I’m progressing steadily through the US-government’s old 1970s-era FSI course, “Standard Chinese - A Modular Approach”, and notice that some of the listening exercises include practice in understanding Taiwanese speakers speaking standard Chinese.
I lack enough experience to judge how realistic or modern the course’s spoken Taiwanese sounds. What do you think about the Taiwanese pronunciation in this sample exercise? (Audio starts at 10:35.)
The woman has a funny accent.
Not that typical.
I think it’s the Chinese equivalent to the Mid Atlantic Accent.
People would do this in my Practical Audio Visual Chinese videos too.
To me it sounds perfectly in line with the KMT. ROCcers attempting to speak Beijing Mandarin ‘because that’s where Mandarin originates from’.
Wendy’s for the win.
They both sound like Mainland Chinese to me. The man is possibly from northern China and the woman from eastern? 
I only listened for a few seconds though.
Yeah they don’t sound like any Taiwanese people I’ve ever heard, including news reporters. But they are also definitely not speaking China Chinese either.
They sound like 外省人. I’m putting money on Eastern China. There’s also a tiny hint of Shandong I’m picking up here and there.
the ‘american’ man towards the end presented as a taiwanese speaker sounds like a hunan accent: speaking from the nose. Also the cadence and vowel shifts like lu for lou sounds like a xiang speaker
The guy’s Taiwanese accent is now only spoken by older people, i.e. they speak Taiwanese growing up, and only learned Mandarin later in life.
Really? His accent didn’t sound Taiwanese at all.
I would know because I live in the south. Everybody here speaks with a Taiwanese accent (native language is Taiwanese and only learned Mandarin later in school).
Did you listen to the part starting around 10:40?
Oh, that’s a completely different guy. He is definitely Taiwanese.
I didn’t know there were more than two people.
Yes, the Taiwanese speaker’s voice is quite nasal, isn’t it? I also had some trouble hearing the spoken third tone in 那邊. I seem to recall seeing elsewhere here on the board that the tone space in Taiwanese is compressed compared to standard Chinese, so maybe 3rd tones are’t as low as with speakers from China.