Differences between Chinese Chinese and Taiwanese Chinese

[mangalica]

Great thread, just got around to reading it …

(fan2 chuan2 - yacht) - they pronounce it fan1

Archangel, fan2chuan2 is not “yacht”, but “sailboat”, fan2 means canvas as the radical indicates, whereas a yacht is a large and expensive pleasure motor-boat which may, but usually doesn’t, have a sail. The Mandarin word for yacht is “you2ting3”.

@LittleBuddhaTW

The “f” sound also often gets pronounced as an “h.”

Yep, that’s very Taiwanese. A similar thing that you guys haven’t mentioned is that native Taiwanese will change the L sound to N in certain cases. A common example is hen3leng3 “very cold” pronounced as “hen3neng3”. AFAIK, they pronounce hen3lei4 “very tired” correctly, so the problem is not the N followed by L. Acutally, “leng3” is the only example I can think of, so maybe it’s simply the case that the L-ENG combination doesn’t exist in Taiwanese.

@JiveTurkey

Taiwan printed dictionaries are actually preferred by stodgy old fart academics

Maybe not preferred by, but certainly written by stuffy academics, and there’s some politics in the mix as well. Right now I can only refer to the Far East Pinyin Dictionary, which does indeed prefer the old putonghua pronounciations, in the cases mentioned above:

fa4 instead of fa3, as in tou2fa3 “hair”
qi1 instead of qi2 as in shi2qi2 “period of time”
fan1 instead of fan2 as in fan2chuan2 “sailboat”

Interestingly, the “Taiwanese” pronounciations are also listed next to each as an alternative, so when you use this dictionary, you need to know that the alternative is the one you should rely on if you’re living in Taiwan.

And if we’re talking about vocabulary differences, let’s not forget kou3jiao3, which is “chewing gum” in Mainland China and “oral sex” in Taiwan.

[mangalica]

[quote=“Feiren”][quote=“RachelK”]
[snip]
Oh, and since I don’t think anyone has mentioned it yet, there’s a specific phrase for words that are ‘mispronounced’ in Taiwan vs. ‘standard’ Mandarin. They’re called 破音字 “broken sound characters”. Most Taiwanese people will readily admit that fa4guo2, for example, is a 破音字.[/quote]

Po4yin1zi4 are characters with multiple pronunciations. It has nothing to do with differences between Taiwanese Mandarin pronunciation and Chinese pronunciation of Mandarin.[/quote]

Feiren is right, po4yin1zi4 doesn’t refer to the different pronounciations between dialects. A po4yin1zi4 is a character that has two pronounciations to convey a difference in meaning.

Mostly the sound difference is only in tone, and the meaning difference is verb vs. noun, as in:

jiao1shu1 “to teach”, jiao4yu4 “education”

In other cases the sound and meaning are more differentiated:

彈性 tan2xing4 “flexible” 彈藥 dan4yao4 “ammunition”

睡覺 shui4jiao4 “sleep”, 覺得 jue2de2 “feel”

暴力 bao4li4 “violence”, 暴露 pu4lu4 “expose”

Anyway, this is getting off topic, the point is po4yin1zi4 don’t belong in this thread.

[mangalica]

@xp+10K

Here’s a Forumosa thread on hypercorrection involving the retroflex consonants. Nothing on n/ng, though. Maybe I imagined that one. :s

Thanks for quoting my old thread. Yes, Taiwanese are more likely to hypercorrect their Mandarin than those who learned correct putonghua from childhood, but I’m sure that is the case for all non-Mandarin regions.

It’s kind of like rich people, who tend to be more conservative because they have more to conserve …

[xp_10K]

@mangalica

Thanks for quoting my old thread.

And thanks for the info, mangalica. And thanks to everyone else.

[Chris]

@mangalica

睡覺 shui4jiao4 “sleep”, 覺得 jue2de2 “feel”

What’s interesting about the character 覺:

When pronounced jue2 it means “awakening”.
When pronounced jiao4 it means “sleep”.

[rice_t]

Can one of the people with more mainland experience confirm whether my favourite is actually true or not:

cn:
cai4hua1 ?? cauliflower
hua1cai4 ?? syphilis

tw:
cai4hua1 ?? syphilis
hua1(ye4)cai4 ?(?)? cauliflower

one more that I haven’t noticed in the thread

quality:
tw pin3zhi2 ??
cn zhi4liang4 ??

different word and different pronounciation of the same character zhi

some poyinzi reflect a du2yin1 and bai2hua4yin1 rather than a different meaning, there was an example in the thread liquid (yi or ye) or blood xue or xie. It very much depends on the context - as always in Chinese

[cloud2000]

[quote=“Chris”][quote=“pikafumanchu”]
Also, since when is 法 pronounced as fa4? I have always been taught (by Mainlanders, Taiwanese, and an American) that it is fa3.[/quote]

I have only heard it pronounced fa4guo2 by people in Taiwan. Likewise, I have only heard fa3guo2 spoken by mainlanders.

[/quote]Oh yeah, isn’t tongzhi sland for homosexual in Taiwan? Maybe it means that because they wanted to make fun of the Mainlander term. Who knows?[/quote]

“tongzhi” literally means “comrade” in Taiwan as it does in China, but it has become slang for “homosexual” in recent years.

Other words that are different:

“week”:
xing1 qi2 (Taiwan) 这是发音有误造成的
xing1 qi1 (China)星期

“research”:
yan2 jiu4 (Taiwan) 这也发音问题
yan2 jiu1 (China)研究

“garbage”:
le4 se4 (Taiwan) 这应该是台湾话吧！不应该归于汉语中的
la1 ji1 (China)垃圾 才是标准的

“guava”:
ba2 la4 (Taiwan)
ba1 le4 (China)

“include”:包括
bao1 gua1 (Taiwan)
bao1 kuo4 (China) is standard chinese 发音

And practically everything having to do with computers is different between Taiwan and China:

“printer”:
yin4 biao3 ji1 (Taiwan) 印表机
da3 yin4 ji1 (China)打印机 （都是一个东西 只是表达不同 就象 美语和英语一样）

“network”:
wang3 lu4 (Taiwan)网路
wang3 luo4 (China)网络 络 和 路 是区别的~！ [/quote]

[cloud2000]

[quote=“rice_t”]Can one of the people with more mainland experience confirm whether my favourite is actually true or not:

cn:
cai4hua1 ?? cauliflower
hua1cai4 ?? syphilis

tw:
cai4hua1 ?? syphilis
hua1(ye4)cai4 ?(?)? cauliflower

one more that I haven’t noticed in the thread

quality:
tw pin3zhi2 ?? 品质 ：关于产品的的性能问题
cn zhi4liang4 ??质量 ：分别要分别从 质和量 方面来解释。

different word and different pronounciation of the same character zhi

some poyinzi reflect a du2yin1 and bai2hua4yin1 rather than a different meaning, there was an example in the thread liquid (yi or ye) or blood xue or xie. It very much depends on the context - as always in Chinese[/quote]
liquid: 液 ye4
blood: 血 xue or xie 都可以（这个我也觉得奇怪）

[cloud2000]

@xp+10K

[quote=“archangel-x”]I’ve picked up quite a few differences between Chinese Chinese and Taiwanese Chinese - pronunciation. . . .

I’m not far enough along in Chinese to pick up on too many vocabulary differences. I mainly hear dfferences between Taiwanese pronunciation and the mainland pronunciation on my tapes. Or at least I think I hear them, and that’s kinda why I posted, to find out if I’m just hearing things. Anyway, here’s some of what I think I hear:

For consonants:

Shi, whatever the tone, is pronounced si. For example, wo3 shi4 is pronounced wo3 si4, and lao3shi1 is pronounced lao3si1. And more generally, I don’t think most Taiwanese have the sh sound. For example, I’ve heard shou1yin1ji1 pronounced sou1yin1ji1. Or ta1 shuo1sounds like ta1 suo1. I think they also say su1 instead of shu1. 这是由于 有些人发音的原因 sh ,zh ,ch 都是翘舌音 但有些人就是翘不上来 发出来的音就是 s，z，c了，跟语言没有关系的。

Once I overheard one of the older students making a tape for the kids to practice for a contest. She came to the English phrase “bamboo shoot,” and she pronounced it “bamboo soot,” where the oo is the one in boot, not in foot. Her s seemed as if maybe the tongue was closer to where the teeth join than the English s is, maybe like s represented by pinyin x.

Zh is usually pronounced z, and ch is usually pronounced c. So Zhong1guo2 is pronounced Zong1guo2, and chi1 fan4 is ci1 fan4. And to me, zhei4ge sounds something like ze4ge.
同上

For vowels:

Anecdote: Once I was trying to teach some kindergarten kids the long a in English because they only seemed to be able to say the short a. So I tried to approximate the long a of English.

I said, “When someone calls on the telephone, you say what? You say, ‘Wei2.’ Okay, say it. Say, ‘Wei2’” (Note: I guess this is supposed to be wei4, but it sounds like wei2 when people say it answering the phone.) They came back with something that I think would be rendered this way in IPA: "[b]W

[zhujianlun]

[quote=“cloud2000”]“garbage”:
le4 se4 (Taiwan)
la1 ji1 (China)[/quote]

We’ve gone over this ground before, but Taiwanese (including Mainlanders, as it happens) can pronounce “garbage” however the hell they like. There’s no “should” about it, Cloud. Face the reality, “le se” is now “standard” Taiwan Mandarin and no amount of snide references to what is “standard” is going to change that. In the meantime, perhaps you might be so respectful as to use a full-form character font

[TaiOanKok]

@cloud2000

And finally, at least some Taiwanese seem to pronounce initial r approximately like English l.

r can become n, l, or IPA/English [z].

[Tetsuo]

[quote=“cloud2000”]“include”:包括
bao1 gua1 (Taiwan)
bao1 kuo4 (China) is standard Chinese 发音
[/quote]
Bzzt you lose. I’ve only heard “bao1 kuo4” here.

[rice_t]

[quote=“Tetsuo”]
Bzzt you lose. I’ve only heard “bao1 kuo4” here.[/quote]

Then you must be listening mainly to waishengren, when I say baokuo here in Taichung, most people look at me in amazement.

[Neptune]

I used to work at the editorial department for a while. and had some experiences working with some translators :loco: and editors from China… I think some subtle differences between the pronunciations of Chinese Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin are still some things we can get over and deal with, just with some little time…what we felt the toughest was that some phrases people here in taiwan and there in China are basically pretty different . That’s why we had to put some more considerations on “modifying” according to the locations those publications were released. Can you believe that it’s still hard for us to understand what “they” talk about even though we speak the same “language”…or I should say, dialect. :s

Plus…values between us vary quite a LOT! That’s what made it more difficult for us to communicate ideas and thoughts with each other sometimes~

[Chris]

@Neptune

I used to work at the editorial department for a while. and had some experiences working with some translators :loco: and editors from China… I think some subtle differences between the pronunciations of Chinese Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin are still some things we can get over and deal with, just with some little time…what we felt the toughest was that some phrases people here in Taiwan and there in China are basically pretty different . That’s why we had to put some more considerations on “modifying” according to the locations those publications were released. Can you believe that it’s still hard for us to understand what “they” talk about even though we speak the same “language”…or I should say, dialect. :s

It’s like the differences between British and American English: different pronunciations, usages, terms, spellings and even grammar in some cases. Mostly we understand each other (and the Internet is certainly increasing mutual understanding), but sometimes confusion does arise!

[Chris]

[quote=“Tetsuo”][quote=“cloud2000”]“include”:包括
bao1 gua1 (Taiwan)
bao1 kuo4 (China) is standard Chinese 发音
[/quote]
Bzzt you lose. I’ve only heard “bao1 kuo4” here.[/quote]

I’ve heard both in Taiwan. I hear “bao gua” more often than “bao kuo” in Taiwan; I’ve never heard “bao gua” pass through the lips of someone born and raised in the mainland. But “bao kuo” seems to be more “educated” or “upper-class” speech, not unlike the varied pronunciations of “vase” (“vay-s” vs. “vah-z”) and “niche” (“nitch” vs. “neesh”) in American English.

[cloud2000]

cloud2000 wrote:
“include”:包括
bao1 gua1 (Taiwan)
bao1 kuo4 (China) is standard Chinese 发音

这个不是我 说的 是我引用 rice_t 的！看仔细好不好！~
还有 我是在 中国大陆 不是在 中国台湾 所以我打不出来 繁体字。
望谅解。
还有 关于 garbage 的中文意思 我为什么要是 le se 是台湾话 因为在大陆是没有人说那是 le se 都从 台湾或者是香港 传过来的 有些地方还会 叫做 渣子 （四川一带的地方话）。所以标准的汉语是 叫做 垃圾 的。

[Tetsuo]

[quote=“rice_t”][quote=“Tetsuo”]
Bzzt you lose. I’ve only heard “bao1 kuo4” here.[/quote]

Then you must be listening mainly to waishengren, when I say baokuo here in Taichung (Taizhong), most people look at me in amazement.[/quote]
Most of the students I deal with in my work at a buxiban up here in Taipei have used baokuo. I seriously doubt they’re waishengren. It could be that they’re either using it to sound flash around a “teacher”, or they’re trying to make their mandarin nice and formal sounding 'cause I’m a laowai and that’s what we know, apparently.

And cloud2000 - 我已經求了你，這裡是個位於台灣的BBS，寫繁體字啊﹗

[cloud2000]

打不出来呀~！！~~！！~

[Tetsuo]

不太難啦，打得出來簡體字的話，就打得出來繁體字。如果你太懶就不是我們得錯啊。