Should I not learn in this city because of its local dialect?

[Cake]

Wow! This is exactly what i was looking for.

abcdefg was certainly right in saying that this forum would provide a broad spectrum of valuable information!

 

I really needed the insight and information everyone that contributed phrased in just the way that it was, Thank you! I really feel that I now have the knowledge that is necessary to make the right choice! 

 

Also, I'll definitely listen to podcasts.

 

Hearing about all of your experiences gives me a look into how things are and how they would be that I could not have gotten from anywhere else

[Flickserve]

Agree with realmayo about the non-standard vocabulary. It is to be expected there might be some differences with local slang but that is what you can asked your teacher. Frankly speaking, I think it makes learning a little more interesting to recognize variations.

In England it is the same.

London "wotcha "

Leeds " 'aiya,luv"

Both versions mean Hello in English!

(You can still use Hello in both cities )

[NotChinese]

Though I agree with those who've said Chengdu is totally fine for learning Mandarin, I'd like to add a couple of anecdotes.

 

I was somewhere a bit further south (possibly Guizhou - still apparently classes as southwestern Mandarin though), and asked a very basic question of a staff member at a bus station (something like, "Where's the number 2 bus stand?") and was met with, "Oh you're speaking putonghua <turns to her friend>, help me he's speaking putonghua!"

 

Another time, I once flew Beijing to Chengdu and, upon arrival, asked a member of staff (at Chengdu international airport) for some help and was (politely) met with, "Oh sorry you're speaking Putonghua, I only know Sichuanese."

 

So there are two things to take from this.

 

1. Some people really can't follow standard Mandarin! At least not when they have the shock of it coming from a foreigner.

2. I was in Sichuan but still learned putonghua. 

 

I was doing proper classes though. Pretty sure if I'd self-taught without a teacher or peer group and practised on the streets it would have been a different situation entirely.

 

Oh and aside from those two little stories, I communicated absolutely fine with most Chinese people.

[Cake]

2 year update:

Chengdu is a great city to both live in and learn Mandarin. I recently took HSK4 and found it to be significantly easier than I expected having never taken HSK prior and I will continue my study of the language. I'm attending university here and there's some good news for anyone with a question about the dialect.

 

Basically, the dialect doesn't matter at all. I'm generalizing here, but pretty much everyone speaks PuTongHua. Your teacher will speak it, the staff at English schools will speak it, the children and teen agers will speak it, and most professional adults will speak it too. They may speak the local dialect to each other, but not always. Young Chinese are taught the right way in school and television programs and movies often use PuTongHua to reach the largest audience. There's a push towards standardization of the language on a national level.

 

The people who can't speak PuTongHua, generally, are old, poor, and often uneducated. If you live here you will frequently deal with them while ordering a bowl of noodles and talking to those who work in low paying service positions, which is unavoidable. However, they are usually good at heart despite sometimes being a little shy when talking to foreigners. It's also possible to meet kids with a strong dialect but it's usually because they're being raised by their grandparents while mom and dad are at work, but it's usually diminished after the child receives a proper education, an opportunity not everyone is fortunate enough to get.

 

It's extremely unlikely that you'll pick up the local dialect as long as you put any effort into your study of the language to know what is right and what is wrong according to the book (PuTongHua).

 

The bad news is that you'll probably always carry the accent of your country.

 

And to leave off on a positive note, that's totally fine. Even speaking with a foreign accent most people still treat you with respect and don't look down upon you. Also, the tones really don't matter much either, just say the two syllable version of the word rather than the one syllable version and 95% of the time it's okay.

 

I was worried for no reason. Thanks for all your advice and encouragement. It's a good life out here.

[Lu]

Good to see your update, even better to hear that you are happy there!

[abcdefg]

9 hours ago, Cake said:

Even speaking with a foreign accent most people still treat you with respect and don't look down upon you.

 

I've found that too, here in Kunming. 

 

9 hours ago, Cake said:

Also, the tones really don't matter much either, just say the two syllable version of the word rather than the one syllable version and 95% of the time it's okay.

 

Could you clarify this? Not sure what you mean about the syllables and tones. 

 

Glad that your time in Chengdu has been productive and fun! I enjoy going there because there is so much great food. And the people have always struck me as friendly. 

[NotChinese]

@Cake Have you been living in a  bubble for 2 years?

 

I find it quite absurd that you think the Sichuan dialect is only for old, poor or uneducated folk or those "working in service positions". The highly educated software engineers I worked with for a year would all think quite differently. All of them aged between 20 and 30 years, all of them university educated, very well paid and highly skilled, and all of them speaking the thickest sichuan accent I've ever encountered. It was the most difficult Chinese language experience of my life. They literally couldn't speak putonghua if they tried. It was a godsend when the boss was in the office because he was from near Beijing and spoke crystal clear. The difference in accent and dialect was like night and day. 

 

My ex girlfriend is a surgeon and she speaks it too. Admittedly she used putonghua with me, but it doesn't change that she's very highly educated, not a service worker, but speaks sichuanese as standard with everyone else. 

 

Honestly I'm just amazed that you think it's the language of the proles. Sichuanhua is everywhere, everywhere! 

 

Also tones are incredibly important if you try to get beyond basic chit chat. A mate of mine, British guy, has the largest Chinese vocabulary of any foreigner I know, but he literally makes Chinese people wince when he talks because of how toneless he is. I can understand what he's saying because I'm a fellow tone-deaf foreigner, but the unfortunate majority of actual Chinese people have no idea what he's on about, precisely because he doesn't even remotely attempt to speak the language in the way it was meant to be spoken. 

 

I hate to be "that guy", but I'm going to have to almost entirely disagree with your whole post, sorry! 

 

The only thing I will agree with is that it's still quite possible to learn putonghua in sichuan, just as long as you do it in the safe environment of the classroom and university surroundings. I was at chuanda too. 

[murrayjames]

1 hour ago, NotChinese said:

@Cake Have you been living in a  bubble for 2 years?

 

I find it quite absurd that you think the Sichuan dialect is only for old, poor or uneducated folk or those "working in service positions". The highly educated software engineers I worked with for a year would all think quite differently. All of them aged between 20 and 30 years, all of them university educated, very well paid and highly skilled, and all of them speaking the thickest sichuan accent I've ever encountered. It was the most difficult Chinese language experience of my life. They literally couldn't speak putonghua if they tried. It was a godsend when the boss was in the office because he was from near Beijing and spoke crystal clear. The difference in accent and dialect was like night and day. 

 

My experience is similar to Cake's.

 

My wife and her entire family is Sichuanese. I lived in Chengdu for over five years. For most of that time, I worked for the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, where most of my co-workers and all of my bosses were Sichuanese. I also spent a lot of time in rural Sichuan.

 

People from Sichuan speak 四川话 to each other. In general, they speak 普通话 to Chinese people from other parts of the country (外地人). They speak 普通话 and English to foreigners. This was overwhelmingly my experience of young, educated people from big cities like Chengdu and Chongqing.

 

Many older Sichuanese people (like my in-laws) speak Mandarin with a Sichuanese accent, eliding "sh" and "s" sounds, for example, so that shí kuaì sounds like sì kuai (slightly rising tone), or conflating "bei" and "bai", so that Beǐjīng sounds like Baǐjīng. Sichuanese people call this way of speaking 川普 (short for 四川普通话). People in Chengdu pronounce the character 街  as gái, which has confused many foreigners in taxicabs, present author included.

Older Sichuanese people, poor or uneducated Sichuanese people, and people from rural Sichuanese areas sometimes do not speak Mandarin at all. To most Sichuanese people this is not a big deal, but it can be rude or untactful to point this out. I have heard people from large cities making fun of the accents of people from the countryside.

Sichuanese people are proud of their language, in the same way they are proud of their food. Apparently Sichuanese was on its way to becoming the official language of the People's Republic of China, but narrowly lost the final vote to Putonghua. I must have heard this one hundred times. Some of the linguistic differences within Sichuan are significant. 成都话 and 重庆话 are noticeably different dialects, both in terms of vocabulary and pitch (重庆话 is gruffer and lower-pitched). People from Chengdu and Chongqing argue over whose language is better and whose women are more beautiful. Again, I must have heard these arguments one hundred times, and from every corner of Sichuanese society: male, female, young, old, rich, poor, etc. As you travel north or east within Sichuan, the 四川话 seems to get further and further removed from the Chengdu-Chongqing linguistic standard, until to my ears it becomes unintelligible, like another language altogether.

[shuipingzi]

On 1/12/2016 at 1:57 AM, realmayo said:

Speaking from similar experience of a city like Chengdu:

 

the only way you'll run into trouble is if you spend a couple of years learning just by what you pick up from how friends and others around speak. That might leave you with a too-strong accent and lots of non-standard vocabulary. And you would probably want to correct it later.

 

But if you're learning with teachers or tutors, then -- unless they're bad -- they'll make sure you are learning standard Chinese, no matter what you're hearing around you. So even if you spend loads of time with locals too, your teachers will make sure you don't pick up any bad habits; any slight accent you pick up under those circumstances will not be a problem or cause for regret.

 

If you're getting tuition, go to Chengdu, accent won't be a problem. If you're not getting tuition, it's a bit more complicated.

 

Exactly. As long as you get qualified teachers or tutors, don't worry about the accent issue. Born and raised in Chengdu where most people arround me speaking local dialect, I can still speak perfect standard Mandarin - mostly taught / trained by school teachers. 

 

And nowadays, Chengdu is getting a diversified population with people from various parts of the country. Mandarin is getting its popularity. Big chance is that when you speak Mandarin to a local, he/she will respond in Mandarin too (instead of local dialect). 

[Jan Finster]

5 hours ago, shuipingzi said:

Exactly. As long as you get qualified teachers or tutors, don't worry about the accent issue. Born and raised in Chengdu where most people arround me speaking local dialect, I can still speak perfect standard Mandarin - mostly taught / trained by school teachers

 

Exactly! 

 

Imagine someone from China would ask the question: "should I rather not go to study English in London, because I may end up with a Cockney accent"? or "Should I not go and study German in Munich, because I will end up with a Bavarian accent"...

 

[道艺]

On 7/20/2018 at 9:57 AM, murrayjames said:

People from Sichuan speak 四川话 to each other. In general, they speak 普通话 to Chinese people from other parts of the country (外地人). They speak 普通话 and English to foreigners. This was overwhelmingly my experience of young, educated people from big cities like Chengdu and Chongqing.

Can attest to this being the same in Shanghai, school principals, board members, even government department heads are almost all Shanghainese and will happily break out into Shanghainese at a moment's notice if given the opportunity. Luckily my workplace has a number of 外地人 which helps keep the Shanghainese contained to one-on-one side conversations. 

 

Some of them even speak a clearer English than Chinese, at least in my opinion.

[Pengyou]

I have been in China for 19 years, have been speaking Chinese for the last 15.  Beijing and other cities in the north east also have accents.  Just because you are speaking to "Beijingers" does not mean that the person you are speaking to is using standard Mandarin. In some cases, their accent is so strong and they often contract phrases, it seemed (still seems) to me almost like a dialect.  No matter where you go, your choice of school/teacher is the most important.  If the school and teacher are good, they will be using standard Mandarin.  "Standard" Mandarin is what most people think they speak - whether they do or not is another thing  ? although most people that I have met in Chengdu (I have only been here for four months) are proud of the fact that they can speak the accent/dialect (whichever you prefer).  Once your ear learns to discern the different tones, and you start engaging in your own conversations with people, you may find that the different accents help you learn to better discern what people are saying. 

[Demonic_Duck]

On 7/19/2018 at 8:20 PM, Cake said:

The people who can't speak PuTongHua, generally, are old, poor, and often uneducated. If you live here you will frequently deal with them while ordering a bowl of noodles and talking to those who work in low paying service positions, which is unavoidable.

 

Maybe you didn't mean it to come off this way, but the level of contempt for working class people is mind boggling, not to mention the implied expectation that they should adapt their native language to your needs.

[杰.克]

41 minutes ago, Demonic_Duck said:

but the level of contempt for working class people is mind boggling

 

I think you are trying to read contempt into it. In the wider context of his post, ie being upbeat about China, enjoying his experience there, diligently researching before, id be willing to assume he is just trying to explain his lived experience. That from his perspective people that are poorer, older and don't have educations tend to speak in a dialect/with an accent/using vocab he has a more hard time understanding as a foreigner. Having lived in China for 7 years across many cities, I also found it easier to understand younger people, who hadn't lived through the cultural revolution (and not been to school) and who had grown up in more urban settings. This isn't to say i didn't enjoy speaking to these people, or value them as humans, i just found it a notch up on the language difficulty scale. There is no contempt in this, its just the language they spoke was not as close to the one I studied in the classroom. This will be language students experience all over the world.

 

Nor do I read his implied expectation of forcing everyone to adapt to his language needs (the post is literally about him trying to learn a foreign langauge).

 

I read his every post in this thread (just to check his vibe), and he comes off as a nice dude. Quite self deprecating, and knowing his mandarin is pretty flawed, but trying to improve.

 

 

 

[Guest realmayo]

43 minutes ago, Demonic_Duck said:

but the level of contempt

 

Even native speakers can make mistakes distinguishing tone in written English....!

[Demonic_Duck]

It's "unavoidable" having to "deal with" people in "low paying service positions".

 

Again, maybe it wasn't meant that way, but difficult not to read that as contempt.

[杰.克]

2 hours ago, Demonic_Duck said:

It's "unavoidable" having to "deal with" people in "low paying service positions".

 

Again, maybe it wasn't meant that way, but difficult not to read that as contempt.

 

Again, given 9 people have liked the post, and his vibe all round is generally positive, it seems its not that difficult.  Why not give him the benefit of the doubt?

[Demonic_Duck]

Fair enough, guess I'm the only one who read it that way.

[suMMit]

On 7/20/2018 at 7:34 AM, abcdefg said:

On 7/20/2018 at 3:20 AM, Cake said:

Also, the tones really don't matter much either, just say the two syllable version of the word rather than the one syllable version and 95% of the time it's okay.

 

Could you clarify this? Not sure what you mean about the syllables and tones. 

 

I get what he means, its easier to pronounce the two character form of a word than the one character form. For example 应该 / 该, 学习 / 学. there's just more to latch onto for both speaker and listener. I guess like for an English learner Cannot might be clearer than Can't. But I don't think thats a good route, because for one thing, if you don't get used to the one character equivalent then you'll have a harder time in listening.  On the tones part, I pretty much just disagree.

[roddy]

A two character word pronounced without tones will be more easily understood than a one character word similarly mangled, but it still imposes on the patience of your listener.