Actually it is a misconception that saying “jiang” instead of “shuo” is special to Taiwan. It is a general feature of southern Chinese. So, for example, is saying “yi diandian” instead of “yi dianr.” My Hunanese friends in London all said “yi diandian” and laughed at me when I said “yi dianr.” Also the use of “man” instead of “ting” for “quite” as in “man hao,” and of course the non-use of retroflex consonants (zh, ch, sh, r).
Actually it is a misconception that saying “jiang” instead of “shuo” is special to Taiwan. It is a general feature of southern Chinese. So, for example, is saying “yi diandian” instead of “yi dianr.” My Hunanese friends in London all said “yi diandian” and laughed at me when I said “yi dianr.” Also the use of “man” instead of “ting” for “quite” as in “man hao,” and of course the non-use of retroflex consonants (zh, ch, sh, r).[/quote]
Not true. Mainlanders, south or north, never say 我跟你講. To them the use of 講 in that phrase immediately identifies it as a colloquialism from Taiwan.
Actually it is a misconception that saying “jiang” instead of “shuo” is special to Taiwan. It is a general feature of southern Chinese. So, for example, is saying “yi diandian” instead of “yi dianr.” My Hunanese friends in London all said “yi diandian” and laughed at me when I said “yi dianr.” Also the use of “man” instead of “ting” for “quite” as in “man hao,” and of course the non-use of retroflex consonants (zh, ch, sh, r).[/quote]
Not true. Mainlanders, south or north, never say 我跟你講. To them the use of 講 in that phrase immediately identifies it as a colloquialism from Taiwan.[/quote]
Not true. 講 is what’s used in all southern Chinese languages instead of 說. Guangzhou Putonghua speakers have said things like 我跟你講 for 50 years.
Taiwan Guoyu is in vogue, though. A lot of young people really like Taiwan pop culture and Taiwanese on the mainland are seen as a pretty affluent crowd. I’ve heard mainlanders completely change their accents when they talk to Taiwanese across the border.
I think Juba and Jive are correct about the use of ‘jiang3’ by itself. But ‘Wo gen ni jiang’ as used in Taiwan is surely a direct transfer from ‘Goa2 kah4 li2 kong2’. That of course doesn’t rule out the possibility that outhern southern Chinese languages have the same structure.
[quote][quote]alidarbac wrote:
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. [/quote]
Much easier? I don’t think so. Give some examples of how they are easier if you want to continue this. Fewer strokes maybe. Easier? I don’t think so.[/quote]
I didnn’t see this reply until right now. But, yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Simplified Chinese is a lot easier mainly because there are fewer strokes. I remember my third week of studying Chinese in college back in the States and having to learn 我爸爸是醫生 and looking at 醫 and thinking WTF am I in this class for. I don’t see how you could possibly make the argument that the simplified form (I’m at a computer without simplified character input), which is just the upper left hand side, isn’t easier for neophyte to learn than all 20+ strokes of the traditional form.
A second way that learning simplified is easier is because of the way many of the radicals are reduced to more obvious radicals. For example, 達 is simplified so that it’s 大 inside that boat radical. You could be a hardcore purist and say that 達 is no problem for you to memorize and that it preserves more of its original meaning, but any beginner/intermediate level student would find it easier to memorize a three stroke character they already know than ten strokes of something they don’t know. Also, for a beginner/intermediate student who is just starting to realize that Chinese is a phonetic language, if they’re encountering ‘da2’ for the first time, they’re much more likely to guess that it’s pronounced ‘da’ with the 大 inside that radical rather than that other stuff. The same point could be made for 憲, which in the simplified has 先 under the radical, and hundreds of other characters that aren’t coming to mind now.
Actually it is a misconception that saying “jiang” instead of “shuo” is special to Taiwan. It is a general feature of southern Chinese. So, for example, is saying “yi diandian” instead of “yi dianr.” My Hunanese friends in London all said “yi diandian” and laughed at me when I said “yi dianr.” Also the use of “man” instead of “ting” for “quite” as in “man hao,” and of course the non-use of retroflex consonants (zh, ch, sh, r).[/quote]
Not true. Mainlanders, south or north, never say 我跟你講. To them the use of 講 in that phrase immediately identifies it as a colloquialism from Taiwan.[/quote]
Not true. 講 is what’s used in all southern Chinese languages instead of 說. Guangzhou Putonghua speakers have said things like 我跟你講 for 50 years.[/quote]
No way. I’ve had dozens upon dozens of beery conversations with people from every corner of Guangdong province over the years, and at least half of them have pointed out how much I sound like a Taiwanese person in pointed reference to my beery interjection of 我跟你講. That is, unprovoked, they chuckled, repeated “我跟你講,” and proceeded to tell me how much I sound like a Taiwanese person, in that a mainlander speaking putonghua would never say 我跟你講, but rather, 我跟你說.
Anecdotal? Yes. Isolated? No. In many years of speaking Chinese with people from all over the map, I have not only never heard 我跟你講 from any other than a Taiwanese person, but I have heard hundreds of mainlanders point out, apropos of nothing, how that very phrase indicates that I learned my putonghua in Taiwan, and that, furthermore, a mainlander would never say such a thing.
Analogy? Sorta like an English person insisting that they say “lorry” instead of “truck.”
[quote=“porcelainprincess”]
No way. I’ve had dozens upon dozens of beery conversations with people from every corner of Guangdong province over the years, and at least half of them have pointed out how much I sound like a Taiwanese person in pointed reference to my beery interjection of 我跟你講. That is, unprovoked, they chuckled, repeated “我跟你講,” and proceeded to tell me how much I sound like a Taiwanese person, in that a mainlander speaking putonghua would never say 我跟你講, but rather, 我跟你說.
Anecdotal? Yes. Isolated? No. In many years of speaking Chinese with people from all over the map, I have not only never heard 我跟你講 from any other than a Taiwanese person, but I have heard hundreds of mainlanders point out, apropos of nothing, how that very phrase indicates that I learned my putonghua in Taiwan, and that, furthermore, a mainlander would never say such a thing.
Analogy? Sorta like an English person insisting that they say “lorry” instead of “truck.”[/quote]
I’m not questioning what you’ve experienced, but I’ve experienced the exact opposite in Guangdong. When working in Dongguang and Guangzhou, I heard plenty of southerners, old and young, use the phrase 我跟你講. Northerners would often snicker at them, but it was common among the southerners I knew. It’s funny what you say about beery conversations. I can recall numerous occasions when an inebriated southerner has leaned over a bar room table and begun a long rant with 我跟你講.
I dare say that was because they knew you lived in Taiwan and they were on the lookout for anything that could be considered vaguely Taiwanish. Anyone who hears me talk Chinese can tell that I have spent time in Beijing, but when I went to Beijing last year, the friend I was staying with got busy trying to spot Taiwanisms in my speech. She got me just for saying “dui a.” I don’t think anyone who didn’t know I live in Taiwan would pick up on that.
Now here’s a real Taiwanism: “Ni you qu ma?” instead of “Ni qu guo mei you.” That comes straight out of Hokkien (Li u ki bo?), but has got absorbed into the Taiwan version of Mandarin. Apparently that phrase has become fashionable with variety show hosts on the mainland. Another one is reading the character 和 as “han” when it means “and.” I never heard it pronounced that way on the mainland.
Damn, that’s picky.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a mainlander say that. I have heard them say “ni youmeiyou qu (or other verb),” but I think that still annoys northerners. I think that that sort of pattern is common in southern dialects but is not considered standard in the north. When my wife (a Cantonese speaker) speaks Putonghua, she really wears out the “youmeiyou (verb)” pattern, but I’ve never heard her say “you (verb) ma?” She’s a HKer and her Putonghua sucks, though, so she doesn’t really count.
I’ve never heard a mainlander say that. When I first moved over from Taiwan, they would play dumb and ask me what I meant (they were really just trying to give me a hard time). Where does “han” come from? Is it a Minnanhua influence? I only have one ROC/Taiwan dictionary; “han” isn’t in it. Strangely though, one of the WSR language police teachers I had in Taiwan insisted that I use “han” instead of “he.”
I’ll throw my vote in here too. Jeffu, in my opinion, doesn’t sound native. My wife hates listening to him, or is that just because he, in her opinion, comes accross too proud and up himself.
But she tolerates you? 
I’ll throw my vote in here too. Jeffu, in my opinion, doesn’t sound native. My wife hates listening to him, or is that just because he, in her opinion, comes accross too proud and up himself. [/quote]
As a Taiwanese, i can tell you without a doubt that Jeffu’s Mandarin is GREAT! He speaks like a native and to some extent i even think he thinks and acts like a native. There might be a very slight accent if i have to be really really picky. But i think that may just due to his indifference towards it(in another word, i think that he just never really made the effort to sound more like a native). In fact, i think he speaks Mandarin so well that he actually seems to have Chinese accent when he speaks English. But i could be wrong about that though since I’m not a native English speaker. I’ve lived in the States for years but no I’m not an American. Jeffu just doesn’t sound like most of the Americans that I’ve come across. But i have no idea who this Igor guy is.
oops how do u get the quote thing to work???
[quote=“Miss C.C.”]oops how do u get the quote thing to work???[/quote]Looks like you did it right, did you accidentally press “Disable BBCode in this post” That would stop the quote thing from working.
thanx it works now
im still curious to know if Jeffu has a Chinese accent when he speaks English. i think he does. what do u think?
What is with accent anyway - between an Anhui ayi - Taiwan wife, offspring and friends and Fuzhou close friend I hear more different Chinese spoken every day than could be written in a book - and they all understand me.
[quote=“speakpidgin”]t
porkprince, juba, jive t:
我跟你講 is 南方 or Taiwanish or whatever for the “standard” 我告訴你 (or 我告兒你 ?!). The standard form is never used in Taiwan (though it probably is in Guangdong and elsewhere I would guess).
I talked with Jeff once when he was a guest on a TV show I was a cameraman on. He does have great Chinese, though sometimes little imperfections creep in (of course we all make mistakes sometimes), but he doesn’t have a Chinese accent in English. I would think Igor has the tougher job, though, doing the news gig.