What's the deal with the Taiwanese adding 有 and 啦 everywhere?

[陳德聰]

@Nathan MAO #30 and #33,

 

You and OneEye are referring to blurring in two different senses. His meaning of blurred is to be combined together. Yours appears to be "difficult to distinguish", as far as I can tell. Please let me know if I'm wrong.

 

Dentals (zcs) and retroflexes (zhchsh) are not collapsed into simply zcs, because there is still a distinction there. Yes, 知 and 资 sound similar, but they aren't pronounced the same. The retroflexes actually become palatalized, but do not cause similar confusion with jqx because there are no times when zh+iang happens or j+ang happens. So in this way, retroflexes and palatals are "blurred" together, because the actual sound that comes out is phonetically similar/same. But the distinction between zcs and zhchsh is blurry in that it is not always easy to hear the difference I guess.

[Nathan Mao]

p.197:

"One of the most notable differences [from the Mandarin spoken in Beijing] is a merging of the retroflex series of the consonant initials, represented as zh-, ch-, and sh- in Pinyin, into the dental/apical series, or z-, c-, s- in Pinyin."

 

p.198:

"In order to transcribe character pronunciations in Mandarin Phonetic Symbols (zhu yin fu hao), pupils must often memorize by rote which characters begin with a retroflex zh-, chi- or shi-, since many of them cannot distinguish these from the z-, c-, s- series, based on their own speech.  The same is true of other sounds, such as final -n and -ng endings, which they also in part 'confuse.'"

 

[shrug] 

 

I don't doubt some Taiwanese still display a small difference.  But it clearly has been the case for decades that many, many, many Taiwanese do, in fact, pronounce zh/z, ch/c, and sh/s indistinguishably the same.  I'd hate to put a percentage on it, but obviously it is enough that the phenomenon is the subject of many studies (not just this one) at the National Taiwan University and other fine academic establishments.

[OneEye]

Back in the 1970s, 1980s that was true but I'm not sure about now? Because it seems like now most of the Chinese teachers in the US are from the mainland. Whenever I go to the Chinese language teachers conferences that's what it seems like.

 

Yes, I'm sure most are probably from China. But many are from Taiwan. That's all I meant.

 

As for retroflexes, I was careful to say "native Mandarin speakers" for a reason. People with a strong Taiwanese Minnan accent (台灣國語 as it's called here) tend to have trouble distinguishing zh/ch/sh and z/c/s. Taiwanese people who speak Mandarin natively do not have that trouble. They clearly distinguish between the two, and it is widely regarded as incorrect not to. They pronounce zh/ch/sh and j/q/x almost exactly the same, however, but as I explained earlier, that doesn't impede comprehension in any way. However, it is correct to say that sometimes, Taiwanese people will pronounce the retroflex series like retroflexes "for clarity, emphasis, or formality."

 

You know, we've had this conversation very recently. I even made recordings demonstrating the differences between z/c/s, j/q/x, and zh/ch/sh as they're pronounced in Taiwan and China. I posted a link to this Wikipedia article, which I think explains it quite clearly. I think I'll leave it at that, because I'm not really interested in rehashing the "retroflex/palatals/dentals in Taiwan" argument yet again.

[Kamille]

Anyway, here's what a 网友 has to say, pretty convincing explanation:

have 是时态助词，不应该直接翻译的。汉语里是用“着”、“了”、“过”来表示时态。这是典型的英式中文。只有在受英语影响比较多的港台地区才这么说。 

 

This was probably written by a mainlander who hasn't made serious researches before speaking out what they thought was true. No references nor sources, by the way. Hmmmm?

 

OneEye has already made my point, I'll just complete by saying that Cornelius Kubler is not the only one who made researches on it, Li and Thompson also did. Here is a short quote from "Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar":

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107268827/IMG_201240110_194349.jpg

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107268827/IMG_201240110_194527.jpg

 

English has nothing to do with it. It's an influence of southern dialects on local spoken mandarin. Taiwanese talk like that, but they don't write like that. It's not a standard. Only the influence of spoken Taiwanese on spoken 台灣國語。It's not standard but it's not wrong either: people call it a "regionalism", it's exactly the same for er-hua.

There is a lot to say about regionalisms in Taiwan. "不錯+動詞" that basically follows the pattern "好+動詞" (不錯吃，不錯看，etc) is another example. Most Taiwanese are perfectly aware that mainlanders don't talk like that. Well then? You want to ask Taiwanese about the feeling they get when they look at simplified characters ? They certainly have the same "good" reasons as you have to think that calling simplified chinese as standard is an irking heresy, don't you think ? (Actually they don't care but you see what I mean huh).

Now, 淨土極樂 could you tell us what makes you that angry? Is there anything that happened during your childhood or... ?

[Guest realmayo]

People only think it's a z/zh c/ch s/sh problem because they're not listening closely enough.

... and (assuming you're right) because the zh/ch/sh goes z/c/s throughout much of China.

 

In fact to my ears the Taiwan zh/ch/sh I hear on TV doesn't sound quite like a mainland j/q/x: best I can describe the difference it is to quote wikipedia's front of the tongue bunched up ("domed") at the palate. But probably I'd change my mind or my ears if I spent time in Taiwan.

 

It's interesting in Nathan's link that the author found lots of evidence of people over-correcting 's' to 'sh' rather than 's' to 'x' etc. Perhaps the person collecting the data just assumed he was hearing "sh" because we're all so unused to hearing 'x' followed by that particular 'i' sound.

[Lanchong]

As for dialects and their worth. My wife is from 陕北 and I can speak 延安话, which is very close to 普通话, but with some different initials, finals, tones and vocabulary. It's 99% comprehensible by other Mandarin speakers, but still, people are to going to be annoyed if we try to speak this anywhere but 陕北

You think 延安話 is close to 普通話?! This video of 陝北話 sounds absolutely nothing like 普通話: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njUKb95F_bg

[SiMaKe]

Demonic_Duck #4

 

Boy, did you call it! 46 posts in 24hrs!

 

How's the popcorn?

[Demonic_Duck]

The sweet taste of the popcorn is marred by the bitterness of the fact that no-one answered my question about "了啦". I guess it's less interesting than arguing about how standard or nonstandard 儿化音 is, or whether it's OK to prefer one dialect over another.

 

Saying that though, I'm rather interested in the current discussion about zh/ch/sh and j/q/x being the same (yet causing no ambiguity) in Taiwanese Mandarin. It's certainly not something I'd noticed before - anyone have any example video or audio files that illustrate this well?

[Kamille]

啦 seems to really be a contraction of 了 and 阿 but I'm not sure of its origins. 

One thing is certain though: it is not used only like that in Taiwan anymore. It has become more of an emphatic particle, thus the occurences of 啦 used alone where there is no 了 and the occurences of 了啦 coupled together. 

啦 is used exactly like 嘛 in Taiwan, except the context is not the same.

 

But still you have the choice between 他走啦 and 他走了啦. I recall one of my teachers talking about the latter, he basically disagreed with that use. But 語氣詞 being purely oral, people can easily decide what they want to do with them. Their use is hard to rule.

[Michaelyus]

Saying that though, I'm rather interested in the current discussion about zh/ch/sh and j/q/x being the same (yet causing no ambiguity) in Taiwanese Mandarin. It's certainly not something I'd noticed before - anyone have any example video or audio files that illustrate this well?

 

 

See #26 of the thread linked to by OneEye above. Also, the paper on hypercorrection in Taiwan Mandarin, also referred to above, states: 

 

Retroflexed initials have a fairly broad range of realization in Taiwan Mandarin. The degree of tongue retraction may vary considerably (as it does in Beijing Mandarin too, though a different range is covered), from highly retracted, through the palato-alveolar area [tʃ], [tʃʰ], [ʃ], all the way to dentals that are indistinguishable from the dental/apical z- [t̪s̪], c- [t̪s̪ʰ], s- [s̪] series.

 

 

 

As for 了啦, I think it is a mistake to consider 啦 as "merely" 了+啊. Though it may be a possibility in Mandarin to agree with this derivation, in Taiwanese Hokkien 啦 is not only far too ubiquitous, it is also phonologically too distant to be equated to it (Hokkien rarely uses 了liáu in equivalent change-of-state constructions, although it does use it as a complement for resultatives as well as in perfective-like constructions). Rather, 啦 as a sentence-final particle in Hokkien has the following (this from Quanzhou Hokkien in a 2002 paper):

 

 

"啦"可用于各种句类的句末和句中,起着加强某种语气或增添某些感情义素的作用.其形成时间当在清末之后,是由句末语气词"哪"变音发展而成的.

 

My translation:

啦 can be used both at the end as well as in the middle of sentences, with the function of emphasising certain moods or to increase emotionality. Its formation can be traced to the end of the Qing, and derives from the phonological development of the sentence-final modal particle 哪.

 

Adapted into Taiwanese colloquial Mandarin, one interesting study (Lin 2005) analysed the distribution of several features in persuasive sales talks. 啦 is given as a softener of bald, on-record face-threatening acts, and hence "this pragmatic function of la may be the reason that it is the most frequently used particle in the sales talks". In a footnote, the author specifically states:

 

This la is not the le and a combination in colloquial speech as noted in Li and Thompson (1981: 317). 

 

 

 

For those who do want to understand the widespread use of 有 in Hokkien as well as in Cantonese and Hakka, I've found this article: Cheng & Wang (2010). It posits a grammaticalisation pathway for the 有+verb/adjective construction, and highlights the subtle differences between the varieties in the acceptability of this construction.

[Divato]

Actually, I think 你有吃晚饭吗？ is just a mixed expression of 你有没有吃晚饭？ and 你吃晚饭了吗？

 

In Cantonese, it's something like 你食左晚饭未(like the expression of 你吃晚饭了吗？) or 你有冇食晚饭(like the expression of 你有没有吃晚饭？)

 

But in formal writing, I would prefer 你吃过饭了吗 to 你有吃饭吗？

In real-life communication or QQ chat, I just use 你吃了没.

 

To be honest, I don't like the expression of 了啦 or something like that, I think it's too feminine(嗲) for a male talking like that but it's okay for a female to use that.

[renzhe]

I love it when Michaelyus flies in and drops references like a bomber.

[陳德聰]

I think it's too feminine(嗲) for a male talking like that but it's okay for a female to use that.

And yet Taiwanese men of all walks seem to use it regardless... So perhaps it is your and others' concept of femininity/masculinity that needs a bit of an adjustment.

[Kamille]

Yeah, 啦 doesn't sound feminine at all to me. It's not masculine either. It's just an emphatic particle. The differance between 他走了 and 他走了啦 (or 他走啦) is just about emphasis.

There's a lot of particles in everyday spoken Chinese in Taiwan. Some sound feminine, some don't. 囉 (了+喔) does sound feminine for exemple. 啦 and 咧 (pronounce "lei") are as neutral as 嘛 is.

[Shelley]

Early on in this discussion I put my oar in, and have realised I was way out of my depth but never the less it has been educational and entertaining to watch from the sidelines.

 

Got enough popcorn for 2 Demonic_Duck?

[sinosplice]

I've been meaning to add an article on this very topic to the Chinese Grammar Wiki.

 

Here's a start: http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Taiwanese_%22you%22

 

Our teachers will look at some of the academic research on this topic and use it to flesh out the article.

[Kamille]

Note that in Beijing Mandarin, this use of the 有 is incorrect. It is, however, extremely common in Taiwan and even some neighboring parts of mainland China.

 

This is not wrong but it could be misinterpreted because this use of the 有, as you say, isn't "correct" in Taiwan either. It's the way people talk, of course, but they will always tell you that it's 台灣國語. I don't know how to explain what it means. 

I make a difference here because I speak French as a first language, or should I say, Belgian French. It's slightly different from French French, we have uses that they don't have in France. The thing is, and I think Taiwanese look at 台灣國語 the same way: we always know which is the word or the structure that they use in France and though we use the Belgian one when talking between Belgians and hate hearing that these uses are "incorrect" (because they are not where I come from), the fact is, they are not standard, even where they are spoken. 

Is it clear like that ?

That's what they call a regionalism. Nothing more.

 

I mean, Taiwan also has it's own official rules on how to speak mandarin (most rules I know are about the pronunciation of characters, for which the standard in Taiwan is slightly different from that in the mainland). Using 有 that way isn't official, even in Taiwan. It's just the way people talk.

 

Besides, we know exactly which areas of China use 有 like that: where cantonese and hokkien are largely spoken. I think that you could as well write it like that.

[sinosplice]

@Kamille:

 

Well, the point is that if you're studying Chinese in Beijing, you could get corrected as being WRONG for adding the 有 (lose points on a test, or whatever).  In Taiwan you're not likely to get corrected.

 

I think you're right to point out that it's a feature of colloquial Mandarin in Taiwan, though.  I'll add that.

[Kamille]

In Taiwan you're not likely to get corrected.

 

That's just it: you actually are quite likely to be corrected if you try and write it in an article (I mean, outside of Facebook, Line, Skype and so on, where spoken language is favoured over written language).

And at school, you'll definitely lose points on a test. The teacher will tell you anyways, that people outside speak like that but that they don't want to see it on the examination sheet. The difference between the Beijinger teacher and the Taiwanese teacher is that the Beijinger teacher won't understand why you tried to use 有 like that and will definitley see a mistake there (probably influenced by the use of "have" in English, from their point of view). whereas the Taiwanese teacher will know why you tried to use it like that, because they surely speak like that outside school too, and they will see a non-standard regionalism that is not wrong in itself but has no place in a written article in proper mandarin.

 

I'm not talking about "how things should be" and "how languages evolve" here. I'm just making a record of the present situation regarding this 有. Even in Kaohsiung (where 台灣國語 is most largely spread in everyday conversation), you don't write it. Of course new standards were once colloquial language before they became standards. But nowadays that use of 有 hasn't reached that level.

[sinosplice]

@Kamille:

 

Right... So, to sum up:

 

Beijing: adding the 有 is considered WRONG in spoken or written Chinese

 

Taipei: adding the 有 is considered fine in spoken Chinese or informal online communications, but wrong in formal written Chinese