Regionalects

[Gormur]

Hi, I'm new here.

I'm curious to know if there are any resources out there (in Mandarin or English, preferably) which talk about various regionalects in China/Taiwan. In particular, I want to learn Chengdu or Sechuan dialect, since all of my good friends come from Chengdu and speak that dialect. I also plan to visit Chengdu in the near future.

Out of curiousity, I would also like to learn Taipei dialect or Taiwanese (if there is a standard variety) because I also have friends there and want to visit them in the future.

Thanks in advance,

Gormur

[carlo]

There are a few books for learning Minnanhua/Taiwanese and you can find these in major bookstores, at least in Beijing (in Chinese of course). There are a few resources on Chengdu Sichuanese but I can't think of any written for learners, only specialist publications for professional or amateur linguists. If you have friends who speak the dialect though and are willing to teach you you can get a lot out of these books, I managed to pick up some Changzhou dialect in this way.

[malinuo]

I picked up trilingual phrase books (not grammars) with CDs for Japanese + Mandarin + "Taiwan go" and "Shanghai go" in Japan. The bigger Japanese bookshops have a fairly good selection of books about Chinese dialects. To understand the grammars you need to understand Japanese of course.

The books I bought were 初めての台湾語 and 初めての上海語. The Cantonese book in the same series does not have Mandarin, just Japanese and Cantonese.