]

In terms of teaching materials and language teachers, it should be standard everywhere in China, as long as it's a good school.

In terms of the language spoken on the street, people say that the north-east is the closest to the standard.

But pretty much every place will have some sort of local accent, even Beijing. The thing with Beijing accent is that it is quite well understood because it is well represented on TV, but if you speak like that, you will sound like a Beijinger, and not like the HSK material.

Also, most major cities today have large migrant populations, so you'll be running into accents in any case. As long as you're aware of it and you have good teachers who can teach you the standard pronunciation, you should be fine.