Which accent features? Tourist guide filmed doing aggressive selling

[DavyJonesLocker]

2 hours ago, Publius said:

It's like the foreigners in the UK, you detect a trace of Eastern European accent in someone's English, but whether they're from Warsaw or Budapest, you don't know.

 

 

Not at all!. It is  simple to tell where a European is from solely from speaking English. Although I'd agree the further east you travel it becomes harder (Estonia, Lithuania etc) Also what's the number of standard Chinese speakers in China ? 70% maybe chances are somewhere in Beijing you are speaker to a native standard Mandarin speaker. 

[Publius]

1 hour ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

what's the number of standard Chinese speakers in China ?

The number is zero. Standard Chinese is an artificial standard. It's based on Beijing Mandarin but is not Beijing Mandarin*. Nobody is born to speak it. You learn it at school and through media. Beijingers do have an advantage though because of the closeness of their dialect to the standard.

 

* For example, 'cèi' is not a valid syllable in Standard Chinese, but you hear Beijing kids shout cèi-dīng-ké when they play rock-paper-scissors.

[roddy]

Wikipedia: A survey conducted by the China's Education Ministry in 2007 indicated that 53.06% of the population were able to effectively communicate orally in Standard Chinese.

 

They might not be native speakers, but after half a century of relentless promotion and serving as the common language, there's a hell of a lot of people who are easily bilingual, and probably more comfortable in Standard Chinese than whatever they spoke in the kitchen at home.

 

If you'd been asked how many English speakers there are in China, you'd have said 'millions'. 

[DavyJonesLocker]

1 hour ago, roddy said:

Wikipedia: A survey conducted by the China's Education Ministry in 2007 indicated that 53.06% of the population were able to effectively communicate orally in Standard Chinese.

 

 

That's much lower than I thought actually, however that survey is 11 years old and perhaps the data from a year or two before. I'd imagine the number is higher now given the explosion in social media,  continual promotion in the language and of course older generations gradually passing away.

 

1 hour ago, Publius said:

 

[imron]

6 hours ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

Not at all!. It is  simple to tell where a European is from solely from speaking English

Broadly yes, but I doubt you could tell northern France from southern France based on their English accent. 

[abcdefg]

That video clip was like a bad flashback to several tours I took when exploring China early on. A tongue lashing like this from the tour guide was something pretty much to be expected before the end of the day. He or she is hanging on up front with one hand as the bus bounces and swerves; passionately trying to explain the economics of the business to her captives and bully or shame us into the expected behavior. 

[Wippen (inactive)]

10 hours ago, imron said:

17 hours ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

Not at all!. It is  simple to tell where a European is from solely from speaking English

Broadly yes, but I doubt you could tell northern France from southern France based on their English accent. 

@imron good point. Or someone from Alsace is from Germany or France.

 

Or a Swedish and Norwegian speaking English or a Swiss and Austrian speaking English. Also Romanians speaking English (with Romanian being a Latin language)

[DavyJonesLocker]

I'm still not sure what the answer is

 

So can an average northern Chinese person tell if someone from Hebei, heilongjiang, Liaoning, Jilin when they are  speaking their native language?

 

[Lu]

I think the point is that you can tell the difference if they speak their local 话, but not, or not as well, when they speak 普通话. In 普通话 you can broadly tell which province someone is from, in 方言 you can narrow it down to the village level.

All this, of course, assuming you have had enough exposure to people speaking with various accents.