This is just a linguistics curiosity. How do linguists categorize tones in Taiwanese accent? It’s barely there. Funnily enough most Taiwanese don’t even realize this. A lot of times when I try to enunciate and they can’t understand me they’ll say the tones were wrong but you say it fast and then suddenly tones are not an issue even if it’s all wrong lol.
Would you go as far as calling it pitch accent?
| Tones value | Taiwan | Northern China |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 33 | 44 |
| 2 | 23 | 25 |
| 3 | 11 | 21(2) |
| 4 | 31 | 52 |
| 5 | 4 | 5 |
Funny conversation with my gfs dad. He’s a taxi driver, he was telling me about this one customer who wanted to go to Yilan. But because this poor bastard was not saying it perfectly with two up tones, he was just bamboozled as to where he wanted to go.
How many Yilans are there in Taiwan??
Can you explain that? I would also assume it’s different for benshengren and waishengren.
Edit: Got it. Thanks.
wat numbers mean
Number 1: lowest pitch in your voice (or close; it’s relative)
Number 5: highest pitch in your voice (same)
So a first tone/high flat tone in Taiwan tends to be lower in pitch than the same tone in northern China. A second tone in Taiwan still rises, but not as dramatically as one in northern China.
I’d be surprised if there was still a substantial difference in tone contour between bensheng and waishengren at this point, but it would be interesting to look into.
The Late Immigrants were never a homogeneous group of people. Despite people with a Northern accent had linguistic prestige, people from Zhejiang had social prestige since that’s where CKS hailed from. Therefore, despite TV anchors typically faked a Northern accent, most school teachers in the 50s and the 60s were from Zhejiang. Those early Zhejiang school teachers heavily influenced Taiwanese Mandarin.
By the 80s I think most TV anchors are faking their broadcast accent.
I call that place Ichiran. I’m the one bamboozled when people call it yi lan.
Considering the founder learned how to cook ramen from a Taiwanese chef in Japan after the war, maybe it should be called it-lân.
Maybe he thought he was saying “ei lan” and was confused why he wanted someone to drive him to Vietnam.
i mean the other numbers, ive still no idea how to process that
Even with the correct tones, spoken Chinese with all these homophones is still very contextual and situational language. People hear and understand what they EXPECT to hear in a given situation.
That’s why I don’t really pay attention to the tones while speaking and just try to naturally mimic the style and flow of Taiwanese speakers and I have no problem with communicating here even I don’t really “use tones” (at least not consciously)
In most of the languages you can just say random unrelated single words out of context and the “message” will still be fully understood. In Chinese you need to get in the context first. Establish a protocol of communication that we’re talking about this “shi” and not the other “shi”, otherwise you end up with:
Written Chinese is superior to alphabet based languages while spoken is still a mystery to me how you can keep so little syllables and still be able to communicate and have sophisticated scientific discussions when everything is “shi” 
Not sure I understand whatyou mean. The first column is the name assigned to Mandarin tones. 1 for the first tone, 2 forbthe second and etc. The other 2 columns for IPA tone values for mandarin accents common in Taiwan and Northern China. The first number is how high the pitch is when the word starts, and the second is how high it is when the word ends.
5 is the highest pitch and 1 is the lowest pitch.
got it now, i was trying to figure why there were two numbers. That clears it up.
