I just heard tonight from a friend of mine that the Chinese Language Program at National Chung Hsing University is closing down.
The same friend then called ‘Biz House’ -the downtown extension of Providence University- and apparently they are also closing down soon.
I’m not sure if this represents a drastic reduction in the number of foreigners living in Taichung who want to learn Chinese or perhaps a change in Gov’t policy whereby University affiliated language centers are now subject to new rules and new pressures.
TLI in Taichung is still around as is National Taichung University.
What could this mean? Taichung is one of the best places to learn Chinese. Cheap but great city to live in, not too many English speakers but still north enough that people use Mandarin.
[quote=“Rabidpie”]Well, there is still Feng Chia university.
What could this mean? Taichung is one of the best places to learn Chinese. Cheap but great city to live in, not too many English speakers but still north enough that people use Mandarin.[/quote]
The scholarships are harder to get, I hear, and part-time work isn’t as easy to come by with all the new teachers. I think these were the two things that brought many students here, but now that they’re not as prevalent, students will go to China. And I don’t blame them; the Taiwanese speak a very non-standard variety of Mandarin (in more ways than most of you are aware). (When I was in Beijing I was so surprised how well the some of the people spoke, but I’m a sucker for standard Mandarin. )
I don’t understand people who complain about taiwan’s mandarin. Its not mainland mando that is for sure. YOu want to learn mainland mando , go to China !
Its like studying french in Quebec. Its not french french is it?
Standard? Are you sure your heard well? Taipei definitley has the most standard Mandarin. Talk to any taxi driver in Taipei vis-a-vis Beijing, I’m sure you’ll get a much better handful of standard Chinese with the Taipei lads.
[quote=“Lili”][quote=“Rabidpie”]Well, there is still Feng Chia university.
What could this mean? Taichung is one of the best places to learn Chinese. Cheap but great city to live in, not too many English speakers but still north enough that people use Mandarin.[/quote]
There’s your answer. Probably not enough demand.[/quote]
I was referring to Taiwanese that speak English well, sorry didn’t make that really clear in the post. Reading it again, it makes it look like i was referring to other joe’s and john’s.
Standard? Are you sure your heard well? Taipei definitley has the most standard Mandarin. Talk to any taxi driver in Taipei vis-a-vis Beijing, I’m sure you’ll get a much better handful of standard Chinese with the Taipei lads.[/quote]
You must be kidding…
Even Taiwanese people who speak Guoyu (Taiwanese Mandarin) better than Taiwanese generally have some non-standard (that is, not standard Putonghua or Chinese Mandarin) tendencies; for example, using 有 like in 我有去過 not using 兒化音 (rhoticization, like in 館兒) at all, nearly no neutral tones (輕聲), 3rd tones that don’t fall but are low and level (and of course never rise), mixing up retroflex and palatal fricatives/affricates, non-standard tones – 期, 質…, I could go on.
[quote=“Baas Babelaas”]Slightly off topic, but I spent my first three years in Taichung, then moved to Xiamen.
The Xiamen locals sound very similar to the Taiwanese when speaking Mandarin as their first language is Minnanhua/Taiyu.
They seem to understand my Mandarin better than non-Xiamenese (ie. the rest of China).
Same same for when I visited Taiwan twice this year - the Taiwanese seemed to understand me better than the Mainlanders - maybe I have a Taiwan accent [/quote]
It could be the accent; it could also be the way you phrase things…My dormmate this semester is an exchange student from Liaoning and from time to time we will find phrases, like 沒水準, that are common in Taiwan, but not used or not used in the same way in northern China.
No surprise, Putonghua is based on the Beijing dialect or something similar. Southern China and Northern China have a huge gap in terms of dialects and culture. Each area has a strong influence on Mandarin from the local dialect. Northern Chinese can also be pretty incomprehensible at times!
Standard? Are you sure your heard well? Taipei definitley has the most standard Mandarin. Talk to any taxi driver in Taipei vis-a-vis Beijing, I’m sure you’ll get a much better handful of standard Chinese with the Taipei lads.[/quote]
You must be kidding…
Even Taiwanese people who speak Guoyu (Taiwanese Mandarin) better than Taiwanese generally have some non-standard (that is, not standard Putonghua or Chinese Mandarin) tendencies; for example, using 有 like in 我有去過 not using 兒化音 (rhoticization, like in 館兒) at all, nearly no neutral tones (輕聲), 3rd tones that don’t fall but are low and level (and of course never rise), mixing up retroflex and palatal fricatives/affricates, non-standard tones – 期, 質…, I could go on.[/quote]
This idea that Taiwanese native speakers of Mandarin don’t speak “standard” is nonsense. Tones vary from region to region, and large areas of the Chinese speaking world do not “rhoticize.” Really, it’s a difference in accent and useage not unlike that which exists between New York and London English speakers. There are differences, but there is mutual intelligibility. If you’re fluent enough, the differences aren’t enough to interfere with your ability to understand or be understood (and the Taiwanese accent is quite well-known in China).
Standard? Are you sure your heard well? Taipei definitley has the most standard Mandarin. Talk to any taxi driver in Taipei vis-a-vis Beijing, I’m sure you’ll get a much better handful of standard Chinese with the Taipei lads.[/quote]
You must be kidding…
Even Taiwanese people who speak Guoyu (Taiwanese Mandarin) better than Taiwanese generally have some non-standard (that is, not standard Putonghua or Chinese Mandarin) tendencies; for example, using 有 like in 我有去過 not using 兒化音 (rhoticization, like in 館兒) at all, nearly no neutral tones (輕聲), 3rd tones that don’t fall but are low and level (and of course never rise), mixing up retroflex and palatal fricatives/affricates, non-standard tones – 期, 質…, I could go on.[/quote]
This idea that Taiwanese native speakers of Mandarin don’t speak “standard” is nonsense. Tones vary from region to region, and large areas of the Chinese speaking world do not “rhoticize.” Really, it’s a difference in accent and useage not unlike that which exists between New York and London English speakers. There are differences, but there is mutual intelligibility. If you’re fluent enough, the differences aren’t enough to interfere with your ability to understand or be understood (and the Taiwanese accent is quite well-known in China).[/quote]
… I made it pretty clear in all my posts here that when I say standard I am refering to Beijing-area putonghua, especially in my description of features guoyu doesn’t have. Beijing-area Mandarin is the official standard language of China and the form which carries the most prestige internationally, not to mention the variety that most students are told to learn. That’s why I think even more students will go to China instead of Taiwan when the scholarships dry up …
Standard? Are you sure your heard well? Taipei definitley has the most standard Mandarin. Talk to any taxi driver in Taipei vis-a-vis Beijing, I’m sure you’ll get a much better handful of standard Chinese with the Taipei lads.[/quote]
You must be kidding…
Even Taiwanese people who speak Guoyu (Taiwanese Mandarin) better than Taiwanese generally have some non-standard (that is, not standard Putonghua or Chinese Mandarin) tendencies; for example, using 有 like in 我有去過 not using 兒化音 (rhoticization, like in 館兒) at all, nearly no neutral tones (輕聲), 3rd tones that don’t fall but are low and level (and of course never rise), mixing up retroflex and palatal fricatives/affricates, non-standard tones – 期, 質…, I could go on.[/quote]
This idea that Taiwanese native speakers of Mandarin don’t speak “standard” is nonsense. Tones vary from region to region, and large areas of the Chinese speaking world do not “rhoticize.” Really, it’s a difference in accent and useage not unlike that which exists between New York and London English speakers. There are differences, but there is mutual intelligibility. If you’re fluent enough, the differences aren’t enough to interfere with your ability to understand or be understood (and the Taiwanese accent is quite well-known in China).[/quote]
… I made it pretty clear in all my posts here that when I say standard I am refering to Beijing-area putonghua, especially in my description of features guoyu doesn’t have. Beijing-area Mandarin is the official standard language of China and the form which carries the most prestige internationally, not to mention the variety that most students are told to learn. That’s why I think even more students will go to China instead of Taiwan when the scholarships dry up … [/quote]
If one becomes fluent, it is easy beyond easy to simply change one’s accent.
It makes no difference where you become fluent, and in fact it may benefit one to some extent to become fluent in a place where the accent is less standard, in that listening comp becomes easier when the standard accent is presented later. The point is to get the structure of the language into the learner’s head, along with sufficient vocabulary. There are not significant structural differences between TW and the “Beijing standard” (some additional permitted constructions coming from Minnan interference, but these are heard more and more in standard Mandarin today as well as Chinese homogenizes) and vocabulary-wise the differences, while there, are not enormous compared to the scope of what one needs to know to be fluent.
[quote=“ironlady”]If one becomes fluent, it is easy beyond easy to simply change one’s accent.
It makes no difference where you become fluent, and in fact it may benefit one to some extent to become fluent in a place where the accent is less standard, in that listening comp becomes easier when the standard accent is presented later. The point is to get the structure of the language into the learner’s head, along with sufficient vocabulary. There are not significant structural differences between TW and the “Beijing standard” (some additional permitted constructions coming from Minnan interference, but these are heard more and more in standard Mandarin today as well as Chinese homogenizes) and vocabulary-wise the differences, while there, are not enormous compared to the scope of what one needs to know to be fluent.[/quote]
Your points are valid, except for the lack of the neutral tone in Taiwan/Southern China, which I think is a good thing to have if the student plans to teach or to use Chinese in an official capacity in China, but I’m coming from two different angles, anyways: the first being that the learner will go to NE China because that is where they think they should go, and the second being that some people strongly prefer the NE accent – for me, my attraction to the sounds of the NE variety of Mandarin was my initial motivation for studying Chinese and I still enjoy it whenever I hear it, although I came to Taiwan over China for the money – The latter may not be directly relational to acquisition, but it may have something to do with motivation and place of study…
I don’t agree with this, though: if someone speaks TW Mand. and wants to switch to NE stand. Mand., they would need to:
(1) know when to 兒化 and when not to;
(2) know when to use the neutral tone;
(3) change the “shape” of the tones;
(4) change segments – consonants are easy, but the finals are not; 了, for example, has a different vowel, and so does 東, and so does…
(5) unlearn and relearn phrases, like the term 沒水準.
I spent a decade in Taiwan, did an MA there, and had a strong Taiwan accent and usage when I left. Within a year of that, people were asking where I had studied in the Mainland.
It depends on fluency going in. Not enough automatic command of the language and there just aren’t enough resources to work the switch. But it was certainly not difficult.
Going from full-tone last syllables to neutral is likewise not rocket science.
[quote=“archylgp”][quote=“Toasty”][quote=“archylgp”]You must be kidding…
Even Taiwanese people who speak Guoyu (Taiwanese Mandarin) better than Taiwanese generally have some non-standard (that is, not standard Putonghua or Chinese Mandarin) tendencies; for example, using 有 like in 我有去過 not using 兒化音 (rhoticization, like in 館兒) at all, nearly no neutral tones (輕聲), 3rd tones that don’t fall but are low and level (and of course never rise), mixing up retroflex and palatal fricatives/affricates, non-standard tones – 期, 質…, I could go on.[/quote]
This idea that Taiwanese native speakers of Mandarin don’t speak “standard” is nonsense. Tones vary from region to region, and large areas of the Chinese speaking world do not “rhoticize.” Really, it’s a difference in accent and useage not unlike that which exists between New York and London English speakers. There are differences, but there is mutual intelligibility. If you’re fluent enough, the differences aren’t enough to interfere with your ability to understand or be understood (and the Taiwanese accent is quite well-known in China).[/quote]
… I made it pretty clear in all my posts here that when I say standard I am refering to Beijing-area putonghua, especially in my description of features guoyu doesn’t have. Beijing-area Mandarin is the official standard language of China and the form which carries the most prestige internationally, not to mention the variety that most students are told to learn. That’s why I think even more students will go to China instead of Taiwan when the scholarships dry up … [/quote]
This is a common misconception… Beijing accent is not the same as Standard Mandarin. Yes Standard Mandarin was based on the Beijing dialect, but the two are not the same.
The average white collar person you speak to in Taipei is likely to have a much closer pronunciation to standard Mandarin than their counterpart in Beijing. As for the Beijing accent carrying the most prestige internationally, not sure where you’re getting that from.
)
… I made it pretty clear in all my posts here that when I say standard I am refering to Beijing-area putonghua, especially in my description of features guoyu doesn’t have. Beijing-area Mandarin is the official standard language of China and the form which carries the most prestige internationally, not to mention the variety that most students are told to learn. That’s why I think even more students will go to China instead of Taiwan when the scholarships dry up … 
… I made it pretty clear in all my posts here that when I say standard I am refering to Beijing-area putonghua, especially in my description of features guoyu doesn’t have. Beijing-area Mandarin is the official standard language of China and the form which carries the most prestige internationally, not to mention the variety that most students are told to learn. That’s why I think even more students will go to China instead of Taiwan when the scholarships dry up …