I was reading the thorn tree section of the lonely planet website, and I saw some very snide posts about “wasting your time” going to Taiwan to study Mandarin since you’ll learn characters most Chinese people can’t read (when thinking about Chinese people around the world) and an accent that will leave most of said Chinese laughing at your hick-ness.
Personally, I’ve found that you can study here and find teachers who are able to teach the Beijing accent if it is desired. Also, I like many accents I hear in Taiwan. Ok, there are a few that I wouldn’t want to emulate but most are fine by my ears.
At any rate, even for languages where there ARE different accents native speakers and foreigners are judged by different standards. Unless you turned up speaking total hick language (which would never be the case if you learn Chinese in ANY language school in Taiwan – I’m talking more about things like the experience of Heinrich Harrer who learned Tibetan walking there from India during WWII and ended up talking like a peasant – but then again Tibetan has very rigid distinctions about politeness) I don’t see the problem.
Even the US State Dep’t has different “standards” for accent – they’ll accept non-Chinese interpreters with Taiwanese accents, although they do not generally like Chinese interpreters with Taiwanese accents. Unofficial but true.
Just be charming, smile a lot and eat everything you are offered, and no one will care what your accent sounds like.
I wouldn’t want to learn Chinese from someone who can’t distinguish between retroflex (zh, ch, sh, r) and non-retroflex (z, c, s) consonants, especially as a beginner. Once you have learned it wrong (I mean in a non-standard way), it would be very difficult to put right. “Jeffu” is a good example of that - Perhaps he feels it isn’t important.
However, for listening comprehension, it is useful to get used to a variety of regional accents.
I would think that the defining factor for many (broke-ass) students to decide where to study Chinese is that mainland China is much cheaper than Taiwan. Maybe not necesarily from a tuition point of view if it’s a program through an American college (the summer program from Princeton is $3-4k I think), but certainly the cost of living in the mainland is a fraction of Taiwan’s.
That, and the fact that simplified characters ARE much easier to learn, I would indeed suggest to most people to study Chinese in China unless they have a very specific reason why they would want to study in Taiwan.
As for laughing at your hickness, a huge percentage of Chinese people are still subsistence peasants; it’s harder to be any more hick than that.
As well, if you’re planning to live in Taiwan, obviously this accent is fine. I’ve lived in both Taiwan and China, and believe me, Taiwan is better.
[quote=“Juba”]I wouldn’t want to learn Chinese from someone who can’t distinguish between retroflex (zh, ch, sh, r) and non-retroflex (z, c, s) consonants, especially as a beginner. Once you have learned it wrong (I mean in a non-standard way), it would be very difficult to put right. “Jeffu” is a good example of that - Perhaps he feels it isn’t important.
[/quote]
Jeffu’s speaking ability and accent have been described to me as native-level, not near-native (like Igor, for example). He’s published books about learning English, but he’s probably more qualified to write about learning Chinese. I’d be interested to know if he has any secrets. Well, I know one of the secrets to his success–he’s always talking non-stop. Sorry for this Jeffu tangent.
[quote=“pinchrunner”][quote=“Juba”]I wouldn’t want to learn Chinese from someone who can’t distinguish between retroflex (zh, ch, sh, r) and non-retroflex (z, c, s) consonants, especially as a beginner. Once you have learned it wrong (I mean in a non-standard way), it would be very difficult to put right. “Jeffu” is a good example of that - Perhaps he feels it isn’t important.
[/quote]
Jeffu’s speaking ability and accent have been described to me as native-level, not near-native (like Igor, for example). He’s published books about learning English, but he’s probably more qualified to write about learning Chinese. I’d be interested to know if he has any secrets. Well, I know one of the secrets to his success–he’s always talking non-stop. Sorry for this Jeffu tangent.[/quote]
Seems to me that Igor speaks like a native and the other guy speaks Chinese very well. My guess is that Igor works very hard at what he does. You can’t compare the two. Igor’s Chinese is far better. This isn’t an opinion.
Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the same book of facts that wipt has, so my statement was based on what Taiwanese friends have told me. To my ear, Igor’s Chinese soundslike a native, and I can’t detect any flaws. But two people have told me that his tones have a few mistakes and there’s a little something strange about his speech whereas they couldn’t distinguish Jeffu’s speech from that of a native.
Traditional v. simplified
Because the number of characters is roughly the same, two traditional characters, having more strokes, are also more likely to have easily distinguishable features than two simplified ones. Therefore, they should be easier to distinguish as well as remember and identify.
So reading should be easier in traditional characters. Printing should also be easier to proof-check.
Handwriting presents the same difficulty because in both cases characters are simplified anyway, and beyond any “analytical” recognition.
Many mainland Chinese also learn traditional characters (part of the curriculum, I think) since they may have to read traditional characters too (archives, HK, Taiwan, many overseas newspapers, etc.). OK those are in a minority but more likely to interact with educated folks like you all are in here. And you have dictionaries of classical Chinese with traditional characters entries and definition in simplified script (or mixed).
Characters that are merely simplified are OK but a small number are completely different, which seems daft.
And, traditional looks better, which is probably why you can have covers in traditional for books in simplified. Ah-ah.
Pronunciation (not accents)
I don’t have a single recording of spoken Chinese where there isn’t numerous and striking non-standard pronunciation on display (coming from publishers of Chinese material in France, Beijing University, Sinolingua, Shanghai, HK putonghua CDs for HK business people), Taiwan and the Chinese top man in Tokyo University).
t’hsuen becomes t’shuan, t’sun becomes t’shun, tian becomes tin, t’shin becomes t’shing, shou becomes shu, shi(shr) becomes she, feng is usually fong, t’sheng becomes t’shang, etc., etc., etc.
Sometimes it’s not really confusing, sometimes it is.
The only source of standard pronunciation I know are songs in Mandarin from Taiwanese singers (except “de” can become “di”).
The “standard Mandarin pronunciation” doesn’t really have much to do with Beijing pronunciation at all. Go to Beijing and take a taxi, and they’ll sound just as “hick” as your average taike. Mandarin was not based on Beijing dialect per se, but rather the language that had developed among university students in Beijing at that time (they came from many different provinces, so had to come up with some way to communicate with each other when they went to Beijing to study). It is roughly related to Beijing-hua, but is certainly not “real” Beijing-hua, and the accent is much lighter. Only a few of the “-er” endings have been preserved, like in “yidian®”.
I was pretty disappointed the first time I heard Jeffu speaking Chinese. After having read his books and the stories about how long he’s been living in Taiwan and how great his Chinese and even Taiwanese was, I expected it to be like a native speaker. The guy’s american accent is way too strong to be mistaken for a native speaker…!
As to Igor, in the beginning I really did mistake him for a native speaker, but my Chinese has improofed since then and I can now tell that he has a few problems with his tones every now and then. But besides that, his Chinese is really great and far better than any other foreigner I’ve ever heard speaking Chinese…gosh, I’m so jealous!
[quote=“mesheel”]I was pretty disappointed the first time I heard Jeffu speaking Chinese. After having read his books and the stories about how long he’s been living in Taiwan and how great his Chinese and even Taiwanese was, I expected it to be like a native speaker. The guy’s American accent is way too strong to be mistaken for a native speaker…!
[/quote]
“Jeffu” is all hype … the media’s and his own. If you want to hear a foreigner speaking really good Chinese, listen to Dashan (Big Mountain) in Mainland China. I believe he’s Canadian, but I could be wrong … IMO, he makes “Jeffu” look like a first-year Chinese student.
Yes, he is. For those who don’t know, Dashan 大山 (Mark Rowswell) is well known in China for performing xiangsheng 相聲, which is comic cross-talk, roughly the Chinese equivalent of Abbott and Costello. His name comes from kan3 da4shan1 砍大山 “chop down the big mountain,” which means to chat.
Oh, I heard about that guy. But nevertheless I really do not like these comic crosstalks in Mainland. They always turn these on at 5:30am in the morning on loooon trainrides and everybody starts to get busy and disturbes me in my sleep. Or have they finally stopped their propaganda?
[quote=“rooftop”]I was reading the thorn tree section of the lonely planet website, and I saw some very snide posts about “wasting your time” going to Taiwan to study Mandarin since you’ll learn characters most Chinese people can’t read (when thinking about Chinese people around the world) and an accent that will leave most of said Chinese laughing at your hick-ness.
Personally, I’ve found that you can study here and find teachers who are able to teach the Beijing accent if it is desired. Also, I like many accents I hear in Taiwan. Ok, there are a few that I wouldn’t want to emulate but most are fine by my ears.
Your thoughts?[/quote]
They don’t know what they’re talking about. Parochialism is a worldwide phenomenon, to be sure. However, Taiwanese-accented Mandarin is considered very cool among the hipper set in China…it carries a certain exotic cachet. We’ve had that confirmed back here in Canada, as well, as we overhear mainland exchange students using Taiwanese-Chinese phrases from TV shows all the time. “我跟你講” is a classic Taiwanesism that you hear now and then.
native speakers and foreigners are judged by different standards. Unless you turned up speaking total hick language (which would never be the case if you learn Chinese in ANY language school in Taiwan – I’m talking more about things like the experience of Heinrich Harrer who learned Tibetan walking there from India during WWII and ended up talking like a peasant – but then again Tibetan has very rigid distinctions about politeness) I don’t see the problem.