Improving my accent... but which one?

[Yadang]

Hey everyone,

 

Last year I went from pretty much zero speaking ability to an okay speaking and understanding by being an exchange student in Taiwan. I hadn't taken any Chinese classes before I went, but I was able to do some self studying. I mainly worked on pronunciation and tones, reading and listening to the ChinesePod pronunciation guide and recording myself on my computer many times to compare it with the native speaker's pronunciation. So far, I've paid a lot of attention to pronunciation, and I work hard to have good tones and "standard" pronunciation...

But now, I'm starting to wonder... My whole time in Taiwan, if I learned a new word from context or whatever, I'd look it up in the dictionary, just to make sure I was getting the tone right, and also, with "zi" "ci" "si", to see if they were actually zi ci or si, or if they were zhi, chi or shi, but being pronounced as a - what would it be paletal? Alveolar paletal? 

Anyways - when I noticed that it was zhi, chi or shi, I would pronounce these retroflex, as I had learned from my self study of pronunciation, even though every Taiwanese would pronounce them not retoflex...

Many people told me that I had very standard pronunciation and it was definitely evident that I was much better understood than some of my other foreigner friends... But now I'm wondering - should I really even care about having a "standard" accent? I mean, I've never even been to beijing, and yet, I'm trying to imitate their accent, which is the standard accent, right?

I've just been thinking - wouldn't it be kind of weird for someone to come to the U.S. and try to imitate a standard British accent? Maybe this isn't comparable, because there is standard American, at least I thought there was...

So anyways - a few questions. Should I really be trying to have a standard accent, or should I just try to imitate those who I live around, including when I know their accent doesn't match the "standard"? I feel like this might even make me more understood as this is what they're used to - and also it might make me fit in more, if I speak like (or try to speak like) they speak...

And another question: if you think I should drop  the whole standard thing and go with a Taiwanese accent - will this cause any problems if I go to the mainland? When, in Taiwan, I even suggested to my host mother that I should imitate the Taiwanese accent more, she said that I shouldn't, because the accent I had was more standard... but maybe that's not necessarily a good thing...

The last question: if you think I should drop the standard accent and go with a Taiwanese accent, when I'm in Taiwan, should I change my accent, based on where I am? I mean, I don't know if I could even pull it off, but if Taiwanese people find it easier or at least more natural to listen to non-retroflex syllables, and people in Beijing find it easier/more natural to have strong retroflex syllables, than should I just change my accent depending on where I am/who I'm speaking to?

Thanks for your advice!

[mr.kylelong]

This is a great question.  Just understand that reasonable people will disagree, and there is no "correct" answer.

 

I can't tell you what you should do but I can tell you what I do.  I emulate the "standard accent" as much as possible.  Here is my reasoning behind it:  if the purpose of improving your accent is to increase the likelihood that other people will understand you, it makes sense to go with the most commonly understood accent, right?  Look no further than Chinese movies and TV shows.  They're seen and understood all across China.  I use that as my model and I've been understood everywhere I go in China.

 

However, I live in Shenyang, the Northeast.  Although they have a pretty standard accent, some of the things are different.  Because I'm here, I will use some expressions that are only understood here, because that's what everyone does.  For example, instead of asking, "duo1 shao3 qian2"  people here always say, "duor1 qian2?"  So, I use common expressions from the region I'm living in but I always try to keep my accent standard.

 

But of course, it depends on where you want to be.  If you never intend to leave Taiwan, you're not crazy for thinking about talking like them.  Taiwan has a lot of movies, and music as well and is widely understood.  If you were in some heavy dialect area, that would be another story.  It would be like going to the rural south in the US to learn English, there is nothing inherently wrong with speaking English like Larry the Cable guy but it will make you tough to understand if you try to go anywhere else in the world to speak English.

 

Bottom line, it's really up to you.

[OneEye]

It's my opinion that anyone living in Taiwan ought to mimic a Taiwanese accent as much as possible. If you're trying to have the Mainland accent but you live in Taiwan, you'll just be doing a poor imitation of it. You're presumably learning Taiwanese Mandarin pronunciation at your school, meaning very few 兒化's and very few neutral tones. Some of the tones in Taiwanese Mandarin are different than they are on the Mainland, like those for 期、質、識, etc. Some pronunciations are different, like 垃圾 (lājī in China, lèsè in Taiwan). Many words are different too. 土豆 means potato in China and peanut in Taiwan, which uses 馬鈴薯 for potato. 出租車 means taxi in China and rental car in Taiwan, which uses  計程車 for taxi (and Hong Kong uses 的士). China calls pineapples 菠蘿, while Taiwan calls them 鳳梨. The list goes on and on. If you want to sound like a mainlander, you'll have to account for all of those differences. If you keep your Taiwanese vocabulary, tones, etc., but try to have a Mainland accent, you'll just sound like a weird mishmash, and like I said, it will just be a poor imitation. What's the point?

 

Fortunately, native speakers of Taiwanese Mandarin (vs. people with strong 台語, 客家話, or 原住民語言 accents) are very widely and easily understood throughout the Chinese-speaking world. I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago and talked to people from Hong Kong, China, and Singapore and there were no problems communicating. Everyone understood my Taiwanese accent just fine. If you get to the point that you truly sound like a native Mandarin speaker from Taiwan, you're doing pretty damn well. And you'll sound authentic, not like a mishmash of accents in an attempt to be "standard." Whose standard, anyway? I think you're right about the American/British comparison. If someone wanted to learn a British accent, I'd recommend that they move to the UK, preferably somewhere with a fairly neutral, widely-understood accent. If they wanted an American accent, I'd tell them to move to the US, and to stay out of the South (I'm a Southerner, so I can say it). Have you ever heard Brits complain about Americans trying to do a British accent? That's how Taiwanese people sound when they try to imitate mainland accents. It's ridiculous. Imagine a Chinese person living in Seattle and trying his best to do a British accent out of some notion that it's somehow "better."

 

You're surrounded by native speakers from whom you can learn the language and get feedback on pronunciation, usage, etc. Use it to your advantage. Mimic the way they speak in all respects, because the closer you sound to them, the more native-like you will be by definition. A mishmash accent doesn't sound native-like anywhere, because it doesn't exist naturally anywhere.

[陳德聰]

My philosophy is that it's best to just go with the flow. Answering your last question: yes. Change your accent where you go.

Have you ever met someone who grew up in North America but spent years in Australia and when they came back they had an Australian accent? I have a classmate right now who all last semester had an East London accent, but now speaks with a West Coast (NA) accent. It's totally normal for accents to assimilate this way, and is also probably part of everyday social processes.

 

But for the same reason, it's not weird that my Japanese friend who spent 4 years in Australia before moving to Vancouver still has traces of her Australian accent when she speaks English. For the most part, she has a very Canadian accent now, but there are times when she says things that remind me she really first spoke Australian English.

That being said... far more entertaining is the guy from Korea whose afterschool tutor was Irish. I hope he never develops a Canadian accent.

[anonymoose]

I'd say aim for standard, the main reason being that in Taiwan, people will think of your standard accent as something positive, and it will be easily understood there. On the other hand, if you have a non-standard accent, people from the mainland will probably see it as a negative (although most people will be impressed that you can speak Chinese at all), and it might impede comprehension, depending on how good your chinese is in other respects.

 

And by the way, the so-called standard accent is not the Beijing accent. The standard has a lot less er-hua than Beijinghua.

[Kamille]

Like OneEye, I advise you to mimic the Taiwanese accent if you live in Taiwan. But beware that "Taiwanese standard accent" if there is such a thing, is not what you hear out in the streets. And Taiwanese accent is much more diverse then one would imagine (by the way, almost no one speaks an aboriginal language as a mother language, aboriginals speak Taiwanese at home like the others and aboriginal languages are dying). In the worst case you could come across people whose "xu" will become "xi" and "si" will become "su". This is for older people mainly but I came across younger ones who were clearly hard to understand because of that. One of them went to do theater afterwards and corrected his accent: he told me that he only then noticed that actually a lot of people were getting it wrong like he did before. These people's accent is just a simplification and not a real "variation" because they are not native mandarin speakers. Actually they're just as you and me: speaking a second language and letting the first one influence on the second one.

Therefore: although lots of people speak like that in Taiwan, their accent is no standard.

 

And, here comes the interesting stuff : although almost no Taiwanese (but I met exceptions) will get the difference between "zh/chi/shi" and "zi/ci/si" right, if you want a standard Taiwanese accent, you should not imitate the masses. Moreover pronouncing "zhi/chi/shi" correctly gives one more hint as to the word you are saying. Basically: don't imitate the foreigners who think they are doing the right thing by going "zi/ci/si" everywhere (I used to be one of them, so I know what I'm talking about). Replacing "zh/chi/shi" with "zi/ci/si" is what is left in the younger generation of what the previous ones did completely wrong ("xu"->"xi" and "si"->"su"). Just imagine how hard it is to understand the word 持續 under these circumstances : "cu xi". I did hear that one man. In other words, there are the ㄓ, ㄔ, ㄕ, ㄩ sounds in Taiwanese zhuyin, and they are meant to be used.

 

In other words: there is a difference between "having an accent" and "simplificating sounds because your first language doesn't have them".

[gato]

Like OneEye, I advise you to mimic the Taiwanese accent if you live in Taiwan. But beware that "Taiwanese standard accent" if there is such a thing, is not what you hear out in the streets. And Taiwanese accent is much more diverse then one would imagine (by the way, almost no one speaks an aboriginal language as a mother language, aboriginals speak Taiwanese at home like the others and aboriginal languages are dying).

 

To get around the difficulty of identifying the "Taiwan standard accent" for Mandarin, just try to imitate a specific person.  For example, if you are female, you could try to imitate 张惠妹 or 蔡英文, and if you are male, you could try to imitate 蒋勋 or 蔡康永.  You can substitute my examples with your own model accents. 

[Lu]

If you can speak like a Taiwanese in Taiwan and like a Beijinger in Beijing, that's the best choice. But it's hard to pull off.

 

I think you're going about it the right way: when learning something new, check the standard pronunciation to make sure you know it. Regardless of what you end up speaking, you need to know the standard. You will inevitably end up with some amount of a Taiwanese accent, because apart from the things that can be pointed out easily, they just speak at a slightly different place in their mouth and say slightly different things, but that's okay. Dropping erhua is not a problem; missing some retroflexes is not a disaster but it's better if you know where they should be. But I would strongly advise against speaking too much Tai-oan Go-yi, changing your -ü to -i will make you sound a bit too 台 even in Taiwan itself. Very well if you're Frank Hsieh, but not something to emulate if you're learning the language.

 

I came to Taiwan with a Beijing accent (在哪儿？在公园儿的南门儿。), which everyone and their sister had to remark upon. I didn't want to sound like someone from somewhere else and swiftly dropped my retroflexes and my erhua. I've since usually been mistaken for Taiwanese on the phone, which is a nice experience. Came back to Holland, said two sentences to a Chinese I didn't know, and he remarked that I just came back from Taiwan, didn't I. Moved to Beijing later, and for the longest time people could still hear I had spent time in Taiwan. I did get back some of my retroflexes and erhua, but have on occasion said 'zer' for 这里/这儿, which is just messed up. So yah, it can be hard to speak like the locals wherever you go, because you'll carry traces of your old location with you.

[li3wei1]

For what it's worth, I spent four years in Taiwan, straight out of college (where most of my teachers were probably also from Taiwan, we were using traditional characters). I didn't care that much about which accent I was developing, I just imitated those around me (mostly Taipei). When I then went to the Mainland, many people said that I sounded very 标准, and while they could tell I had spent time in Taiwan, they could understand me. I think there are regional accents in the Mainland that are far more an impediment to understanding than the Taiwanese accent.

[Yadang]

Hey everyone, thanks for all your responses! Wow, a lot of variation, as mr.kylelong said there would be... Although I was really hoping that he'd be wrong

So it looks like the main advantage of trying to emulate a standard accent would be that you'd be understood better in places besides Taiwan. This is a very good point. However, as lu, li3wei1, and OneEye remarked, is that the "Taiwanese accent" is very understood in other parts of the Chinese-speaking world. Another advantage is that people will view this accent as probably a good thing, or at least not a bad thing.

 

However, as OneEye pointed out, the best I could probably do would just be a mishmash of a "standard" accent mixed with a "Taiwanese" accent, which no one has an isn't spoken anywhere, so why not just go with the Taiwanese accent and get it as good as it can be...

You all really brought up some really good points...

However, I'm a bit confused by what Kamille said: 
 

 

 

although almost no Taiwanese (but I met exceptions) will get the difference between "zh/chi/shi" and "zi/ci/si" right, if you want a standard Taiwanese accent, you should not imitate the masses. Moreover pronouncing "zhi/chi/shi" correctly gives one more hint as to the word you are saying. Basically: don't imitate the foreigners who think they are doing the right thing by going "zi/ci/si" everywhere

 

 

So, is what you're suggesting is imitating most of the Taiwanese accent, but not all of it? I mean, you said, if I want a "standard Taiwanese accent"... But from what I heard, from class mates, teachers, host parents, basically everyone was saying zi ci and si instead of zhi chi shi... In fact, sometimes my host father would even, when trying to be clearer, try to pronounce the retroflexes and even pronounce some naturally non-retroflex syllables as retroflex...

I guess doing this would make myself more clear in other parts of the Chinese-speaking world, but wouldn't it also kind of make my accent not Taiwanese? Then I'd have the same problem that OneEye mentioned: having an accent that's just a mishmash of different accents - then there's not the advantage of sounding more natural/native like, nor the advantage of being totally standard. However, I guess it's taking the middle road between these two...

 

 

 

 

And by the way, the so-called standard accent is not the Beijing accent. The standard has a lot less er-hua than Beijinghua.

Thanks, anonymoose!

 

Well, since you guys all brought up really great points for each side, I'm still on the fence... But another question:

What about how the Taiwanese will perceive it? As anonymoose said, most people in Taiwan will see (and, in fact, did see, and also told me) a more standard accent as a positive thing. But is this positive insofar as that I just have better pronunciation than most foreigners they've met (so like, less of an American accent), or is it really because it's actually more "standard" sounding? What I mean is, where they really commenting on my pronunciation being less Americanized, or my actual accent being more standardized... Does this make sense? I mean, perhaps sounding more like them (in going with a Taiwanese accent) will also have benefits in that they will see me more like they see their classmates and friends, because I speak more similarly to them, as well as having it still be seen as a "positive" thing just because my pronunciation is much less Americanized... And what about in other places? If the Taiwanese accent really is pretty understandable to other people because of Taiwanese movies and things, and because it's not as different as other accents can be, would this be seen as "positive" as well? As OneEye said: " If you get to the point that you truly sound like a native Mandarin speaker from Taiwan, you're doing pretty damn well. "

[Lu]

In my experience, if you speak like a Taiwanese without going overboard with it (ie don't pronounce 邮局 as youji and such), what you get is that nobody in Taiwan will notice much about your accent. Unless you have a foreign accent on top of that of course. All they will tell you is that your Chinese is so great. If you speak more 标准, with some erhua and retroflexes, people in Taiwan will notice and tell you at every turn how very biaozhun your accent is. Even, I suspect, if you still have a foreign accent on top of that.

To my knowledge, and in my experience, a Taiwanese accent on the mainland is definitely noticed, but there is no prejudice or negative feelings attached to it, and it's universally understood. Neither, to my knowledge, do people have special positive feelings about it. Anyway, assuming you look like a foreigner, that will always be more noticable than your accent.

When I was in Taiwan a while ago, after spending 2+ years in Beijing, an event I was at was presented by an Indian(-looking) guy, speaking Chinese. He spoke excellent Chinese, mind, but with a (to me) very noticable Taiwanese accent. It was funny to see a foreigner speaking the language so well yet so differently from how I usually (at that point) heard it spoken.

[renzhe]

I'll go with the "standards are important" crowd here. The "standard" is different in Taiwan and on the Mainland, and it makes sense to emulate the one you are most likely to need -- once you get either of them down, you will be understood anywhere. But I'd go for something relatively neutral and widely accepted where you are -- not Beijinghua in Taiwan, but something like the most common Taiwanese newscaster accent you can hear. It seems like Taipei pronunciation is considered the prestige dialect in Taiwan, so that would be a good one to emulate. I agree with Lu, find a person with a nice, standard accent, and emulate that to avoid mixing everything together.

The Taiwanese DO pronounce retroflexes. A small minority pronounce them fully (like on the Mainland), many of them ignore them fully, but there are many who pronounce "soft" retroflexes which are clearly audible. IMHO, Mandarin is a language with retroflexes and knowing exactly where they go is important. Do learn to speak with them, and then decide whether you want to use them in speech. Going in the other direction is impossible, like your host father's example shows.

Do avoid jumping into emulating the most accented speech head-first. Primarily because that type of speech will be the least consistent, and least understood outside of the local community you're in. If you're planning to stay in Taiwan, go for the accent everyone in Taiwan will understand, not stuff that leaves even the Taiwanese from other regions scratching their heads.

I like local and regional accents, but if you speak like that, I expect you to have a real, strong connection to that place -- local customs, local culture, years of living there. If you're pretending to be local, people will expect a local and want to treat you like a local, and you should be able to play the part. Standard accent doesn't have that issue.

[Lu]

In fact, sometimes my host father would even, when trying to be clearer, try to pronounce the retroflexes and even pronounce some naturally non-retroflex syllables as retroflex...

Yah, and about that: best to check a dictionary if you're not sure, or if you hear something strange. I agree with Renzhe that Taiwanese people do often pronounce retroflexes, but differently from how a Beijinger would, and overcompensation is a danger. You see the same thing with erhua: many Taiwanese people think that Beijingers speak 北京话儿, while an actual Beijinger would NEVER EVER use an 儿 for that word. 'Huar' is a painting not a language. And it's not pronounced 'hua'er' either, but huar. When in doubt, perhaps best leave the -r out.

[Koxinga]

When I started learning Mandarin, I learned from Chinese books and materials with the standard Chinese accent. Everyone said my Chinese sounds is very standard, and I was understood easily, so I believe I got the pronunciation down very well.

Since there are very few Chinese speakers where I live, most of my communication with them happened online. A while ago, I got tired of the Chinese internet speed to the outside world. It is usually slow, but connecting to Chinese websites and users is especially slow from my country. I just got 0.13 Mb/s on Speedtest.net for a server in Shanghai. Speeds like that don't allow for any kind of voice chat without heavy lagging, especially since they are not constant.

Then I "discovered" Taiwan. Taiwan's international internet connections are much faster, so I was able to voice chat with Taiwanese people without major issues. Right at that point, my Chinese started getting somewhat fluent so I was really excited that I was finally able to have decent conversations in Chinese.

The more I talked to Taiwanese, the more I picked up the their accent and expressions. However, I still pronounced most of the sounds (including zh, ch etc) in the standard way. The end result being that I still sound (mainland) Chinese to Taiwanese people because I didn't adopt the Taiwanese pronunciation of certain sounds, and I sound Taiwanese to Chinese people because of my word usage and tones.

TLDR

I sound Taiwanese to Chinese people and I sound Chinese to Taiwanese people.

[anonymoose]

I agree with what Renzhe said above. If you listen to broadcast standard Taiwanese mandarin and mainland mandarin, the difference isn't actually very large. So if you want to learn the Taiwanese accent, definitely choose a good model like that. I would not choose a heavily-accented person off the street for that purpose (even though there are those who think the more distinct their accent is, the more "authentic" their Chinese is).

 

Incidentally, it is funny how often this argument comes up. To me, it seems that two issues are being confused - which standard accent to choose, and whether to emulate people on the street. If you want to learn the de facto prestige standard in Taiwan, as used in broadcasting, it makes no more sense to emulate a person off the street in Taipei than it does to emulate a Beijing taxi driver if you want to learn the mainland standard.

[imron]

a Taiwanese accent on the mainland is definitely noticed, but there is no prejudice or negative feelings attached to it

Depends on if you're a guy or not. The Taiwanese accent is perceived as feminine - at least in the more northern parts of the mainland.

Note: I'm not saying 'feminine' == bad, just that most guys don't want to sound feminine, just like most gals don't want to sound masculine.

Also note: I'm not stating my opinion about whether I think it's a good or a bad thing, just pointing out a common perception on the mainland. I'm also aware that Taiwanese have plenty to say about mainland accents back.

[Lu]

If you want to learn the de facto prestige standard in Taiwan, as used in broadcasting

I wonder if that really is the 'prestige' accent in Taiwan. From what I've seen there, different groups and circumstances consider different things 'prestige'. To give just one example: politicians feel they have to speak at least a little bit of Taiwanese if they want to have a chance at being elected. A thick Taiwanese accent is not always considered bad, quite the contrary. On the other hand, teachers of Chinese usually have an accent so standard that it's almost unnatural.

That's not to say that newscasters are not a good model to emulate. But 'prestige' is not really a factor imo.

[陳德聰]

I'm pretty sure "prestige" is the word we use in sociolinguistics to describe the language that has the potential to distinguish "class" differences when two or more languages are in close contact. Your understanding of prestige here may not be the same one that is being talked about.

[gato]

Right, "prestige" means upper class, not necessarily popular in elections.

[Kamille]

So, is what you're suggesting is imitating most of the Taiwanese accent, but not all of it? I mean, you said, if I want a "standard Taiwanese accent"... But from what I heard, from class mates, teachers, host parents, basically everyone was saying zi ci and si instead of zhi chi shi... In fact, sometimes my host father would even, when trying to be clearer, try to pronounce the retroflexes and even pronounce some naturally non-retroflex syllables as retroflex...

Pronouncing the sounds the way they are meant to be pronounced will never make you sound foreigner nor form the mainland nor whatever. If it's Zhi, pronounce it zhi. Taiwanese don't really pronounce "zi" because of an accent but because of a certain type of "laziness" (and of course bad influence since about everyone speaks like that here; always remember that mandarin is only the second language of about everyone in Taiwan).

The important thing to remember is: no matter if you pronounce "zhi" or "zi", you'll sound Taiwanese anyways. So just pronounce "zhi" where it's "zhi" and "zi" where it's "zi". That will only make you easier to understand for the few people who care about it, and make you sound educate for about everyone (because they don't consider the way they talk to be a standard, really).

Some Taiwanese have what I call the "standard Taiwanese accent" but they are few. My ex-girlfriend was from Keelung (基隆) and was one of them. Besides this accent is what you'll hear on the TV if you watch the news. The teachers in the Chinese Language Centers are also supposed to speak like that, although there are exceptions (and I remember of one who would tell students off when they went non-retroflex where they should have gone retroflex... although herself would make mistakes here and there...  自相矛盾 she was ). 

 

Basically, here are some differences that exist between the Taiwanese standard and the mainland standard and they go like that: 1) no er-hua in Taiwan, 2) "eng" is sometimes pronounced "ong" in a number of characters (you say "peng" in "朋友" but "bong" in "OK繃") and 3) bin and bing will come out all the same (up to you to decide if you want 彬塊 in you tea or not, but you'll never get 冰塊 anywhere in Taiwan and you'll definitely sound "from the north" if you try to order some), 4) "an" and "ang" are sometimes mixed too (i.e. "ang" sometimes becomes "an"). I might forget one or two differences here and there, but that's to give you a general idea. The "zhi/zi" battle is not relevant and even less is the "i/ü" one.