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Manic Quest for Mandarin - TAC ’14 Team 鹊 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4480 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 33 of 52 14 March 2014 at 1:09pm | IP Logged |
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One of the FSI comprehension tapes contains a "dialect listening exercise" for the listener to practise understanding Taiwanese Mandarin speakers. I was just blown away by how different it sounds from the standard Mandarin that I've been learning. I guess that it's possible that the speaker's accent was particularly strong, especially compared to young people these days. Even so, it made me realise that it must take a lot of effort to get used to hearing non-standard accents.
I've been searching a video introduction to the Dongbei dialect, but I haven't managed to find anything yet. So far I've found that some people say 啥 (shá) instead of 什么 (shénme) and 咋 (zǎ) instead of 怎么 (zěnme). I'm hoping that the reasonably standard accent in Dongbei vindicates my decision to choose a region where standard Mandarin is spoken - even if it means braving the freezing northeastern weather! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5807 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 34 of 52 14 March 2014 at 6:50pm | IP Logged |
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The forms 啥 and 咋 are just like short forms, in standard speech you probably wouldn't even realize that they'd said 啥 instead of 什么.
As for the Taiwanese dialect, you'll find that a lot of people have "trouble" with sounds like sh, ch, and zh. For example, people will make fun of them for pronouncing 四十四 "si4 si2 si4". 你要吃什么 sounds like "ni3 yao4 ci1 sen2me". At least, those are the main things i've noticed, and it's definitely not limited to Taiwanese speakers. There are different pronunciations for certain characters in Taiwan (often a tone change) and some words are different/have different meanings, but that happens in pretty much every language, especially one spread across such a large area. To be honest, i was kinda excited about the dialect listening exercises, but it takes a bit of a back seat throughout the course and really doesn't help you get to grips with the dialects. It's also much harder when you still have trouble understanding the standard language ;) One of the things that threw me off at first was the extent of the "儿化" in the north. In FSI, i always read 门 as men2 (muhn). The first time i heard it in the north i had no idea what merrr was. Now it seems silly, but when i first got there it really threw me for a loop. EDIT: And another thing fairly common in the south is not nasalizing the "g" at the end of a word, for example 先生 might sound like xian1shen1. As for numbers, those will come quickly. Just make sure you can recognize them now and soon enough you'll be able to get by. I still remember handing people 14(十四)块 when they were asking for 40 (四十). Or the time i handed someone 6 kuai thinking they said 是六块 when really they just said 十六块. You'll also learn the hand signs for numbers that people use all the time in China. Congrats on the job, have a fun time! I'm hoping to head back to China soon, too (as soon as i can save up enough money for the plane ticket and visa ;) ). Keep up the good work! Edited by Crush on 14 March 2014 at 6:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4480 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 35 of 52 15 March 2014 at 6:28am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for your detailed reply. You mentioned a lot of very useful things.
I was also excited about the dialect listening exercise, but I think that the standard language is hard enough, and since I don't have any plans to go to Taiwan any time soon, I think they can wait until I have a better base to build on. As for the 儿化 I haven't had too much trouble adjusting to the limited number of words ending in -r so far. The main confusion is which words can take the -r and which ones can't. It's probably safest to use as few as possible when I speak, at least at the beginning. I wouldn't want to overcompensate and start saying such things like "Worrr shirrr Benrrr"! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5807 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 36 of 52 15 March 2014 at 4:16pm | IP Logged |
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You might also want to be careful how you pronounce your name, as 笨 means stupid ;) Chinese kids seemed to love to take foreigners names and make insulting or just funny names out of them when they could, haha.
Keep in mind that it's not just in Taiwan, a lot of people move to larger cities so you'll come across a pretty wide range of accents. Taxi drivers are notorious for being difficult to understand, for some reason. And yeah, the 儿化 is just something to get used to. 本 = berrr3 (like burrr when it's cold), 玩 = warrr2, etc. It's funny because most people's English accent is actually quite good, but there are some parts that i never really associated with a Chinese accent. For example, one of my favorites is pronouncing "panda" as "panderr". You'll hear a lot of err's at the end of English words! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| LangWanderer Diglot Pro Member Australia digintoenglish.com Joined 4480 days ago 74 posts - 97 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, French, Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 37 of 52 18 March 2014 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
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Crush - Hah, I really lucked out when it comes to my name in foreign languages. In Japanese, 小便 (shou-ben) is an, ahem, "number 1" and 大便 (dai-ben) is a "number 2". In my high school Japanese class there were two students called Ben, and I think my Japanese teacher must have chuckled to himself when he called us "Big Ben" and "Little Ben". It was only later that I discovered the connection!
---- My March challenge is going well; I'm up to 48 tapes of FSI for the month. That means I need to complete an average of four tapes a day until the end of the month. I am confident that I will be able to do this, given that unless I am on holiday (which I was for six days) or I am out all day, I can listen to 5-6 tapes without driving myself insane. I'm currently up to Module 4, Unit 3, which focused on asking and giving directions. Riveting stuff, of course. I won't say it's enjoyable, and I have to admit to smiling to myself excitedly when I discover that a particular tape is short (some are 11 minutes; others are close to 30 minutes). It's helping a lot though, and considering that it might only be a few weeks until I'll be fending for myself in China, I need as much help as I can get! March Challenge Progress: 48/100 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5807 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 38 of 52 18 March 2014 at 3:50pm | IP Logged |
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小便 and 大便 are also the Chinese words for the same terms (i find i can recognize a lot of random words in Japanese, though i have no idea how to pronounce them). Luckily in Mandarin the pronunciations (xiao3 bian4 and da4 bian4) are a bit different ;) You can also hear little kids say 便便 for #2 and 尿尿 (niao4 niao4) for #1.
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| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5108 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 39 of 52 18 March 2014 at 7:06pm | IP Logged |
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I've just watched 图图 this morning and he says 尿尿 . Funny how things interconnect.
I'm starting to become optimistic about how much of vocabulary discount I'm gaining in Japanese after Chinese, even considering tradidional x simplified, different meanings, different readings etc. Japanese isn't really on my list now, but maybe one day... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5807 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 40 of 52 18 March 2014 at 9:20pm | IP Logged |
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When i see Japanese texts, it's really funny when i see strings of words and think wow, i don't know if it means the same thing in Chinese, but i know what it would (mostly) mean in Chinese! Even "日本語" is how the Chinese write it (but pronounced ri4 ben3 yu3), just in simplified characters the 語 turns into 语. I have no idea about the katakana/hiragana, though.
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