Practicing with my girlfriend?

[JMitchem]

My girlfriend is a Chinese-born American who speaks Mandarin, but in a Zhejiang/Hangzhou dialect. Probably the biggest differences in pronunciation is that x->s, sh->x, and zh->dz, at least from what I can tell compared to other pronunciation. Here and there some of the vowels/finals are pronounced a bit differently too.

I'd like to practice speaking with her, and she seems willing to work with me and help me. However, she's also been correcting my pronunciation here and there. When she teaches me something that's different than 'everyone else', it makes me a bit hesitant.

Am I better off trying to develop a pure Putonghua accent and not speaking with her in Mandarin until I've done that? Or should I start practicing with her now and risk picking up her accent? Is it difficult to change one's accent later?

(She speaks fluent English.)

[yonglin]

If other (Chinese) people understand what your girlfriend says, her pronunciation is probably just fine. If she thinks your pronunciation needs a correction, following her advice is most likely going to make you more understandable. Of course, depending on your loved ones for Chinese practice can be quite frustrating (for all parties), and whether this is advisable really depends on what your alternatives are: do you have access to other Chinese speakers, or would abstaining from practicing with your girlfriend mean you have no one else to practice with?

One problem when you're learning a new language is that you don't know what difference in "noise" makes a difference in meaning in a particular language. So two noises that sound meaningfully different to you may not sound meaningfully different to a Chinese speaker. Or maybe only to some Chinese speakers. (There is a linguistic term for this which I cannot remember.) For example, while Chinese learners are generally taught that pinyin "w" is pronounced like English "w", many Chinese people pronounce it more like an English "v" and this sounds totally normal. In English, the w/v distinction is meaningful, but in Chinese it is not.

In many southern dialects, the zh-->z, ch-->c, sh-->s merges and clipping -ng to -n are quite well-documented. Many native Chinese speakers are aware that their Chinese suffer from this problem, and can produce more "standard" noises if asked. Some even practice "hyper correction" (switch genuine z/c/s for zh/ch/sh). I personally have never heard of x-->s or sh-->x shifts, and this sort of makes me wonder whether you have an appropriate understanding of the s/sh/x set of noises: although you may have grasped a particular version of these, your idea of when a noise is more like "x" than "s" or "sh" may be slightly off. The only way to learn this is really to spend hours and hours and hours listening (to different speakers, in different contexts).

[msittig]

First, seconding everything yonglin said. A great post.

Second, in particular I emphasize what he said about studying from multiple sources. The more voices you hear from differenct sources, the better idea you will have of what is standard, and the better you will be able to adapt your accent to whatever the situation calls for.

Third, don't let this put you off from learning from your girlfriend. Having a model/instant feedback from a native speaker is not something to waste even if her accent is not completely standard. There are Chinese at my school who studied abroad in the US, Australia and the UK, and they all have slightly different English accents which I consider naturally acceptable and as easy/hard to understand as native English speakers from those countries.

Good luck and keep at it.

[JMitchem]

Thanks for that. Gives me a few things to think about.

I really don't have anyone to practice the language with besides her. There's just not much of a Chinese population around here.

What I do know is that she can tell me when I say something "wrong". If I was theoretically speaking with a proper Beijing accent, she'd still be able to point out where I was saying things wrong, even though my pronunciation is different from hers. So right now I think I'm going to try to learn my pronunciation mainly from recordings, but use her to validate comprehensibility. Does that sound reasonable?

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By "sh->x", I mean that she pronounces a few words like xiao3 and shao3 exactly the same. Of course the distinction can be inferred from context, but out of context, she's saying the exact same thing. (I actually say this more from a linguistic "she's making the exact same sounds" and less "I can't tell the difference")

--

When I was 3-5 years old, I lived just outside of Paris. As a kid, I picked up the accent and the language, at least everything you need to know to have friends and go to school at that age. Years later, despite 5 years of relatively worthless high school French, I can't really use the language. But, when I do get a chance to speak to someone from France in the US, people initially assume I'm also a native because of my accent, and after a second of "oh, you're not French?", we switch to English. So I've seen how accent can be very important.

On the other hand, I know people who have a good command of a given language, but their accent is very heavy. Given a bit of time, you can understand them, but initially it can be quite difficult. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be like those professors or bosses people can't understand, who speak pretty good English but with an incomprehensible accent.

So I'm just hesitant on how I pick up my accent, because I know you can retain the accent even if you effectively lose the language. Bad pronunciation in the beginning, or the "wrong" accent, seems to be something very hard to change later on. Not that it can't be done, but it's harder than just learning it right in the first place.

Accents are a tricky thing. Not because they're that difficult to produce, but because every accent seems to have a certain amount of stereotypes attached to it, often classist, sometimes racist. Use one accent and you sound uneducated, use a different one and you sound pretentious. I also don't want to sound like an American.

And with French, if you're actually traveling in Europe, the Parisian accent is a good one to learn; most people will understand you, even if they don't speak it themselves. With Chinese, it seems a lot less clear cut.

--

All that being said, if I want to pick up a good Putonghua accent, but something I can use conversationally rather than excessively formal or excessively proper (i.e., diplomat and newscaster accents), what are some of the better sources? TV dramas? Radio talk shows?

[JMitchem]

This was a good thread: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/34148-deciding-which-accent-to-learn/

It basically answered my questions, namely:

"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."

"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."

[heifeng]

This is another gem from the forums, especially post #8

[abcdefg]

Am I better off trying to develop a pure Putonghua accent and not speaking with her in Mandarin until I've done that? Or should I start practicing with her now and risk picking up her accent?

Practice with your girlfriend. Don't waste the valuable resource she is kindly providing. Worry about accent later; it's not a big deal. As others have said, if you have a chance to practice with other native speakers as well, do that too.

[Ruben von Zwack]

The Chinese, as far as I can tell, seem to put much more emphasis on "correct" speaking and pronounciation than Westerners. At least from what I grasp, they don't seem to have that "hey, there is no wrong or right in speaking, it is a creative process" approach that bugs me here in Germany.

So I would appreciate any help from a Chinese native.

I remember my surprise when a friend told me he was from "Lanjing". A major city even! How could I not have heard of it? Took me a while to figure out it was an accent thing But it's not like I ended up confusing L and N, and of course he knows what correct Putonghua needs to sound like, and corrects my mistakes.

About being "doomed" by one accent - I have my doubts, don't people switch accents frequently? (Unless you are one of those very few unlucky ones who apparently really can't).

"Sociolects" can be dooming, yes, but that is a completely different matter, and if that should happen, then one would probably have other things to worry about than the accent...

[Demonic_Duck]

"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."

I don't really agree with the "you should aim to sound exactly like a native" way of thinking. It's generally unrealistic, there's no real reason why you should do that, and a slight accent can even be quite charming - think of how you view fluent but non-native speakers of English. For instance, personally I'm rather partial to the way northern Chinese tend to pronounce words like "delicious" as "delishers". What you want to remove is an accent heavy enough that it hinders your being understood. It's those accents that sound painful, and even then quite possibly more painful to your fellow learners than to natives - I cringe inside every single time one of the guys in my Chinese class, who claims that his pronunciation is generally understandable, pronounces 学习 as shui-shee, or pronounces almost every other two syllable word as fourth followed by second tone.