Hi
I was talking with my friend today here in Bangkok today ,
her daughter has gone to the USA for 1 year of High School ,
now her Mom would like her to learn Chinese and its also much closer than the USA !
But I was wondering if you get a Taiwanese accent if learning in Taiwan and if that can be a negative in the future ?
I have no idea , it just was something that came up today and was an interesting angle 
your thoughts ?
Thanks for any ideas
The Honourable Kevin Rudd (é¸ĺ ć) studied Mandarin in Taiwan, and was neither crippled by a Taiwanese-accented Chinese, nor by his Australian-accented English.
You think too much.
Depends what you mean by a Taiwanese accent.
If you study Mandarin in Taiwan, youâll probably learn the lightly accented, acrolectic Standard Mandarin as it is spoken in Taipei (much like Putonghua, but with noticeable differences: garbage is âleseâ instead of âlajiâ, words are not given the -r ending as frequently as in China, the retroflex consonants are not as harsh, etc.).
You probably wonât be learning the more heavily accented, basilectic âTaiwan Mandarinâ (where the âf-â ends up being pronounced like âhu-â, alveolar/retroflex consonants are non-existent, and é ç´ (âto book in advanceâ) sounds like âee-ehâ). This is the kind of Mandarin spoken by people whose native language is Taiwanese, and itâs heavily colored by that language.
If you learn Standard Mandarin here, itâs a pleasant-sounding accent thatâs pretty much universally understood by Mandarin speakers worldwide.
ThanksâŚ
I am not learning it , a High School Thai girl would be learning it
China is doing a big push into Thailand with a new train link that will be finished in a few years (hopefully)
So learning Chines and already knowing English will help with her future ,
And I guess she could go to both Taiwan and later to Mainland China to go to summer school,
Are there any Chinese classes in Taiwan that are more for FUN and not just sitting at a desk everyday ?
A lot of people in China have non-standard accents (and they are Chinese). This includes a lot of people who sound a lot like the people in Taiwan speaking Mandarin. So aside from a few words that are different (an easy fix) I wouldnât worry about accent. As long as she speaks so that she can be understood easily, it will be fine.
Itâs no worse than studying English in Scotland or Australia or Canada or Florida (as opposed to in London for âstandardâ British or in Pennsylvania for âstandardâ American). Accents are inherently unavoidable; just choose the accent you like.
âAccents are inherently unavoidable; just choose the accent you like.â
and that is the point , not knowing which one to âlikeâ
would you send someone to learn English in Scotland or the Deep South in the USA ? I would not !
Sure! Why not? Hereâs a list of a dozen ESL programs in Louisiana.
It really doesnât matter. When I speak to someone and I think they may wonder about my accent, I simply say âI lived in Taiwan for 7 and a half years.â Problem solved.
Thereâs nothing âwrongâ with learning Taiwan-style Mandarin, just like thereâs nothing âwrongâ with learning South African-style English. Itâs simply different.
The English analogy is not really the same as the situation with Mandarin accents in China.
There are plenty of people in China â Chinese citizens â who speak almost exactly as Taiwanese people do, accent-wise. A few differences in word choice, thatâs about it. But they sound like Taiwanese, pretty much.
There are no major American populations in the US who sound like Australians, British, etc. that Iâm aware of. So itâs more like choosing to study English in Florida, or California, or New York. And in such a case, it doesnât matter. Any of those will be viewed as an American accent.
You can learn Chinese in Taiwan, go to China, and have the same accent as millions of people in China. And guess what? You will always be spotted as a non-Chinese anywayâŚ
[quote=âironladyâ]The English analogy is not really the same as the situation with Mandarin accents in China.
There are plenty of people in China â Chinese citizens â who speak almost exactly as Taiwanese people do, accent-wise. A few differences in word choice, thatâs about it. But they sound like Taiwanese, pretty much.
There are no major American populations in the US who sound like Australians, British, etc. that Iâm aware of. So itâs more like choosing to study English in Florida, or California, or New York. And in such a case, it doesnât matter. Any of those will be viewed as an American accent.
You can learn Chinese in Taiwan, go to China, and have the same accent as millions of people in China. And guess what? You will always be spotted as a non-Chinese anywayâŚ[/quote]
Thanks , she will probably never live in China or Taiwan , But knowing Chinese will help her in the future when living in Thailand.
And even with an accent she will still be far ahead .
Is there an area in China with a more neutral accent if she also wanted to go study there ?
thanks again
When I first started learning chinese, I placed a great emphasis on getting the accent right as well as the tones and pronunciation. So when I was studying Potunghua in Beijing it used to really annoy me when I couldnât understand people with different accents. It was pretty frustrating paying all the tuition fees and spending hours studying to not be able to used my âstandard potunghuaâ outside of school.
However I soon discovered as previous posters have mentioned, that in China there are so many different accents, that your standard potunghua is not actually the standard at all. So I am not so bothered about my accent now, so long as I used the right words and correct grammar, the accent is secondary.
However I would say that after living in Beijing for 3 years and Taiwan for 2 years, the living environment in Beijing is better at reinforcing correct pronunctiation of characters. After a few years in Taiwan, due to the almost non-existant ârâ tone, words like shi become si, chi - ci and zheng - zeng. Re becomes Le, and âfâ and âhâ gets mixed up.
I rely heavily on pinyin to type in chinese and it gets quite frustrating when I cannot find the word because of the differences in regional pronounciation. Itâs also easier to learn the ârâ pronunciation and then to remove it when not required than the other way around.
I do live in Taichung so my environment is more local than in Taipei. However the friends I have met in Taipei do seem to have similar accents.
I am from a cantonese/hakka heritage and I do find potunghua as spoken in Taiwan easier to understand than in Beijing. I am not sure if this is due to similar grammar constructs or vocabulary.
Learners (of Chinese, of English too) often think they are misunderstood because their accent is unintelligible. I learned in Taiwan, and some of my tones and vocab is different but people understand me though. Friends comment my third tones are weird sometimes - this is a little Taiwan influence, a little âme being crap at speaking Chineseâ influence. The issue is rarely accent in intelligibility, itâs simply only having intermediate level Chinese. Communication sometimes breaks down with learners and when I taught learners in the UK, intermediate level learners often complained about regional accents in the UK. Advanced students were better able to deal with the allophonic variations because their âprocessing timeâ was shorter, when listening. Learners over-estimate their own accent and blame their communication breakdowns on that, probably because itâs an easy psychological coathook.
The Taiwanese folk I know in China have no problems whatsoever understanding and being understood where we live in eastern China, because they are fluent. For we learners, thereâs a period of adjustment, but itâs not a huge big deal. My uni also has kids from far-flung provinces and they can all communicate with eachother. Of course, there are prestige accents in every language, but learners donât really have access to this âprestigeâ because they always just sound like learners, anyway, and thereâs nothing wrong with that.
Thereâs nowhere with a âneutralâ accent. You just have to spend a couple of weeks tuning in to the differences, wherever you find yourself.
Chinese communities in Bangkok donât really speak much mandarin anyway. Itâs useful to read it if you canât read and speak Thai, sometimes.
I asked a Chinese friend if I had a Taiwanese or a Chinese accent and he looked at me as if I had lost my mind and said âYou have a foreigner accentâ. I think the same kind of comment would also apply to your question.
I asked a Chinese friend if I had a Taiwanese or a Chinese accent and he looked at me as if I had lost my mind and said âYou have a foreigner accentâ. I think the same kind of comment would also apply to your question.[/quote]
Agree. My experience is that it is stunningly difficult for any non-native Chinese speaker to obtain a sufficiently native accent in Chinese (be it Northern, Southern, Taiwanese or whatever) whereby native Chinese speakers donât just hear the âforeigner accent.â This isnât always a bad thing, though and it doesnât mean that you canât effectively communicate. My Chinese and Taiwanese friends all have no problem understanding Wang Lee Homâs Mandarin but he has a noticeable ABC accent to them (admittedly my Chinese friends also claim that it is also clear that he is a Taiwanese ABC).
Personally, Iâm very happy when Chinese speakers tell me they can hear a Taiwanese accent in my Mandarin buried deep in my normal ABC atonality and garbled pronunciation.
That depends a lot â on the individual, and on the person judging the accent.
My dissertation research looked at foreign accent in Mandarin. I had 9 samples of Mandarin speech â one native speaker who used two different accents (Mainland and Taiwanese), one foreigner who used three different accents (Mainland, Taiwanese and hypercorrected â where you replace /x/ with /sh/ and so on â itâs common with people in the service industry) and four distractors, all of whom were foreigners. The 200 Taiwanese subjects had to rate the speakers on personal characteristics and guess where they were from â then they got a short break and did the whole thing again, but this time they were told where the speaker was from before rating.
In some cases (not a lot, but enough to say it was not a fluke) the raters mis-identified the speakers as Taiwanese or foreigner when they were not first told where they were from. This did not happen for the distractor speakers, most of whom had pretty strong foreign accents.
This is detached from real life for a couple of reasons: the recordings were all of the same content (if the content was different that might have affected things) and most importantly there was no visual channel. People make their first judgment on what somebody âshouldâ sound like by looking at them. And there is plenty of evidence in the research that demonstrates that there are lots of valid reasons for retaining a distinct foreign accent. I had problems in Spanish because my accent was good enough (and there is enough variation within Spanish accents) that I was accepted as probably being native in many cases, and I didnât think like a native of the country in question. It might have been better had I sounded more definitely American in that case.
I have a Taiwanese accent from living in Taiwan as a kid. Most Chinese people I meet can tell this very quickly, but I have never had any negative reactions. Some people think it is cool or even cute, haha. Many people from China will have a regional accent, anyway. Taiwanese and Chinese people can understand each otherâs Mandarin perfectly, without any problems. Also, some Chinese accents are very similar to Taiwanese accents. Actually, I think it will be useful to become familiar with non-Beijing accents, because many learning materials are in Beijing accents, but most Chinese do not sound like that.
Pennsylvania?? lolâŚI donât think I would consider Pittsburgh or Philly accents âstandardâ American English. Iâve always heard that St. Louis is considered pretty much neutral American English.
Anyway, I agree with your point though. Taiwan accent is perfectly fine. I began my Mandarin study in San Francisco and looked down on the Taiwan accent, but now I realize it is an easily understood and fairly standard Mandarin accent. Iâve heard many mainlanders say that they find the Taiwanese accent pleasing to the ear.
[quote=âtommy525â]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXbFqTNXqwY
She sounds pretty much like a Taiwanese girl [/quote]
Almost. Only listened without visual for the most part. Some small cues like her ârâ, âxâ and âzhâ allows me to notice she might not be native, but she really got the young 20 something Taipei girl speech pattern down.
Pennsylvania?? lolâŚI donât think I would consider Pittsburgh or Philly accents âstandardâ American English. Iâve always heard that St. Louis is considered pretty much neutral American English.
Anyway, I agree with your point though. Taiwan accent is perfectly fine. I began my Mandarin study in San Francisco and looked down on the Taiwan accent, but now I realize it is an easily understood and fairly standard Mandarin accent. Iâve heard many mainlanders say that they find the Taiwanese accent pleasing to the ear.[/quote]
This is only after the northern cities vowel shift in the late 1930s. Prior to that vowel shift, the entire great lake area also mostly used General American. This means General American originally was from Northern non-coastal US.