Taiwanese Mandarin to Chinese Mandarin

[Lu]

Taiwan people's zh, ch, sh are no different from Beijing people's zh, ch, sh in Mandarin.

I think the difference is huge. But that might just be me.

As to different Mandarin accents in Taiwan, I have the impression that this depends more on education level (and direction, Chinese teachers tend to speak impeccable Mandarin, with all the zhchsh and -n/-ng endings), whether someone's parents speak standard Mandarin or heavily accented Mandarin or Taiwanese, and other such factors, than on what place in the country someone is from. Taiwan hasn't been speaking Mandarin for very long yet, there has not really been time for local accents to develop.

Now for Taiwanese the situation is different, that varies according to where you are. Taizhong Taiwanese is a bit different from Tainan Taiwanese, which in turn is a bit different from Taipei Taiwanese. But I don't think they would ever have trouble understanding each other.

[cdn_in_bj]

IMO, Taiwan people's zh, ch, sh are no different from Beijing people's zh, ch, sh in Mandarin. The people who pronounce differently are generally due to their own local accents coloring their Mandarin pronunciations.

Can you back up this statement? (ie - show us a comparison)

[muyongshi]

Taiwan people's zh, ch, sh are no different from Beijing people's zh, ch, sh in Mandarin.

Hey can I have some of that weed you smokin'?

There is a BIG difference. They don't curl there tongue (taiwanese). I have never met a taiwanese person who doesn't drop the h's in those. All you have to do is watch even a movie like 不能说的秘密 and you hear it right away (ok so it took me 3 times until I heard because sichuan people do the same thing so I am used to it....) and the difference is really obvious!

[xiaocai]

There is a BIG difference. They don't curl there tongue (taiwanese).

That is because what you heard is not STANDARD taiwanese mandarin. The only way to differentiate zh, ch, sh from z, c, s is to curl your tongue and if you don't, then that is not standard mandarin. Maybe you can try to watch news broadcast by taiwanese anchors (but very little chance if you live in mainland, I guess) and you will find at least most of them will speak standard taiwanese mandarin with a distinct accent from those of CCTV, and do curl their tongue nevertheless.

[82riceballs]

I have never met a taiwanese person who doesn't drop the h's in those.

Maybe you haven't met enough Taiwanese people... Are there really any in Sichuan? My Taiwanese friend from Taipei pronounces all of her zh ch and sh by curling her tongue.

[jbradfor]

At least when I was in Taiwan ('89), after the sh/s difference, the biggest difference I found between "standard mandarin" (i.e. what we were taught) and "Taiwanese mandarin" (i.e. what my roommates spoke) was the pronunciation of 和 : he2 vs han4.

[atitarev]

My 2 cents about Mandarin in Taiwan.

I agree standard Mandarin is not usually spoken in the street the way it should be. I met a few Taiwanese in Australia, they all drop they H's in shi, chi, zhi. However standard (prescribed) Mandarin in Taiwan is much more similar to Beijing's Mandarin in terms of pronunciation (main difference being absence of 儿化 in Taiwan + others, mentioned above). I heard some recording - comics, children's short-stories. They are all pronounced very well. As Xiaocai mentioned, TV anchors curl the tongues well.

Listen to Teresa Teng's (邓丽君) songs (Taiwan)! You can learn the best Mandarin just by listening to her songs! So well-articulated, classical pronunciation, IMHO. Other singers of Taiwanese origin have a very similar trained pronunciation, different from other Taiwanese people.

[cdn_in_bj]

That is because what you heard is not STANDARD taiwanese mandarin.

Where would one encounter standard mandarin in Taiwan, besides from listening to news broadcasts? I hope this question doesn't come across as being argumentative - I am genuinely curious.

Maybe you haven't met enough Taiwanese people... Are there really any in Sichuan? My Taiwanese friend from Taipei pronounces all of her zh ch and sh by curling her tongue.

All of the people I've met from Taiwan do not curl their tongues when they speak, and this includes people who are true Taiwanese natives as well as those brought up in families that originally migrated from the mainland during the Communist revolution, so I would've assumed what I was hearing from them could be considered "standard Taiwan mandarin" (for lack of a better term). These people would've immigrated to North America in the late 60's to 70's - perhaps the pronunciation being taught in Taiwan has changed/become closer to "standard northern mainland mandarin" with the younger generation(s)?

[cdn_in_bj]

I should also add that I know of a few native Beijingers who have spent significant time in Taiwan for work, and when they come back they speak with the stereotypical (dropped-H) Taiwan accent. Of course, it doesn't take them much time to adjust back, but I think one of them does it intentionally to sound "cool". Have any of you met "poseurs" like this? I find it quite amusing myself.

[muyongshi]

Maybe you haven't met enough Taiwanese people... Are there really any in Sichuan? My Taiwanese friend from Taipei pronounces all of her zh ch and sh by curling her tongue.

No there is none, but I have met a few in the states as well as after watching a good amount of Taiwanese tv shows and movies (which none then have used "standard" as you so put it). None of them do it. And to me that is odd as many times movies and tv shows are the ones that push for standard speaking.

[xiaocai]

Really? Then don't tell me you you haven't watched 流星花园. At least as I've noticed, most of the girls, including 杉菜(徐熙媛) and 小优(杨丞琳), speak quite standard taiwanese mandarin. But the main guy character 道明寺(言承旭) has a very strong accent and does drop the "h"s.

[muyongshi]

Nope haven't seen that one...maybe I've only seen the not so famous ones...

[xiaocai]

What a shame you haven't! But anyway, tudou's got the complete set for streaming, I think, for free.

And what dramas and movies you've seen? I can't believe that you didn't hear any standard mandarin at all in all of them. Most of them are more or less accented, indeed, but still far from "none".

[muyongshi]

I can only remember one of about 5 right now and that is 我只在乎你. I will check the other out if I get a chance...busy month!

In terms of not "hearing it at all" I will say that the amount of accent does vary greatly depending on the age of the actor and I can maybe remember once where some one spoke fully standard but other than that I have to say I cannot honestly remember anyone using it.

[naeglerian]

This is an interesting thread. I am fairly certain that I learned "standard" Mandarin in weekend Chinese school in the 1980s, with an ROC-based curriculum. Despite only going for a few years, I retained the zh-ch-sh pronunciations. I still have tremendous issues with the er-hua that I am supposed to learn now, though, as it just seems odd to me, from lack of familiarity.

Here's a couple of clips to add to the debate:

邓丽君 talking about ancient poems that were set to songs. Off topic, but I think she speaks just as nicely as she sings.

換換愛 - a recent Taiwanese series. Lots of loss of the "h".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLQWZfpoQ8k

I suppose if you are around people who don't use the "h," you won't either. I have a friend from Fujian who speaks something in between Taiwanese and Chinese Mandarin.

[Lu]

I thought a bit more about fireball's claim and then realized that she probably meant something like Beijing news anchors and Taiwan news anchors speak about the same style of Mandarin. And that's true, I would still say that Taiwanese news anchors don't have such prominent zh ch sh, but they do have a bit, while Beijing news anchors don't speak with a strong Beijing accent.

As to the question where you would hear people speak standard Mandarin in Taiwan: in my experience only news anchors, Chinese teachers and people like Deng Lijun speak it like that. (A TW friend of mine took a class in teaching Chinese to foreigners, but then quickly abandoned his plan to become a teacher, as it seemed he had to learn to speak Chinese all over again.) When you think about it, in Taiwan standard Chinese mostly exists in theory.

[bhchao]

Listen to Teresa Teng's (邓丽君) songs (Taiwan)! You can learn the best Mandarin just by listening to her songs! So well-articulated, classical pronunciation, IMHO. Other singers of Taiwanese origin have a very similar trained pronunciation, different from other Taiwanese people...

As to the question where you would hear people speak standard Mandarin in Taiwan: in my experience only news anchors, Chinese teachers and people like Deng Lijun speak it like that.

The officer corps of mainlander descent in Taiwan's military also speak excellent standard Mandarin. I am not sure about today's generation of military officers, but high ranking military officers in Taiwan born in the 1950's and 60's to mainlander parents spoke flawless standard Mandarin like Deng Lijun. The ability to speak standard Mandarin with excellent pronunciation was a criteria for moving up the military ranks, as it reflected the person's mainlander background.

Deng Lijun was born to a mainlander officer in Yunlin County, and raised in a military village in Taiwan's central region. The people raised in these villages spoke excellent standard Mandarin. They inherited their parents' influences in language pronunciation and work ethic.

[ABCinChina]

I happen to be a descendant of those Chinese people that moved to Taiwan during the Communist Revolution but I've been learning Chinese in China for 1.5 years.

One thing that gets me is that my Taiwanese mother tried to correct when when I told here there was a time limit (期限 - qī xiàn) to get my worker's permit. Is the Taiwanese Mandarin pronunciation of 期, qí or qi? (I'll try to remember to ask next time but maybe someone might know)

[skylee]

Is the Taiwanese Mandarin pronunciation of 期, qí or qi? (I'll try to remember to ask next time but maybe someone might know)

qí

Does your mother also tries to correct the 危 in your 危險?

You might find this thread useful -> Characters with different pronunciations on Mainland / Taiwan

[fireball9261]

I grew up with a school full of classmates who spoke standard Mandarin, and there were probably several thousands (could be 10,000+) of us in my school (from kindergarden to high school and both boys and girls). Considering my school existed from around 1950's to not (2008) and each grades had about 600+ people and there are about 15 grades, I would assume 600*15*50 (I guess I will use about 50 years instead of 58 years) = 450,000 just from my school alone who would and could speak standard Mandarin. That is not counting others in other schools I have noticed who also speak/spoke standard Mandarin. Among these people, there were about 1-2% of people who had some Taiwanese accents because of their family influences. However, all of us understood that to be successful in Taiwan's society means we must speak correctly like educated persons and not like any country persons on the streets. Therefore, we all tried very hard to learn how to speak the correct and standard Mandarin and not Mandarin with our respective local accents (mine would be the Wu accents from Shanghai or Zhejiang areas).

Now, Taiwan people are very good at doing business and know that to be a good businessman you must speak the language of your customers! The current fashion is Taiwanese, and many people deliberately speak Mandarin with the Taiwanese accents. Some even speak Mandarin with the Taiwanese accents to prove a point politically. Many modern/current Taiwan politicians also want to present a nice and friendly country bumpkin image to get close to their voters as well as many actors and actresses on TV to get close to their fans. Some of them actually know and do speak excellent standard Mandarin, but they don't do it in the public for their own images.

When I was growing up, Beijing style of Mandarin was a fashion and considered very upper class. Therefore, I sometimes speak more like a Beijing person with very curled tongue and very pronounced Zh, Ch, Sh, R sounds as well as deliberately added "er" endings in certain strategic locations of a sentence. The trick is just enough "er" to be high class. Too much "er", you would sound like a Beijing natives, and it would be laughable again. (Not that Beijing accents are bad, but it would mean you don't have the correct standard Mandarin again!)

When I was in the Wu areas, I deliberately added Wu accents. When I was in Fujian areas, I deliberately added Taiwanese accents. When I was in Beijing, I deliberately spoke with a lot of "er" and emphasized my zh, ch, sh, r, like the natives. Thus, I would gain their help and their friendship and had them (the locals) feeling close to me unconsciously. This is a way for business and for travel. If I travel to the American South, I would say a lot of "You’ll". When I am talking to the valley girls (my husband's nephews' girl friends), I would speak like a valley girl as well. The current fashion in Taiwan is Taiwanese accent. According to my cousin (who married a Taiwanese wife), many local Taiwanese would not do business with you if you don't have a Taiwanese accent, so many Wai Shen Ren started speaking with Taiwanese accents. It's not that they don't or couldn't speak the standard Mandarin, but they deliberately done so in public.

In Taiwan, the most concentrated people who speak standard Chinese are in Taipei and Taichung. However, you need to get invited into the Wai Shen Ren homes and speak to their younger generations. Unfortunately, it is also considered cool or cute to speak with a bit of Taiwanese accent nowadays, so ... You might want to skip the teenagers and go directly to the people in their 20's, 30's, and 40's (and more serious people) and specify that you want to hear the standard Mandarin and not the accented ones. Many of them would and could do so.

Now, a little bit off the topic, and it's something I want to say to many in this forum before, but I want to be polite and mannerly to our foreign (non-Chinese) friends, so I have been holding back my tongues (which is usually sharper than when I am in this and another English Chinese forums):

When my boyfriend/husband (a native Californian who had never gone to anywhere else other than Canada and once to Mexico when he was very young) argued with me about his misunderstandings of how Chinese women/girls would/should have behaved (as comparing to why I am behaving wrongly and not according to my Chinese tradition), he would say that all the Chinese girls/women he had met would not behave the ways I did! This is what I told him as well as what I would tell many of the people on this thread:

I have grown up in Taipei for 18 years. Taipei has one of the most concentration of Chinese people from all the provinces and overseas. With my father's law office located at home and my mother's love to help people on their marriage and family problems (with the abused wives or abandoned elderly and children or pregnant unwed teenagers or housewife with mental problems living with us for months or years) and her tailor shop on one of the main streets of Taipei, I was exposed to many various types of people (including Westerns, Japanese, and Koreans) since early childhood. I am also very familiar with their ways of speeches and behavior patterns. There were no TV's (and later very few TV programs) and the movie theaters were far and few between and expensive. Our pastimes and entertainments were gathering with friends and neighbors and chat about all sorts of things. That was how I got most of my information about attitudes and usage of words and speech patterns and different outlooks in life, etc. I am also very well read in the past as well as now, and in both English and Chinese, and in literatures and research papers from both coasts (mainland and Taiwan) as well as many modern Science and Social Science subjects in the West. I also like to compare what I have read to what I have observed around me. When I don't understand something, I asked with respect of any one who could provide me the information and am grateful for any answers I got even when they didn't match with what I know or understand because I could be wrong. Fortunately, I lived very close to 2 major Universities: Taiwan Universities and Taiwan Normal Universities, and my father had no lacking of professor friends who were experts (and some were internationally known) in their fields, so I had no lacking of scholarly people to give me theories and more acholarly answers. Also fortunately, my father had clients of farmers and friends who came from farming and lowly backgrounds; my cousin was a low ranking police in Taiwan and later a Li Zhang in the local areas, and he and his Taiwanese wife have a grocery store and had many contacts with many people from all walks in life even the criminal elements. My mom also had a lot of friends who came from military and later retired into lives of Taiwanese farmers and young Taiwanese tailors who had no education and left home (in the Taiwan's country sides) at 16 years old to come to Taipei to look for jobs. We also had maids who were Taiwanese Aborigines or from rich Taiwanese families to learn how to be a proper wife before their marriages (some of their family traditions, I was told). Many of these young women became my friends and/or my mom's god daughters. I learned to ask the lower class people as well as the less educated for my more real world questions. These people were maids, taxi drivers, hotel maids, farmers' wives, cleaning ladies in hotels or restaurants, owners of small grocery stores or street stands. I have done so in the last 40+ years (now closer to 50 years) of my life and in many different provinces of China as well as areas in Taiwan. My boyfriend/husband might have met 1000 (it is probably more than the real number) Chinese girls/women in all of his life, and most of them were ABC's or girls/women with Hong Kong heritage (not even the Cantonese heritage). How could he be qualified to tell me that my behaviors are not normal for a Chinese girl/woman? He shut up after I took him to travel to Taiwan and mainland China to meet my cousins and to Hong Kong and Shanghai for business -- He met enough Chinese women in these travels and in more close up settings (spent in the close company of my cousins and nieces and nephews) to understand my behaviors are more normal than his perceptions of Chinese women from his impressions of the American born Chinese women.

I will also add something for the members of this forum: From what I am seeing in this forum, many of the Westerners here in this forum (I do not include other Asians, including Indians, or Middle Easterners who have similar backgrounds as Chinese and have a lot more knowledge about China than many Westerners) have not been in China or Taiwan long (some may be for 10 years or less?) and might have not traveled widely in China or might not have encountered variety of Chinese and get very close and personal with them (I mean live with them in their homes for many years). How could you make the statements and assumptions and put down others who have more experience than you? I understand people would make such statements to a certain degree and tolerate it to a certain degree. However, it does offend me and my sense as being a Chinese and a native speaker as well as a Chinese with a more advanced age (probably) than many of the people on this forum.

Now, I don't smoke weed or take drugs and also never have any interest to try even though I grew up during the tail end of the hippies and lived in California and had many friends who did do all those things. I don't smoke nor like to drink too much alcoholic drinks either. In addition, I never get totally drunk even when I drink. I do take personal offense when someone say, "you must have taken some weed", etc., to me when I tried to tell you of my own experiences as a native speaking Chinese who grew up in Taiwan and have been to Beijing and other parts of mainland China and have friends in many levels of Chinese societies on both coasts.

I have been very helpful in this forum and believe I do not deserve such put downs. I understand sometimes people do have loose tongues on internet and forums among friends, but I do request you to be aware that Chinese are very serious people and easily get offended in the modern Western style/ways of speaking. Although I have been in the West for 30 years (in California where it is even more casual than most Western places) and could say that I sort of grew up in the Western culture (since 18 years old). However, I did grow up in Taiwan for 18 years and had very traditional upbringings, so some of my attitudes are quite traditional even though I do like manga and anime and cartoons and could speak with teenagers without problems.

Recently, someone in this forum talked about some of the native speaking Chinese came and went quickly or just left after a while. I feel it was possible that they got offended by some of the ways they were treated on this forum by the Western people who have no or little understanding of the Chinese culture and mentallities. Most Chinese would not understand the Western ways or would not point this out to you all. However, I have no problems to do so. I am not planning to leave this forum, but if you noticed that I have come to this forum less and less, it was due to my unhappiness and the put downs of the people here. My continuous staying here is due to my vow to contribute to increase understandings between Chinese people and other non-Chinese people in any ways I could and my love to both Chinese culture and traditions and the hope that non-Chinese and younger generations of Chinese would learn what I have learned from my Qing dynasty born father and early Republic era mother and their friends from those eras.