Characters with different pronunciations on Mainland / Taiwan

[bhchao]

A pronunciation that just crossed my mind is 意思. The standard putonghua pronunciation is yi4si1. However the pronuncation for 意思 among Taiwanese Mandarin speakers is yi4si4.

[Mugi]

...意思. The standard putonghua pronunciation is yi4si1.

The standard putonghua pronunciation is actually yi4si5.

[necroflux]

And everytime I've heard 意思 in Taiwan it's been yi4si5.

[sjcma]

和: he2 is used much more than han4 on Taiwan. People only sometimes read han4 when reading aloud from the newspaper or things like that, I never heard it in natural speech

.

My brother and I say "han4" all the time in natural speech. That's the way we were taught as kids. Han4 is an "older" pronounciation that comes straight out of the Kangxi dictionary, I believe. Nowadays, he2 has become more common in popular usage.

The differences in pronounciation between mainland and Taiwanese Mandarin standards are due to history. After the Qing dynasty was overthrown, the new ROC government created a national language (Mandarin) and standardized the pronounciation. Thus, a committee of people came together and by the 1920's, standard Mandarin pronounciation became cemented and stable. In the 1950's, the newly formed communist government decided to establish its own standard called putonghua along with character simplification.

Mandarin is _based_ on the Beijing dialect but is not equal to the Beijing dialect. So a group of people had to decide, given various pronounciation from different dialect groups for the same character, which one was to be accepted as the standard. Given that the two standards were created with two separate groups of people separated by decades, it's only natural that differences will occur.

Taiwan still uses the older standardization of the 1920's while the PRC, obviously, uses the standard that it has created.

[owen]

And everytime I've heard 意思 in Taiwan it's been yi4si5.

ditto.

[Taibei]

The signs using pinyin in Taipei have dual usage of hanyu pinyin and tongyong pinyin. Hanyu pinyin comes first, followed by tongyong pinyin in parenthesis.

The situation is not quite as you described. In Taipei proper (Taibei Shi), Hanyu Pinyin is now standard and Tongyong Pinyin is not to be found except on signs in places controlled by the central government (e.g., the train station, highways through the city); and the central government's signs do not include Hanyu Pinyin. The Taipei City Government, however, does use both Hanyu and Tongyong on just a few signs, generally near the border of the city. This is because Taipei City, which has adopted Hanyu Pinyin, is surrounded by Taipei County, which did not adopt Hanyu Pinyin and, having been under a DPP administration, generally went with what the central government (also a DPP administration) said to do.

So within Taipei proper, the MRT system has Hanyu and no Tongyong. The most recently opened MRT stations in Taipei County, however, are labeled in Hanyu, with Tongyong in parentheses. Older MRT stations in Taipei County do not have station names marked in Tongyong, though the maps and other indicators within those particular MRT stations will have Tongyong in parentheses.

But Taipei County is now under a KMT administration, so there will not be any expansion of Tongyong in the county; expect a slow and probably poorly executed transition to Hanyu Pinyin. Although it's possible the administration will shift in the next election, I doubt Tongyong will make any kind of comeback.

BTW, the title of this thread is way off. Chinese characters are not primary, words (spoken language) are. A much less confusing title would be "Mandarin words pronounced differently in China and Taiwan".

[carlo]

I normally hear 确凿 as que4zuo4 (in Beijing), yet mainland dictionaries transcribe it as que4zao2, while Taiwanese dictionaries have que4zuo4. I would have guessed it was a mainland Taiwan difference, but I'm not really sure.

[Ge-lin]

衝擊

chong1 ji2 in Taiwan, chong1 ji1 in the Mainland, right?

[trien27]

go to zhongwen.com

click on Vocabulary link,then click on Different Pronunciation Standards link. A lot of examples between putonghua vs guoyu. Mostly single character words.

[trien27]

Language changes with time and location. Regional dialects might have an effect on how Putonghua changed over the years. Just like how Minnanyu(southern Fujian/Fukien/Hokkien dialect) changed Taiyu/Holoe (subdialect spoken by many Taiwanese people) in turn, changed how some people in Taiwan spoke Mandarin. Or how some people use words from Shanghainese or Suchow or Sichuan and how it effected the Mandarin used by people from these areas. Spoken Chinese kept evolving since the beginning of Chinese history. Where you live can affect how you speak especially in Mainland China. Example: Your ancestors are from one region, you were born in a 2nd region, you live in a 3rd region, you go to school in a 4th region, you work in a 5th region. You will be speaking at least 3 dialects with 2-3 subdialects plus English in the 21st century! I guess that's why Chinese people are so smart.

[Wenwang]

When I was studying in Taiwan, I learned that 和 had several pronunciations depending on use. It was hé in nouns like "hépíng", the various ones like "nuǎnhuo", and then "hàn" when it was a grammatical word meaning 'and'. I have seen children's textbooks with the readings next to the characters which show this and other readings in a sentence. I only studied there for a year, but I got the expression that compared to Mainland mandarin, people from Taiwan use 跟 a lot of places that a 'lander would customarily use 和.

AFAIK, 垃圾 in Taiwanese is pronounced something like 'bun sa' ... if you want to hear it yourself, it's in the chorus to the song 垃圾車 by 五月天.

[Mugi]

AFAIK, 垃圾 in Taiwanese is pronounced something like 'bun sa' ... if you want to hear it yourself, it's in the chorus to the song 垃圾車 by 五月天.

Although off-topic, you're partially right; Taiwanese will often write 垃圾 for 'pùn sò', although the correct characters are 糞掃. Technically, in Taiwanese 垃圾 is a simplified way of writing 'lah sap', which means "dirty".

[atitarev]

Can someone comment on particle 勒 in Taiwan? I came across several times in 不能说的秘密 movie. User Lu suggested it was a typo (should be 呢) but I met it 3 times.

Here's an example with a translation from the subtitles.

那你勒？What about you?

2 more examples:

还骗你的勒

你觉得晴依都会去那边弹勒

--

EDIT:

I'll be back next week.

[achiese]

"勒" is also a particle from 閩南語. It functions almost the same as "呢".

I prefer to use another character "咧" than "勒".

Not only the sound of 咧 (lei) is much more accurate than "勒", but the

radical indicates the feature of particle.

ex.

還騙你的咧！

你覺得晴依都會去哪邊彈咧？

[atitarev]

I would appreciate, if you elaborate on the meaning and pronunciation of "勒", achiese.

I can't work it out from the ABC entry:

勒 [lēi] tie or strap tightly [lè] 勒索 lèsuǒ extort; blackmail

1. There is no entry saying the character can be used as a particle.

2. What is the pronunciation when it's used as a particle?

[achiese]

"勒" here should be pronounced as lei1.

I am affirmatively sure "lei1" here is a particle from 閩南語 .

Also I was surprised at the fact that "咧" could only be pronounced as "lie"

after I looked it up.

Regarding the meaning and pronounciation of "勒", you have already explaned

about it approximately.

The situation is the particle "lei" is a dialectal word, and so far there is no appropriate

character to represent it.

Since "勒" is the only character which pronounced as "lei1" in 國語(普通話), thus

many people choose to use it to express the particle especially when they input by a

phonetic method.

On the contrary other people, including me, use the character "咧" whom they think is close to the original sound available in 國語. Maybe they have no idea "咧" should not

be pronounced as "lei1" but "lie" just like me.

At last, I guess many people even don't know they mix the dialectal word into 國語.

You could find taiwanese like to misuse "有沒有", cantonese like to say "令到", while

they are not formal usage in 國語. People just don't notice it.

After all we have 7 major dialects all over the country.

[atitarev]

Thanks for explaining it, Achiese. 现在我清楚多了。

[calibre2001]

How do taiwanese pronounce 熟 ?

[Lu]

Shou3, or at least that's what I hear and use. Mainland says shu3, right?

[imron]

Mainland says both shóu and shú. Never heard shǒu or shǔ.