Which accent?

[beechtree50]

Not sure if this is the right area to post this in. I have a project that needs voiceover rerecording into chinese, and a question has cropped up. What is the Chinese equivalent accent to the UK BBC standardised "middle" english. Is there one region or one accent that the majority of chinese would be able to understand?

[Jose]

Yes, since the first half of the 20th century, a standard form of Chinese has been promoted as the national language. This is called putonghua ("common speech") in mainland China, and guoyu ("national language") in Taiwan, and it was originally based on the Beijing dialect. This is the form of Chinese you will hear on television and on the radio most of the time. In the West, it is often referred to as Mandarin, though this term can also be used in a broader sense to designate all the mutually comprehensible forms of Chinese spoken throughout northern and southwestern China, as opposed to other Chinese dialects like Cantonese, Wu, Min and so on.

Note that, although originally based on the local speech from Beijing, the use of putonghua as a national standard language has made it develop some features of its own, much in the same way as BBC English is not the same as the English spoken in the Southeast of England. Anyway, any young educated speaker from Beijing, or from other northern cities like Tianjin, should have a standard accent.

[Lu]

The official language of China is Mandarin, Putonghua in Chinese. This is approximately the same as the version of Chinese spoken in Beijing and further north. Chinese people learn this language in school, so the vast majority of the people will understand it, although not everybody speaks it equally well.

[Fiona Lau]

Putonghua is the official language in China,but the version of Chinese spoken in Beijing and further north is not same with Putonghua.They have certain local accent.

When you speak Putonghua,nobody can easily find where you are from.It's sucessful Putonghua.

[beechtree50]

Thank you both for your informative replies.