Mandarin in different areas of asia

[shroiookami]

Okay, so, as a citizen of the U.S., I have seen how we have destroyed English in many ways. I plan on learning mandarin in a more "Taiwanese" way, because my purpose is to communicate with friends there. But, it makes me wonder, what are the relationships between the language in different parts of asia, such as the mainland, Taiwan, etc...? Which, if any, is the "original", and what are some of the largest differences? And how easy is it to communicate with these different variations of mandarin?

[Flickserve]

I had this same dilemma. I decided to go for 'standard' mandarin pronunciation to minimise deviation from the norm.

It doesn't seem to be difficult to learn some of the differences when speaking. For me, the end result of my speech pattern is rather a mix: Chinese from the North say I have a cantonese style accent, some say my pronunciation is fairly standard and some southern chinese say my pronunciation is more like a northern style. But most importantly, they do understand me! So communication should not be a problem if you have a teacher who speaks clearly.

I can seperate the words out in Taiwanese produced TV programs. Films (Taiwanese produced) are a more difficult as people can speak very fast and slur words. But this is a function of my listening ability. It is the same difficulty for me listening to Beijing style Mandarin.

[Mouseneb]

I'm curious to know how we Americans have destroyed English