Deciding which accent to learn?

[missbrokensmile]

I'm just curious about what accent people eventually end up choosing to "learn". I mean, in the beginning stages, it doesn't matter so much (or you're not aware that there are a lot of accents in China), and in-between, there is a lot of teacher changing, different resources, etc. Of course it's important to be exposed to other dialects and accents, but ultimately, you'll have to end up choosing an accent to emulate. Everyone and every area in the world has its own distinctive accent, whether you're aware of it or not. So, I was just curious, how do people decide what accent to pick up? Location, proximity, accessibility, etc.?

[jkhsu]

If you are learning from the proper universities, good language centers, and watching official CCTV news, etc, and most importantly have the foundations of pinyin correctly, you should not need to worry about accents. I don't think it is a choice but more where you learn also. You will undoubtedly pick up regional accents but they will be slight as long as your teachers are good.

[jasoninchina]

In school, I learned a reasonably formal sort of Chinese, with things like 好玩儿. I dropped that pretty quickly after getting laughed at. It's still fun to do from time to time though. However, despite living in the south, I refuse to give up the 'sh' in 'shi'. I feel strange to do otherwise. In hainan, many of the local Hainanese can't speak Mandarin very well, so it can get somewhat difficult to understand them. That being said, I definitely appreciate a certain level of "standardness" to my Mandarin. Like the above poster wrote, any half way decent school will teach you standard chinese. There's really not much choosing to be done, I feel.

[renzhe]

I think that most people will recommend that you learn the official, standard, "correct" pronunciation which is given by dictionaries, schools, news anchors and the standardised proficiency tests. This will make you understood more easily, and help you communicate with the widest range of people. The chance of not being understood by a native Mandarin speaker (whether 1st or 2nd language) while speaking textbook Mainland putonghua or Taiwanese guoyu is very small. It grows considerably with most regional accents.

This is also what you are required to speak for any standardised test (HSK, Putonghua Shuiping Ceshi, TOP etc.) and what native speakers have to speak (in theory) for many jobs.

Once you have the correct pronunciation down, you can try to pick up a local accent for fun.

[roddy]

To be honest, if you have to ask the question, the answer is none. If you had a good reason to learn any specific accent you'd know which - maybe you'd be married to someone from Sichuan, or doing a lot of business in Jiangxi. Otherwise, stick to trying to get rid of your foreign one - that'll be enough of a challenge.

[rezaf]

Blow with the wind. Try to stay standard but eventually as you communicate with people you will absorb their accents naturally. I have noticed that in environments like Shanghai that are full of different accents even some native speakers slightly change their accents depending on who they are talking to. Personally I speak nanfang hua when I'm with my Taiwanese or Malaysian friends and beifang hua (with all the erhua etc) when I'm talking to beifang people. Just do whatever feels natural.

P.S. Learning accents is not something that you should try to do but keeping your standard accent is. Accents will come naturally after you spend some time with native speakers.

[Scoobyqueen]

Just do whatever feels natural

Do you think it is natural to imitate other people's accents?

I currently live in Germany and my friends would get very offended if I suddenly tried to speak with a bavarian accent but then changed to a Cologne accent when speaking to people from this region. It can come across a bit offensive.

I have a friend from Fujian and I have noticed that she does not like it when people point out her not being able to pronounce certain things.

It can be a sensitive issue so stick with the standard pronunciation.

Roddy's advice is good. Getting rid of the foreign accent is probably the bigger challenge.

[rezaf]

No I said we should try to speak the standard Mandarin and imitate CCTV but in my own experience the conversation becomes easier when I slightly shift my Mandarin towards nanfanghua or beifanghua according to the people I'm speaking to and in a conversation this is not something that I do intentionally. It just happens naturally. I just can't use erhua on a nanfangren or z,c,s instead of zh,ch.sh on a beifangren.

[renzhe]

Do you intentionally use z,c,s for zh,ch,sh when talking to Shanghainese?

What if the Shanghainese has a standard accent?

[rezaf]

I'm struggling to keep my Mandarin close to standard so I speak the standard accent with people who can speak it and most of the Mainlanders that I know can. The reason why I sometimes use z,c,s is because I have been exposed to Malaysian's 華語 more than anything else because of my classmates, therefore I sometimes can't control it. Most of the time I start the conversation in standard but after a few minutes I sound a little bit like nanfang people.

[jbradfor]

Do you think it is natural to imitate other people's accents?

Yes, I think it is natural.

If you are learning a language, you learn by trying to copy (intentionally or unintentionally) the speech you hear around you. Even as an adult, I've found I have a very unfortunate tendency when in England for more than 12 hours to unintentionally start doing this really really horrible faux British accent.

[creamyhorror]

I'm in two minds about my accent. I like proper s/sh differentiation, etc. but I find erhua (and to a lesser degree qingsheng) a bit too beifang/mainland for me. I'd also rather use mainland than Taiwanese tones for words. Plus my accent changes depending on whether I'm speaking to a Singaporean, mainlander or Taiwanese. My countrymen think I sound weird (too biaozhun). It's a bit of a conundrum.

I guess I waver between British, American and Singaporean pronunciation too, so it might be a system-wide problem in a sense (heh).

[yellowpower]

Best not to get too hung up about so called standard 'accents' - b'cos all accents - the good, bad, and ugly - all make up humanity and variety is the spice of life. Celebrate the beauty of it and marvel that another world and culture becomes accessible to you.

Most important is that your tones are right and clear, and that people can understand what you're saying. There are numerous examples of learners of different languages, trying so hard to have that 'native speaker' accent from whatever country or region, that what comes out of their mouths are a torrent of indistinguishable sounds.

Many global languages, French, Mandarin, German, Spanish)- ALL have their variations of speech patterns, pronounciation, etc depending on country, geography, history, influence of other languages...so is there such a thing as a one standard accent, and who dictates or says that is THE official acceptable one? There is power in diversity and differences that makes language so vibrant.

Sad but true, many equate having a so called native speaker accent of whatever language as the defining hallmark of having succeeded in mastering any foreign language...ironical, how you sound can determine how fluent and how much of the language you know....and better yet how about trying to 'look the part' of the people who speak the language if you look nothing like that group to begin with. Perception is not always based on realities.

[Hofmann]

Standard varieties are standard because of its users. Standardized varieties are standard because of its regulators.

Given current resources, I recommend learning what is known as 普通話 or 國語, because learning resources for these varieties are most abundant. It seems too troublesome to try to find, for example, how a Shanghainese person (speaking Mandarin) would say something.

And yes, most people have trouble getting rid of their non-Han accent. Have you done that yet?

[jkhsu]

It seems too troublesome to try to find, for example, how a Shanghainese person (speaking Mandarin) would say something.

Most current generation of Shanghainese in Shanghai (those 30yr old and under) speak pretty standard Mandarin because schools require it and also a lot of Chinese in Shanghai are from other places in China so they (the Shanghainese) are required to speak more standard Mandarin with them. It's the older generation of Shanghainese that have problems with zh, ch, sh sounds. However, I don't think that's the case with Taiwan or Hong Kong. I think even the current generation have issues with the zh, ch, sh sounds there.

[歐博思]

Do you think it is natural to imitate other people's accents?

Yes. Mom, Dad...

I once was playing soccer with friends. At the time one of those friends was engaged to an Australian guy. Now I thought that guy was really cool, and by the end of the day I was saying 'mate' and talking like I was born down under (with a slight midwest USA accent? )

After your entire "country" accent is in the right place (China) and can about trick a native Chinese on the phone that you are not 'waiguoren', then your Chinese will naturally drift towards whomever you are friends with!

[hbuchtel]

How about listening?

Which accents do you think are the most important to be able to understand?

[anonymoose]

Best not to get too hung up about so called standard 'accents' ... Most important is that your tones are right and clear

But is having correct tones not part of imitating a standard accent? I mean, non-standard accents differ not only in sound but also in tone from the standard. So it is a bit of a contradiction, on the one hand, to advocate not getting too hung up about the standard accent, yet on the other insisting on "correct" tones.

Beginners sometimes worry about accent, perhaps because of incomplete information and confusion between accent and dialect, but really this is rather a non-issue. For anyone learning Mandarin, I would say without reservation that one should aspire to acquire a standard accent (as presented in most reputable teaching materials). Apart from the practical difficulties associated with learning a non-standard accent (without being in the region that it is spoken), why would anyone even want to? Wouldn't you rather your Mandarin be as understandable as possible to the widest audience? Especially considering for many people even getting the standard accent up to a comprehensible accuracy (in other words, sufficiently ditching the foreign accent) is a challenge.

Also, some people would argue that there is no real "standard" - only the CCTV accent which noone speaks in real life, and that any regional accent is just as acceptable as any other. But the reality is, even amongst native speakers in China, accents from one region are sometimes looked down upon or ridiculed by people from another region. So as a foreigner, where your accent is likely to come under closer scrutiny than would a native speaker's, if nothing else, you will get more kudos for having a standard-sounding accent (which will raise the overall impression given by your Chinese, even if it is not fault-free in other respects).

Of course, once you understand enough about Mandarin, and have enough mastery and control over your speaking, you can experiment with accent and dialect, but this should be avoided as a beginner.

[Mike N]

While I have nothing to add to this post which anonymoose and others have not already said, I'll just relate my personal developmental experience with you. Sorry if it's a bit lengthy!

When I first started learning Chinese I had a teacher from Chengdu, but her 普通话 (standard Chinese) was pretty good, so her accent did not have any kind of profound affect on my own. However, early on in my studies I made a Taiwanese friend who spoke with the accent typical of southern China. Over the years of studying various foreign languages, I've learned that I tend to be very impressionable in terms of accent, vernacular, and speech patterns--even when speaking English. Because of this, a lot of southern accent began to creep into my Chinese.

After I left my teacher from Chengdu, my next teacher was from Beijing, and she was adamant about the proper use of 儿 and introduced me, for the first time, to 儿话 (which I hated at first, probably because of my southern influence). My accent swiftly began to take on some characteristics of the northern Chinese accent. Then I went to China.

To make a long story short(er), by the time I had been in China for a few months I had spoken with so many Chinese with different accents that I sort of evened out and became rather more neutral, meaning that I was easily understood by Chinese natives from all over the country. I also had native Chinese begin to confuse me for a native on the phone (and in person), so I knew that I had done a good job.

Through it all, I never much cared what part of China my Chinese came from. When I was around southerners, my brain naturally moved to emulate their speech, resulting in a more southern accent. When I was in Beijing, my brain shifted the other direction to match up with those around me. What I did care about, and what we all should care about when learning a foreign language, is that we don't sound American (or Canadian, or French, etc.). That is more uncomfortable than any "inferior" Chinese accent could possibly be to a native speaker.

Sorry again for the length of this post. I get kind of long-winded sometimes. 请多关照! :rolleyes:

[yellowpower]

Speaking any language is not about having a native-speaker (i.e. standard) accent to be understood, it's about reproducing sounds that people can understand based on situations and contexts, communicating your message. So for beginning ESL learners which standard English accent should they aspire and listen to, is it British English, American English, Canadian English, Australia English, New Zealand English, etc? So which accent should be looked down upon? and which one is ridiculed by native speakers from among these variations of English? So why should variations in spoken Chinese be different?

End of the day, ESL learners will need to be able to comprehend English in all its spoken varities at some point. And as adult learners of any foreign language, they likely will have a so called non-standard accent when speaking. Does this mean that without sounding like one of the varieties of spoken English, that ESL learners cannot be understood by native speakers? Same case for people who are learning Chinese from non-asian or even asian backgrounds, they will at some point need to understand the different spoken varieties of Mandarin.

As with any other language, there are different clear Chinese (standard) accents from Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, and other Chinese speaking countries respectively. Yes, for classroom learning it's important to have that a clear consistent accent to listen to get pronounciation and comprehension right. But after a while, when a person steps out of the classroom into the real world there is a plethora of different accents, clipped sounds, etc that they will need to deal with.

One can't choose a teacher based just on how they sound. I know people who speak Mandarin with an accent whether from an English speaking background, Japanese speaking, etc...to their credit they speak clearly and fluently just like a native speaker would with no hang ups or concerns about whether they sound standard or not. End of the day, kudos to them for making themselves understood and for having mastered the art of expressing themselves to interact with others. Their non standard accent has not hindered them from immersing themselves in the language.

My point is to respect different accents and to avoid placing value judgements on them early on.