Is watching Taiwanese Dramas / Variety shows bad for my learning?

[Zorlee]

Hello
I'm currently in the very early stages of learning Chinese. I'm starting to get used to the sounds of the language, the tones, some basic structures and stuff like that. However, since I understand practically no Chinese what-so-ever I can't judge whether or not something is spoken with a strong accent or not.
I speak Japanese fluently, and when I started out learning Japanese I would just put variety shows / dramas on in the background while doing other stuff, just to get familiar with the sounds. I also liked watching variety shows even though I couldn't understand a thing - it's probably due to the crazy themed Japanese shows
Anyway, I haven't found any mainland Chinese dramas or variety shows that I like, but I have found several Taiwanese shows that seems entertaining and fun. I'm just wondering, how much different will the Mandarin spoken in Taiwanese shows differ from mandarin spoken in shows from mainland China?

I'm just wondering if listening to Taiwanese mandarin while working on standard mandarin will turn out to be confusing, or if I'm over-thinking this?

Thank you guys for help

Peace!
Z

[liuwenhao]

The more Chinese you absorb, the better. The Taiwanese accent is a bit different than the "standard" Beijing accent, but it's similar to the Chinese spoken in Fujian and Zhejiang province, from what I've heard. You'll need to get used to as many accents as possible so don't worry about it!

[Lu]

 

I'm just wondering if listening to Taiwanese mandarin while working on standard mandarin will turn out to be confusing

 

I'd say no. Taiwanese Mandarin is the same language as Chinese Mandarin. People on tv shows will probably have a Taiwanese accent, but they would be perfectly understandable to any other Mandarin speaker. There are some sounds that people on Taiwanese tv will pronounce differently, so if in doubt, follow what your textbook says, but generally, listening to such tv shows will help your language.

[roddy]

Just be aware of what the differences are, and decide which accent you're going to have - I'd be wary of ending up with a mish-mash of both, as that will just confuse people. 

[lechuan]

Taiwanese Mandarin seems pretty "standard" to me. In fact, I find it more "standard" than some (other) parts of China. Main differences is the removal of the -er sound (compared to the Beijing "standard" accent. ie. na3li vs nar3, shang4ban1 vs shang4bar1, etc) at the end of certain words. They may pronounce shi/zhi/chi si/zi/ci, not differentiate between n/ng endings, and possibly swap n/l/r sounds a bit. Those are the main differences that I notice, and I tend to see it more in older generations who also speak the Taiwanese dialect.

As for the -er, I just tend to match whatever the person I'm talking to uses

[character]

 

I'm just wondering if listening to Taiwanese mandarin while working on standard mandarin will turn out to be confusing, or if I'm over-thinking this?

 

I got into learning Mandarin because I enjoy HK/Chinese films (a lot of older HK films are in Mandarin, and most HK DVDs have a Mandarin soundtrack).  Personally I would avoid listening to Taiwanese Mandarin, as it does sound significantly different than standard Mandarin.

 

HK dramas can be entertaining, and you can find releases of them with a reasonable Mandarin dub and English subtitles.  I've been getting a lot of Malaysian releases of them like that on eBay.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I started off being mainly exposed to Taiwanese, and when I was confronted with "other" Mandarin first, as I was preparing for the HSK, the shock was quite big. I guess for a beginner even something that in hind sight is just a slight difference can be a massive obstacle.

It took me a few days to tune my ears in, and then I was okay. But it was an effort.

I noticed I tend to make pronounciation mistakes though (zh -> z, etc.) which I find very annoying, and I suppose they come from my early-on exposure to Taiwanese.

[JustinJJ]

I have just (yesterday) moved back to Australia and noticed that walking around the city/China town and having a chat to people and eavesdropping on conversations, the mandarin spoken here is very standard. In Beijing while not every one is a local, the majority have a distinctly Northern accent with a lot of 儿化音, whereas I didn't notice that in Australia. Could be for a number of reasons, but perhaps one is that they would be from a variety of areas of China, so have to speak in a more standard way to communicate with people from a very different area.

 

Another couple of obversations: people seem more surprised about foreigners speaking to them in Chinese than in China, and I think that (until the point of trying to find a job) it would be possible for someone to live in Australia using only mandarin due to the large Chinese population and the variety of China shops, etc. So I guess it would be possible to create an immersion environment here if you have a lot of will-power.

 

In relation to the OP, perhaps stick with standard mandarin for a while and when you become more comfortable, branch on to other common accents such as Taiwan and Northern accents. Strangely, yesterday someone asked me if I am Taiwanese (I do not have Chinese heritage)!

[Zorlee]

Thank you guys so much for your answers! I really appreciate it.
I guess I'll stick to standard mandarin (or close to it) for now, and move on to Taiwanese shows etc. after a while.
Again, thank you so much!

[roddy]

Have you checked out the goodies in our Television sub-forum? If you can't find something you like there, I'll refund your forums membership fee. 

[OneEye]

I really think (and I've said it before here) that a good clear Taipei accent is probably one of the most widely-understood accents there is. A strongly Minnan/Taiwanese-influenced accent is a different matter, but it seems like native Mandarin speakers from Taipei have little trouble being understood by other Mandarin speakers anywhere in "Greater China," whereas that may not be the case for speakers of other varieties of Mandarin. A Taipei accent may not be PRC 普通話 "standard," but I don't think that's any reason to avoid hearing it if you find a show you like.