The Taipei Accent

I think it depends on context. Americans for example often expect service with a smile. Not a thing in HK.

I worked for a Hong Kong company before and they were decent to me though with the important stuff though .So I have no complaints.

Eeww. Is that English for 娘娘腔?

I can’t say for certain why English can be bent without taking a completely different and unintelligible shape, while Chinese tends to do so. But I think the crux of it lies here.

The main difference between most dialects has to do with vowels. In English, changing the vowel sound doesn’t suddenly have the possibility of altering the entire meaning of a word. But in Chinese, it does. That plus the tonal element can really throw things for a loop.

Chinese words are just so much…shorter, for lack of a better descriptor. One little tweak can make it sound totally unfamiliar.

I think that’s the way it sounds if someone who doesn’t know any Chinese would discribe the differences.

I dislike Beijing accents, but I kinda enjoy Shanghai accent, hunan is interesting as well. Sichuan I’m like wtf are you people saying!?!?

True. I’ve actually been threatened and physically attacked while shopping in Hong Kong. Definitely a low score on quality of service.

1 Like

Holy Shit

I find HKers treat you with respect if you’re competent and are pretty fair in that regard.

But to me Beijingers are the rudest I’ve encountered compared to the rest of China. Chengdu and Wuhan people where very friendly and helpful. Beijingers don’t want to help and will rip you off if you don’t bargain well. Beijing taxi drivers as also just awful to interact with.

Considering shopping is one of the only two things to do in HK (eating being the other), that sounds like a disappointing trip.

You can’t just leave this tidbit without giving us some backstory, though…

To me probably the most notable thing about many Taiwan accents is it is spoken far forwards in the mouth.

Overall I don’t see a major language difference, social differences are much more noticable than language differences

This is also how I’d describe Taiwan’s Mandarin accent. The tones are also somewhat less dramatic. It just sounds kind of milder and more laidback overall.

1 Like

I was bargaining for something in a shop, and I guess the salesman didn’t like my offer, so he insulted me, threatened me, and then pushed me out of the store. To be fair, it was probably a triad-owned business.

That escalated quickly…

Time is money. :grin:

There are some vocabulary differences I never knew before. Like 空調and 小姐.

That’s just me being grumpy and mean. Politics aside, many mainlanders have a touchingly positive impression of Taiwan. 台灣,好地方!with the thumbs up sign when you mention you live in Taiwan sort of thing.

In case it isn’t obvious, I’ve got an axe to grind with Taiwanese society. That aside, I’d say the variety of Chinese accents is fascinating. They’re all charming in their own way. I mean, for instance, it’s interesting how Taiwanese 國語 preserves certain older pronunciations that have been lost in mainland 普通話. The first time I heard a Taiwanese person say contemptuously of someone “他很垃圾” (le4 si4 vs la1 ji1) I wondered whether 樂色was a dialect word for lecher… My Taiwanese vocabulary, unfortunately, doesn’t extend much beyond the three Ps (poop, penis, and please), but I think the Taiwanese language used in that wood-puppet historical drama program they show on TV sounds cool as all hell. In the privacy of my own home, I like to badly imitate the Taiwanese words as spoken by the puppets while shadowing their martial arts moves

That one drives me nuts, cant believe people dont get it

That is more of a discursive difference, the word has the same actual meaning

Holy shit, do you know a guy called “K-man”?

1 Like

Because 冷氣 clearly makes more sense :grinning:

Sichuan dialect is actually a lot closer to Mandarin than Hunan dialects, but the thing is many or most Hunan speakers will make a switch to standard Mandarin when speaking to anyone outside of their hometown, even for speaking to people from other parts of Hunan. Sichuan people on the other hand are more likely to keep on plowing through in the home dialect: Chinese equivalent of Glaswegians.

No doubt, but Taiwanese not recognizing空調 is like the equivalent of British not recognising ‘elevator’…

Especially considering 空調 is used in Taiwan, just with a slightly different meaning.