Oh my mistake!
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“Zhu” and “zhi” can tend pretty close to “zu” and “zi” as well.
Yeah. Once I started doing that, everyone I meet in China/Taiwan tell me I have a Taiwanese accent.
You don’t get validation by random strangers in two countries with no skin in the game if you’re doin it wrong lmao
Friendly joke: try changing the tone 
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There aren’t really hard and fast rules, for me it’s more about the range. There is quite a range of pronunciations out there, or on the telly.
The d question is a bit of a dead duck though, right?
Probably.
Yeah. But it sounds weird to talk like a news anchor or a PRChinese person. My friends drilled it into my head this way cause I said I wanted a Taiwanese accent. I’m just tellin ya, this is how I do it. This is how I’ve saved myself the trouble, as I am a 4th storey man. Been there done that.
And a Taiwanese accent they delivered.
My Chinese is awful, but somehow it has become the language of my life. Which actually is a massive failure on my part. Nuns: reverse reverse. Your concern for a taiwanese accent is pretty funny. I think its cool though.
Old people do not make the s/sh distinction.
Taiwanese people do attempt to pronounce them differently, but the distinction isn’t nearly as pronounced as it is in Northern China.
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Mainlander blow in! 
.
Marco trump’s you cause noodles?
He is brewing up an entire lasange right now.
I dont think that credential all by itself allows you to knock his opinion though.
I mean there is some pretty good lasagne in Taiwan. and how it gets pronounced belongs to who pronounces it
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23 generations would put that in the 1400s despite the fact that Han Chinese did not settle until 200 years later. Unless she is aboriginal, the evidence suggests otherwise.
Lasagna!
And it’s really hard to do that without a western oven. I’d love to do one one day when I get my own house and real oven.
Appreciated.
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Nice work.
Im sure the same care and diligence is in the lasagne. I just burnt the roof of my palate thinking about it
If she was aboriginal, her family wouldn’t be speaking Mandarin until Chiang Cash my Cheque came along.
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Touche, you won this round, I’ll work on your anti Chinese bias later, after the lasange. What kind of wine does it come with?
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The Mandarin “d” is not voiced like the English “d” is. It’s unaspirated, and sounds like Spanish or Italian or Indonesian “t”. Or the “t” in English “stop”, as opposed to “top”. There’s no puff of air that rushes out.
Do you know any Thai? The Mandarin “d” is like the Thai sound ต, as opposed to the voiced “d” sound of ด.
Just stick with your existing knowledge about how d is pronounced in kygystan and you’ll be fine
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Except the socalled Pinyin D doesn’t stand alone at all. It’s a bit disingenuous to suggest this because D/ㄉ is always paired with a final and is never a final itself.
Examples:
ㄉㄧ Di
ㄉㄚDa
ㄉㄨㄥ Dong
The D sound… like Dan/ㄉㄢˋ/蛋 would not be different than if I was to call the western name, Dan. While the ‘An’/ㄢˋ part would be different because Chinese has different vowels, it’s still the same unaspirated tongue on teeth.
o_O This is wrong. I’m not gonna speak for Spanish, but an Italian ‘T’ is the same as an English ‘T’.
The Indonesian part is right.
Lol they’re so cute! I had no idea what the hell she was saying until I saw the characters.
You have to sort of smile and make your tongue more flat than a normal “D”.
Try to hear someone say “Hen Da” - their “D” is way more exaggerated. You almost have to shout it a bit. Use more suction - don’t be gentle.
The position of the tongue in the Mandarin d sound is the same as in English. There is, however, a slight difference, and that is that the Mandarin d it is always unvoiced. Voiced d in the English word “Dan” is therefore different from the unvoiced d in 蛋 . It’s a minor difference and using a voiced English d in Mandarin won’t cause any confusion.
十 is second tone and 四 is fourth tone in both 普通話 and in Taiwanese 國語（as can be attested by checking the MOE online dictionary etc)
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