Improving my accent... but which one?

[Tamu]

@OneEye - Nice pronunciation! Good demonstration of tongue position at the different stages all the way from heavy-Taiwanese-Mandarin to standard-putonghua.

 

Btw, I'm surprised no one else joked about it, but it's pretty obvious that you don't speak much northern-mainland-standard putonghua lol; all the other versions sound very natural, but your CCTV impression is pretty stressed lol!! :)

[OneEye]

Ha, I had a feeling it might be! But of course I don't speak like a northerner. I've never lived in northern China, or anywhere in China for that matter, so naturally my accent is going to be more Taiwanese-sounding. I've talked to people from all over China though, and my accent has never caused any communication issues whatsoever. Now, the other person's accent might! I do need to work a bit on my understanding of regional accents from China.

 

What's funny is that when I first moved here, people all assumed I had studied in Beijing. I tried my best to maintain my "correct" accent for the first six months or so, but then when I realized I wouldn't sound natural anywhere I went, but would sound instead like the sort of weird amalgam I mentioned above, I decided to work on sounding more authentic.

 

 

 

@Nathan Mao

and that's what I consider the Taiwan accent to be in the Chinese-speaking world.

 

Which "Taiwan accent" are you talking about? Like I've said in this and other threads, I think the accent of a well-educated native Mandarin speaker from Taiwan (preferably Taipei) is one of the most widely-understood accents out there. Here's an example of the type of accent I mean. Do you really find that to be a "heavy regional accent?" This is what most of the people I interact with on a daily basis sound like, except that their retroflex initials might be a bit softer. I agree that a heavy regional accent is not what people should go for, but in my opinion the most desirable alternative to that is not necessarily "as accent-neutral as humanly possible," but "a widely-understood authentic accent, preferably that of the place you live and work or that of the place you learned the language."

 

If one should aim for as neutral an accent as possible rather than an authentic one, as you claim, how does one go about it? I mean successfully, without sounding like a weird mishmash? In Taiwan that would mean using different tones than everyone else around you, for one. Or different pronunciations for some words/characters. That's not even mentioning the other aspects of speech that can mark you. What do you do about regional vocabulary/usage? I could just see it: "No, not the 土豆 that elephants eat (土豆 means peanut here), the 土豆 that you can cut up and fry and eat with a hamburger." "No, not the creamy 乳酪 that goes on a bagel (it means cream cheese...cheese is 起司), the 乳酪 that comes in slices and goes on a burger." And that's ignoring the fact that if you said rǔlào, most people in Taiwan wouldn't understand you anyway because it's rǔluò here. "No, I don't want a rental car, I want a taxi." What happens when you sound funny/unnatural to everyone around you (where you actually live and work) because you're trying to maintain some abstracted “ideal” rather than aiming for a widely-understood naturally-occurring accent?

 

Is not the most pragmatic thing to imitate as closely as possible the accent of educated people where you live and work? The accents of well-educated speakers from the major cities don't really differ all that much, and most people probably have enough exposure to them through the media that they should be widely understood. In much the same way, educated English speakers from major cities are easily understood pretty much anywhere English is spoken, while people with heavy regional/rural accents (who tend to be less well-educated) may not be. I was at a conference a few months ago that featured speakers from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and all over China. Nobody had any trouble understanding anyone else, except the few foreigners there who had to adjust a bit to the more unfamiliar accents. But even the "strongest" accent (or I should say "furthest from what I'm used to") was quite comprehensible to me after a minute or two.

[Lu]

I agree that a heavy regional accent is not what people should go for, but in my opinion the most desirable alternative to that is not necessarily "as accent-neutral as humanly possible," but "a widely-understood authentic accent, preferably that of the place you live and work or that of the place you learned the language."

I agree with this. And I don't think a Taiwanese accent (not a heavy Tai-oan go-yi accent, but normal Taiwanese Mandarin) is not a 'heavy regional accent' anymore than American news anchor English is.

[OneEye]

It seems like every time this subject comes up (why do I always let myself get sucked into it? I should be working right now!), people think I'm saying to try to talk like this guy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I actually saw a video of an American professor who teaches at a university in southern Taiwan, whose name I'll withhold to protect the guilty, who had a really strong 台灣國語 accent. My Taiwanese friends all made fun of him and we were all baffled at how he could have possibly learned Chinese to such an impressive level and end up with such a stigmatized accent.

[Nathan Mao]

@OneEye

I think you may be overreacting.  I specifically pointed out news broadcasters as having relatively neutral accents.  The original poster was asking about imitating the people around him.  Unless he's only hanging out with news broadcasters while they work, I think imitating the people around him will end up with a heavy regional accent.  I think imitating news broadcasters is a good thing.

 

When I think of a truly neutral accent, I think of singers.  Even the worst Taiwan offenders of retroflex blurring speech will use a distinct retroflex in their singing (for the most part...伍佰 sometimes blurs it a little), and the worst Beijing offenders of tongue-swallowing retroflex talk still have a more forward/brighter placement when they sing (interestingly, the second-worst example I can remember of overdone retroflex in a song was by a Taiwan singer: 刘若英  in 《为爱痴狂》; the worst being by mainlander 谢雨欣 in　《爱是怎样炼成的》　）

 

Bottom line is ear development and an extremely wide range of listening to different models will help one figure out what is the most neutral, the best able to fit in, what is common among native speakers and what is outlier.

[OneEye]

As I said, that's "what most of the people I interact with on a daily basis sound like." That's mostly grad students, for the record, not broadcasters. Of course, they don't have the same sort of news anchor intonation because they're not announcing the news, but the accent is pretty much the same. So again, I think you need to be clear about which Taiwanese accent you're talking about when you say it's a "heavy regional accent" and that people shouldn't "imitate the local Taiwanese." Educated native Mandarin speakers from Taiwan more or less talk like that newscaster, and those are the people I've been saying to imitate. I'm just trying to figure out why you seemed to think "go[ing] out of your way to imitate a heavy regional accent" is what was being advocated here.

[Lu]

Nathan Mao, do you actually know/talk to many Taiwanese people? It's not actually the case that most everyone apart from broadcasters has a 'strong regional accent', unless you define that as 'I can tell they're from Taiwan'. Many Taiwanese actually don't have that strong an accent, and speaking like the people I met in Taiwan has never caused me to be misunderstood by mainland Chinese. They note my accent, yes, but they understand me just fine.

Many singers from both Taiwan, the mainland and Hong Kong sing with a fairly standard accent, but since one can't go around singing everything instead of speaking, that's perhaps not the most useful standard to go by. (Even apart from the issue of tones.)

[Nathan Mao]

This is clearly becoming an unproductive discussion.

I withdraw my previously stated opinions.  My apologies for my contribution to making the discussion unproductive.

[Yadang]

Hey everyone,

 

Thanks for all the great replies! I think I'm going to follow the "Taiwanese Standard" as best as I can figure out what it is. From what I've been reading here, and the examples that I saw (thanks, OneEye, for the examples!), I'll basically try to imitate almost everything that I hear, but keep my retroflexes (or at least partial retro flexes? as OneEye was explaining...) and not pronounce 學生 as "xue sen" or "xue shen" as I have heard many (even my Chinese teacher pronounce... I think this is what most people are feeling, right? Or am I totally interpreting you guys wrong?

In fact, if this is what most of you guys are talking about ("standard" but not the bejinghua standard) than this is pretty much what I did anyways. I always use retroflexes in their proper places, I never use erhua (and in fact, now that I'm back in the U.S. and have a mainland teacher, I tend to crack up every time she pronounces the erhua It just sounds so funny to me and reminds me of when my host mother would sometimes add it in here and there... Although I should probably just get used to it so I'm not constantly laughing if I go to Beijing ;) )... I use the vocab that they use, and don't use the mainland version of tomato (which I forgot what it even is) or trash or anything... So unless I'm totally not understanding you guys, this seems like the way to go...

Thanks for all of your feedback! Feel free to tell me that I totally misinterpreted (For example, OneEye, you mentioned you try to imitate those around you as much as you can, but you also said that you are usually around people with pretty standard accents... So I assume you still use retroflexes - is that what you mean by this?)

[OneEye]

Well, it isn't really a retroflex, as I was saying. It's an alveolo-palatal. But if you're asking if I make the distinction between s/sh, et al, then yes I do.

[Yadang]

Ah yes, sorry! I thought you had said something about some of the Taiwanese still pronouncing a retroflex but it being "softer"? Or was what the alveolo-palatal you were talking about? But, yes, that (if you make the distinction between s/sh etc.) is indeed what I was asking! Thanks!

[thefamousamos93]

My own two cents here.

 

Being born in Taiwan (though I grew up and was educated in the U.S.), I would broadly categorize Mandarin spoken in Taiwan into three categories:

1. the heavily Taiwanese dialect influenced 台灣國語, where zhi chi shi becomes zu cu su, the (f-) becoming (hu-) the (yu) sound being confused with (i), wo being pronounced (o), eng and ing becoming en and in, spoken in rural areas and among older people

2. the "typical" accent, where zh ch sh are either pronounced more lightly or still is confused with z c s, lacks the retroflex (er) of Putonghua on the Mainland, and the tones being less exaggerated than on the Mainland

3. the "standard" accent as spoken by news broadcasters, differing only slightly from the standard found on the Mainland, where zh ch sh is pronounced where it needs be, still lacks the retroflex, and differs from Putonghua mainly in word choice or standard pronunciation of certain words, e.g. (Taiwan guaniu "snail" vs Mainland woniu). 

 

I would classify my own Mandarin speech to be that of the second category, though recently it's become a lot more Americanized in terms of pronunciation. When I'm talking to Mainlanders or teaching Mandarin terms to my friends I tend to hypercorrect my speech to the point that I sound as if I'm from Mainland China, really emphasizing on the zh ch sh, exaggerating my tones, distinguishing between en/eng and in/ing, though I would still use distinctly Taiwanese Mandarin vocabulary.

[Lu]

That looks like a useful distinction. Imo (2) and (3) are both fine, (3) being somewhat better for learners if you don't necessarily want to stay in Taiwan but also plan to talk to many Mainland Chinese. Not that they wouldn't understand (2), but might as well aim for something that sounds closer to them. So Adam Hamilton, your plan sounds good (and if I'm not mistaken it was what you're doing already anyway).

Personally I used to say xuesen and xiansen, but I'd like to believe I sound more mainlandish again now. I suppose it helped that I learned it the standard way (and then the Beijing way) first before coming to Taiwan.

[OneEye]

The 台灣國語 thing reminds me of this comic from a few weeks ago by 林當肯 (Duncan Lin), a Taiwanese comic artist:

 

 

Who understands it without cheating?

 

明天應該有百分之百的降雨機率。我們來看衛星雲圖。

[gato]

2. the "typical" accent, where zh ch sh are either pronounced more lightly or still is confused with z c s, lacks the retroflex (er) of Putonghua on the Mainland, and the tones being less exaggerated than on the Mainland

 

 

Doesn't "retroflex" refer to the distinction between z/c/s and zh/ch/sh?  

[OneEye]

No, retroflex refers to the curling back of the tongue. The so-called "retroflex initials" in Mandarin are called that because that's how they're pronounced in standard 普通話, but in acrolectal Taiwanese Mandarin they tend to be pronounced as alveolo-palatals. As I've said before, there's still a distinction between them and z/c/s, it's just not the same as it is in standard 普通話.

 

Actually, that means there isn't really a distinction made between zh/ch/sh and j/q/x, but that doesn't matter because the finals that are paired with one group are never paired with the other, so there's no confusion.

[gato]

My point is that the previous poster was using "retroflex" to refer to 儿话, but there is no curl of tongue in 儿话.  

[OneEye]

There ought to be. The 兒化 ending is [ɻ], which is a retroflex approximant.

[Lu]

Technically the -r is a retroflex, but when I hear 'retroflex' I think about zhi chi shi, not erhua. Reading that sentence, I also get the impression that that poster thinks erhua=retroflex, and that is not the case.

[Lanchong]

Many Taiwanese actually don't have that strong an accent, and speaking like the people I met in Taiwan has never caused me to be misunderstood by mainland Chinese. They note my accent, yes, but they understand me just fine.

I think you could probably extend that to most of China. I imagine most people the OP will socialise with will speak to him with a reasonably intelligible accent. Of course, there are lots of people in China who can't speak with such an accent - people with a Mandarin accent that other native speakers would really struggle to understand - but social class and generational factors mean that it's unlikely a Westerner would interact with them very much.

If one should aim for as neutral an accent as possible rather than an authentic one, as you claim, how does one go about it? I mean successfully, without sounding like a weird mishmash?

Would a mishmash actually sound weird? It doesn't sound weird in English - the "transalantic accent" is a real thing, heard from, among others, people who were born on one side of the atlantic but went to the school on the other. So I'm not sure how a 'trans-straits Mandarin accent" would be received by native speakers.