Why do non-Taiwanese say I have an accent?

Heres a quick background, I am half Taiwanese half white and was born in Taiwan and moved overseas when I was a toddler with my parents and so grew up overseas, I went back to Taiwan very often when I was growing up and would stay for a couple months at least each time (basically my summer holidays) however I have always spoken Taiwanese mandarin as we speak it at home, and no Taiwanese locals have ever said that I speak with a foreigners accent, they have all said I sound just like locals (e.g.like I can’t curl my tongue either when pronouncing certain words lol) , they say only after they look at me they realise that I’m not really fully asian - I often get mistaken for a full white person instead mixed race :frowning: . But once they have spoken to me they recognise straight away that I am from Taiwan…so here is my confusion…

People from China and also maybe Singapore have said awww so cute you speak like a Caucasian person. I know it shouldn’t bother me but I am really quite sensitive, I identify more with my Taiwanese side and don’t like being called a “white person” and especially since I have spoken mandarin growing up. So I asked my Taiwanese side of the family if I speak with a Caucasian accent or not and they have said no I don’t, so I was wondering if anyone else have had this problem? Is it because they haven’t really heard how Taiwanese locals speak? Any comments would be good, I would love to hear what people have to say.
One of my friends said maybe I don’t look asian enough and should dye my hair black :laughing:

Don’t take it too much to heart.

I did my dissertation experiment on accent in foreign speakers. My stimulus set (the raters had to listen to nine different speakers, twice over) contained two samples that were actually by a native speaker. Some people mis-identified that person as being foreign. Some people mis-identified some of the non-native speakers as being native speakers (relatively few, in both cases, but it did happen). And that was without any visual cue. The eyes tend to override the ears in terms of people making judgments about what people are like or what group they belong to. I suspect that is what’s happening to you, especially if you are not dark-haired as you seem to be saying.

People are notoriously poor judges when it comes to things that don’t look like they expect.

They don’t know much about the Taiwanese accent in China or Singapore, in fact many Singaporeans Chinese skills are not great, and some feel threatened by a fluent Chinese speaker who is whitish looking.
Whatever dude, just tell them they sound funny to you.

Pardon the thread hijack, but what was considered the native language for this experiment? I’ve always thought that, in the U.S., you can tell that someone’s not a native speaker of American English within the first few seconds. Even Canadians give themselves away with a few minutes. But maybe only people with a very particular kind of ear care to have that ability.

[quote=“headhonchoII”]They don’t know much about the Taiwanese accent in China or Singapore, in fact many Singaporeans Chinese skills are not great, and some feel threatened by a fluent Chinese speaker who is whitish looking.
Whatever dude, just tell them they sound funny to you.[/quote]

Singaroreans have their own accents, in English, Mandarin, Hokien Holo, Cantonese, Malay you name it…

As for your case, I would guess if Taiwanese people don’t realize you have an accent, you don’t have one. At most you have an Taiwanese accent, with together with your appearance is mistaken as foreign accents.

I read al of your posts before I left for classes today and they really cheered me up, so thank you =) …hmm yeah I guess the eyes can override the ears… Iron lady, I’m also very curious about this study it sounds very interesting

Chewinggums, there are times I’ve been yammering away in Chinese to people and they refuse to understand the Chinese. I could not have been speaking Chinese because I am white.
People judge by appearance and project their own views on things. That’s why they speak Chinese to the Asians and English to whites. Brilliant logic but there you go.

Pardon the thread hijack, but what was considered the native language for this experiment? I’ve always thought that, in the U.S., you can tell that someone’s not a native speaker of American English within the first few seconds. Even Canadians give themselves away with a few minutes. But maybe only people with a very particular kind of ear care to have that ability.[/quote]

Accents are a huge social indicator in the UK, so I’d imagine UKers would be able to tell very quickly as well. A study on accents, distinction and social status in society would be an interesting one.


OP, why don’t you link a short clip of you speaking Chinese? I have to admit, I’m curious.

Pardon the thread hijack, but what was considered the native language for this experiment? I’ve always thought that, in the U.S., you can tell that someone’s not a native speaker of American English within the first few seconds. Even Canadians give themselves away with a few minutes. But maybe only people with a very particular kind of ear care to have that ability.[/quote]
Mandarin. The whole thing arose from odd musings about “I wonder what I sound like to native Mandarin speakers?” Actually did it three times: 1992, 1995 and 2004.

So there’s a major cultural difference. From what tsukinodeynatsu says, the UK is just as sensitive to accents as the even more multicultural United States. People have always told me that since Taiwanese simply have much less experience hearing different accents (or at least, foreign-accented Mandarin), they just don’t discern as much information as U.S. natives would. I guess that’s plausible enough. For example, there’s an episode of Popup Chinese where the professional voice actor was instructed to produce German-accented Mandarin and just plain couldn’t do it, and the Chinese host said it wasn’t possible. Yet German speakers learning Chinese produce German-accented Mandarin from day 1. Whenever Taiwanese ask me where I’m from, I always ask them in return (in Chinese) whether my accent reveals where I’m from and they invariably say 100% not. So I’m still curious what it is they do hear coming out of me. I mean, certainly they can hear that I don’t sound “normal” even if they’re completely unconcerned with the distinction.

[quote=“ChewingGums”]Heres a quick background, I am half Taiwanese half white and was born in Taiwan and moved overseas when I was a toddler with my parents and so grew up overseas, I went back to Taiwan very often when I was growing up and would stay for a couple months at least each time (basically my summer holidays) however I have always spoken Taiwanese Mandarin as we speak it at home, and no Taiwanese locals have ever said that I speak with a foreigners accent, they have all said I sound just like locals (e.g.like I can’t curl my tongue either when pronouncing certain words lol) , they say only after they look at me they realise that I’m not really fully Asian - I often get mistaken for a full white person instead mixed race :frowning: . But once they have spoken to me they recognise straight away that I am from Taiwan…so here is my confusion…

People from China and also maybe Singapore have said awww so cute you speak like a Caucasian person. I know it shouldn’t bother me but I am really quite sensitive, I identify more with my Taiwanese side and don’t like being called a “white person” and especially since I have spoken Mandarin growing up. So I asked my Taiwanese side of the family if I speak with a Caucasian accent or not and they have said no I don’t, so I was wondering if anyone else have had this problem? Is it because they haven’t really heard how Taiwanese locals speak? Any comments would be good, I would love to hear what people have to say.
One of my friends said maybe I don’t look Asian enough and should dye my hair black :laughing:[/quote]

I think that you’re perhaps thinking too much and trying to identify with a fiction. There’s really no such thing as “Taiwanese”, “Asian”, “White” etc. Personally, I only consider myself as being me, not a representative of any group of people, and not being represented by any group of people.

A couple of days ago I had a chuckle. I was speaking to a Chinese girl and she said I sounded just like I was from Taiwan. I told her I’d lived there almost half my life. I was intrigued how she could tell straight away where I was from and she said she recognised the accent as she was from Fujian China. It turned out that even my awesomely crappy Minnan was better than hers which we both had a good laugh about.
The thing which we both shared and found funny was that it made no difference where we were from, or what either of us looked like, we both shared a little in common in that we sort of met in the middle of our entirely independent experiences and both felt that neither of us belonged to or represented any specific group.

Well said Suvlaca, it’s pretty stupid to apply gross generalisations to people from diverse backgrounds and experiences.

I think we all tend to make generalisations from time to time as it is a natural thing to do. It also makes for the basis of pretty funny jokes at times and at other times may be an arguably useful, if not very blunt tool when “filtering” or making certain decisions. I always do this when buying wine for example, and I always tend to look for Australian, Chilian, Californian Merlot. I think that we all know, even when making these generalisations however what we are doing, and I at least hope that the more intelligent of us do a half decent job of not jumping to the conclusion that we are performing any particular style of scientific distinction. I don’t think that generalising is necessarily a stupid thing to do, but I think the word you use “gross” is perhaps the key point. Yes, we shouldn’t ever overemphasise based on our generalising. I know we have all been guilty of it however at one time or another. I hope we can be forgiven for it too. I know I try to forgive others for making the same, often emotional generalisations.

I totally resent that jab at the UK, btw. Not only are we more multicultural and less racist, we also have more native English accents than you guys along with a whole plethora of foreign accents. (You’re actually better off with a foreign accent than a low-class accent, since that puts you outside the system.)

Ahem.

My husband does a very good imitation of an English speaker speaking Chinese…which ironically I can’t do. I can pick out a Mainland, Japanese, English-speaker, Korean, Russian and Singapore/Malaysian Chinese accent pretty easily (knowing something about each of those languages probably helps, along with plenty of opportunity to interact with speakers), but I couldn’t pick a German one to save my life.

But Taiwanese people who haven’t spent a large amount of time hanging out with Chinese-speaking foreigners will probably never have heard half of those accents ever, and therefore wouldn’t be able to pick it to save their lives. I have to admit, with me having spent so long outside of the UK I can barely pick some of the regional accents now - I know where a person’s NOT from, but I don’t always know where they’re actually from. Simply haven’t heard any in far too long.

I agree 100% with what sulavaca says, but when I learn a language I want to sound native, so I can understand where the OP’s coming from. Accent’s part of learning.

I totally resent that jab at the UK, btw. Not only are we more multicultural and less racist, we also have more native English accents than you guys along with a whole plethora of foreign accents. (You’re actually better off with a foreign accent than a low-class accent, since that puts you outside the system.)

Ahem.
[/quote]

Seriously? You think there’s a jab here? Forums remain civil when participants assume good faith and respond to others rather than characterizing others’ statements. U.S. has five times larger population is all.

With respect, you seem to be suffering from the “them and us” (as I like to call it) syndrome. You can’t gain people’s respect by trying to isolate yourself from others by some sort of general national, cultural, theory. You talk about resentment for a generalisation whilst you yourself are generalising about being less racist whilst using the words “we” and “you guys”. This entire statement is troublingly full of irony.
I’m not taking a stab at you personally, but the concept that one is somehow morally better off because of the general trend surrounding them is no means a support for their own general theory.

As I always say in such circumstances, "There is no them and us. There is only “us”.

I should have added to my above post that otherwise the bad discussion quickly drives out the good…

Haha. In my first visa run to HK had a conversation with this young man from Australia, it was only his 5th day over there, he was actually the first Australian I had ever met, nevertheless I’m kinda familiar with the accent thanks to tv and movies, but he couldn’t point where I was from, from my accent or my looks (People guess me as South European/Egyptian/Middle Eastern). Mexico, I replied, he just answered back: Really? You speak perfect English.

I guess is better when you get a nice compliment instead of immediately drawing a wall. I don’t think accent should be an issue for nobody, unless you speak like Sofia Vergara or her local equivalence.

[quote=“JimmyTheSaint”]

Seriously? You think there’s a jab here? Forums remain civil when participants assume good faith and respond to others rather than characterizing others’ statements. U.S. has five times larger population is all.[/quote]

Having a larger population doesn’t make you more multicultural; I’ve always been surprised at how segregated most of America is compared to Europe.

But anyway. There is plenty of rivalry between the UK and the US, though it’s all in good fun. 'Tis part of being from Europe, you’re required to hate every country you have a relationship with. Think US and Canada. :unamused:

…because they want you to guest star on a show about it?