I’ve been practicing with the Pimsleur Mandarin program, and I’m doing pretty good. I’m planning on coming to Taiwan in a few months, and I want to “hit the ground running”.
Please let me ask:
Is the Mandarin spoken in the training programs close enough to what is spoken in Taiwan? Am I “on the same page”?
XieXie nie.
I think so. They use Putonghua 普通話 on the CDs so the accent is a little different, but not so different as to have people not understand you or you not understand them. I had a friend come here that studied in China first and said he occasionally got laughed at for adding the “er” 兒 (ARG!) at the end of everything.
Some of the vocabulary also might be a little different, but it will definitely be more helpful than hurtful.
I’ve gone through a bit of the Pimsleur stuff too, and on the whole it’ll be a good primer. There are a few turns of phrase that aren’t used here, and a few more mainland-specific choices, like MK’s er endings (as in nar for “where” insteald of nali.) But as a foundation, it’ll serve you well. And even if you do crank out a few Beijingisms, it seems like a lot of people here (or at least the ones that can actually believe a foreigner can speak Chinese) aren’t surprised when a white face pops out a Beijingism over the Taiwanese version.
hi Underwriter,
It’s sorta like British English vs. American English, y’know. Besides the “er’s” and a couple of different phrases and the accents, they’re really not that different from each other.
On a side note, British accents make me hot. :bouncy: