Question on similar accents

[anticks]

Hi im planning on visiting China to study for a little while and just check out some places in general. The places that appeal to me most so far are; Harbin, Dalian, Qingdao, Kunming, Nanjing and Beijing 2nd.

Im just wondering; which places have the most similar accent to Putonghua? Ive read that Harbin and Dalian and basically anywhere north of Beijing (or there about) have Putonghua as a local dialect? But ive also read that Kunming is also a good place to study even though they have their own local dialect. Is it because Kunminghua is very similar to Putonghua? How about The Nanjing and Qingdao local dialects? How do they compare?

The reason places like Shanghai put me off is that, as i understand, friends and families speak Shanghainese to eachother.

I cant find much information and really looking to be set on the right path. As im seeing it now; Beijing and North of Beijing have the easiest Mandarin to understand from a foreigner perspective? Someone who has been learning Mandarin in another country might find these places the best to go to improve their language skills?

Also for those who have travelled throughout China and speak Putonghua; What Cities have the most similar local dialects to Putonghua? Are there any cities that you can goto that are not freezing cold but where alot of (easy to understand) putonghua is spoken among friends/on the street etc?

[anonymoose]

I had the same queries as you before I decided where to spend my year in China as an English teacher. In the end, I picked Dalian, partly from language considerations, but also because I had heard from various sources that it is a pleasant city.

In hindsight, I don't think choice of location is as critical as you might expect. I guess it partly depends on what you will be doing in China. As a teacher, most of the Chinese people I had contact with were my colleagues and students. Being from relatively educated backgrounds, they spoke more-or-less standard putonghua. As for people on the street, it really depended from person to person. Basically, the more 土气, the harder they were to understand. This I expect is partly as a result of local dialect, but chances are that any large city you go to, many of the people you meet will be 外地人 anyway, and thus have a variety of different accents. Of course, if you are going to study in a language school, and the general public will be the main focus of your practise, location may be a more important factor.

[Xiao Kui]

Kunming is a good place to study because it's beautiful, cheap, and is in a good location relative to other travel destinations in SW China, but the dialect is not very similar to Putonghua. If you have studied Mandarin a while you can understand quite a bit of Kunminghua but listening to it is definitely not going to help your Mandarin. I lived in SW China for 5 years. I also stayed in Harbin for 2 months and I'm certain that if I had spent these 5 years there instead of Kunming and Chengdu my spoken Mandarin would be much better, just because I would be exposed more to it in daily life. In the case of Chengdu the Sichuanhua they speak actually hurts your Mandarin because some of the tones are switched around. I don't know abt the tones as much in Kunminghua but maybe they are switched, too. From my experience of learning Spanish while living in Latin America I know that this kind of daily exposure to a language really speeds up the learning process because there aren't as many dialects in latin America, nor are there as many English speakers as in urban China, so you are forced to learn the language and the daily exposure reinforces everything you learn.

I don't even know if Harbin Chinese is "standard Mandarin", but it was a lot closer to what I was learning in the textbooks than Kunminghua. I think there are several discussions on this topic posted already and both Harbin and Dalian are big winners as far as dialect goes. I think there may have been some posts abt Qingdao as well, so you might want to do a search on it in the forums.

[Lu]

Harbin, Dalian, Qingdao, Kunming, Nanjing and Beijing 2nd.

The Chinese spoken in Harbin, Dalian and Beijing is very close to putonghua.

In Nanjing people speak Nanjinghua, most notable difference from putonghua is that Nanjingnese tend to switch the l and the n (laozi for naozi, li for ni, etc. Interesting, but not very good for your Mandarin.)

People in Kunming speak Yunnanese. Having only spent one day in Kunming I can't say much about how understandable that is to a speaker of Mandarin, I didn't understand it, but maybe if you stay a bit longer you get used to it. It's a Mandarin dialect, so in theory it should be easier to get used to than Shanghainese or Cantonese. Apart from the dialect I liked Kunming as a city.

Don't know much about Qingdao, all I heard of it is that Shandongnese is quite close to Mandarin, except that the tones are different.

Are there any cities that you can go to that are not freezing cold but where alot of (easy to understand) putonghua is spoken among friends/on the street etc?

Shenzhen?

[anticks]

Ill most likely be studying over there.

Lu: kunming and nanjing both sound good. So Nanjinghua would be easier to understand than kunminghua for a beginner speak you think? Do you know what the cost of living/schooling etc is like in Nanjing compared to Kunming?

anonymoose: Dalian seems to be fullfilling most of the requirements i am looking for. I do have one quesiton though. Ive read at a few places that Dalian locals talk funny? Whats the deal behind that? It doesnt sound too major but i am curious.

Shenzhen sounds good too and was on my list. It dropped a bit after i read about the crime level and that there are better places to visit with regard to culture aswell.

[anonymoose]

I'm not sure exactly what you're refering to about Dalian locals talking funny. I think that most people when talking in informal situations will be using a sloppy colloquial style which, regardless of the region of China, will be hard for a learner of Chinese to understand, initially at least.

There were often times when I overheard conversations between natives and found it difficult to even recognise any of the words, let alone follow the conversation. However, in nearly all instances when I was speaking to a local, it was sufficiently clear and well-pronounced for me to understand. I assume that was partly as a result of people making an extra effort to talk clearly with a foreigner. Even so, I wouldn't say it was anything like what you'd hear on CCTV, but it was certainly good enough to be of benefit to me as a learner of Chinese.

As for people in Nanjing speaking Nanjinghua, I think you need to be careful as to what is meant by Nanjinghua. It is true that Nanjingers speaking putonghua do pronounce l as n. However, the local dialect, what I'd refer to as Nanjinghua, is not mandarin, but a wu dialect similar to Shanghaihua.

[Lu]

Lu: kunming and nanjing both sound good. So Nanjinghua would be easier to understand than kunminghua for a beginner speak you think? Do you know what the cost of living/schooling etc is like in Nanjing compared to Kunming?

Sorry, I have no idea about the cost of living. Both are cheaper than Beijing, but that's all I can tell you.

As to Nanjing: The local dialect is hard to understand (as anonymoose says), and on top of that you have the n/l thing when the locals do speak Mandarin. It'll be hard to avoid to pick that up yourself, especially if your Chinese is not very good yet.

[NYC]

As someone who studied in Nanjing, I can say some things about that city's "dialect". Nanjinghua is so different from Putonghua, they might as well be separate languages, I couldn't understand it. But it's not Wu, it's "Southern Mandarin". In any case, the locals you come into contact will normally speak to you in PTH only, and depending on factors like age and education, with varying degrees of accent (some had no accent that I could detect).

Still it's a good place to learn PTH, although if you want to learn standard pronunciation, you'll have to careful not to pick up local (mis)pronunciations, like the typical z-,c-,s- for zh-,ch-,sh-, n/l mixup, for example.

Plus, Nanjing is also a 5-hour train trip to Shanghai so you can take a weekend trip there if you want. And the weather is pretty good except the summer when it gets very hot.

[Crivens200]

It doesn't really matter where you learn putonghua in China. It makes next to no difference if you learn it in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai or Kunming.

Nobody learns chinese from street talk, it's a language that has to be studied and studied properly. And if you are studying it you will be taught by a teacher who speaks putonghua. Getting results learning chinese is something that is directly proportional to the amount of effort you put in, not dependent on which city you live in.

Yeah, there might be different accents but anyone under 50 will speak pu tong hua.

The only people who don't speak pu tong hua would be uneducated old farmers which I presume that most westerners in China would have no earthly reason to speak to.

For someone to say that they would have had better chinese if they had spent more time in City A as opposed to City B is a pile of gash.

Anyone you need to speak to in China speaks putonghua and anyone who claims to have learnt their chinese from some method other than studying it is a goddam dirty liar

[Lu]

Crivens: I think you're overestimating people's putonghua. My current language partner, well under fifty, well-educated and intelligent, is from Nanjing and switches his n and l all the time. Many of my local friends in Taiwan (also under 50) have no retroflexes and tend to mix up -n and -ng.

Language is not only learned in the classroom, it's learned by speaking and listening it as much as possible, preferably with native speakers. Sure you can learn Mandarin in Nanjing, Taibei (ok actually you can learn fine Mandarin in Taibei) or even Hongkong, but you're likely to pick up an accent from the people you're speaking with outside of the classroom, and if you don't speak to people outside of the classroom, your Chinese won't get that good.

[Josh-J]

switches his n and l all the time.

Lu, I'd have thought what you're talking about there is more like accent than PTH capability. Here in the UK, most people in scotland can hardly be said to be speaking with a standard english accent. But they're speaking english nonetheless. Personally at least, even if they had a VERY strong accent that I found difficult to understand, I'd still say they were speaking english unless they were using scot-specific words alot

[Lu]

I should have phrased that differently. Most people, especially young and educated people, speak putonghua, but many people, including young and educated people, have a local, non-standard accent to their putonghua, which sometimes makes them hard to understand. It is generally not a good idea for a foreigner to pick up such an accent. It can easily get them either laughed at or misunderstood in other parts of China.