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Mandarin Accents: Most understood? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Neurocity Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4894 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 18 01 June 2012 at 5:49am | IP Logged |
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Accents have always fascinated me and I really like Mandarin because of the fact that there is so much diversity in the way that people speak.
I was looking through forums to try to find a comparison for the different Mandarin accents. Pretty much what I've figured out is that there is something that is called "Standard Mandarin" which is apparently the Mandarin that you hear a news broadcaster speaking in if you're in Mainland China. The thing that I was wondering is this: what accent is this "Standard Mandarin"? I've heard things like "The Beijing accent is Standard Mandarin" but I've also heard other things like "The Taiwan accent is closer to Standard Mandarin than the Beijing accent because the Beijing accent uses 'er hua' which isn't used by anyone outside Beijing". So I was wondering if anyone knew anything about where the best place to go for getting a near-standard accent would be. I mainly want to know about this because I want to be understood by the largest amount of Mandarin speakers possible. If there's a specific accent that sounds good on the ears or anything like that, I would like to know also. I'm a guy so I'd like to know more about the accents that the men in certain areas have so I can do some shadowing. If you have any examples via youtube videos of a certain person who is worth shadowing or if you have any advice on how to improve an accent, please post. If there's already a post that covers this in great detail, please link me to it. Thanks! Edited by Neurocity on 01 June 2012 at 5:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kevin Hsu Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4739 days ago 60 posts - 94 votes  Speaks: English, Mandarin*, Korean Studies: German | Message 2 of 18 01 June 2012 at 7:03am | IP Logged |
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I haven't heard any Mandarin accents that I cannot understand with ease (I live in
Vancouver, where I am exposed to people from lots of different parts of China). So don't worry about the comprehensibility of the accent that you want to learn. As for what sounds good, personally I prefer Beijing or Taiwanese accent. Edit: fixed typo Edited by Kevin Hsu on 01 June 2012 at 7:04am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kenshin Triglot Newbie Taiwan Joined 5031 days ago 17 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German, French | Message 3 of 18 01 June 2012 at 10:29am | IP Logged |
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http://www.laits.utexas.edu/
orkelm/chinese/index.html http://www.laits.utexas.ed u/orkelm/chinese/prof13.html# In this website, there are interviews of Mandarin speakers from different parts of China and Taiwan. Certainly Beijing and Taiwan accents are both widely and perfectly understood by Mandarin speakers, so I would recommend choosing the accent that sounds best to you. I myself found accents of China ( e.g. Beijing, Shanghai ) “stronger” and “heavier” in general. While I have heard that Mainlanders say that Taiwanese people sound much “softer”, and thus they found Taiwanese girls speaking Mandarin pleasing to hear. All in all, it is a personal preference as to which accents sound good. As above mentioned, different accents of Mandarin usually don't cause problems in understandings. The only situation I have trouble understanding Mainland accents is when I hear older people from Yunnan or Qinghai provinces speaking in Mandarin mixed with local dialects in interviews on TV. So unless you are imitating the accent of some remote areas in China, you will be understood by all Mandarin speakers . Edited by kenshin on 01 June 2012 at 11:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Beysic Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5067 days ago 20 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 4 of 18 01 June 2012 at 4:14pm | IP Logged |
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I wouldn't say the accents are that easy to understand. Now that I'm at a fairly
advanced level of Mandarian and have had experience with various kinds of accents I don't have an issue with them (except, as mentioned above, very remote ones), but Taiwanese and Beijing accents were both a bit jarring to me when I first heard them. This is especially true in the sense that people with heavy accents often employ generous use of dialect. The 儿话 in 北京话 often completely changes the pronunciation of words which takes some time to get adjusted to in my experience. Edited by Beysic on 01 June 2012 at 4:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4933 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 5 of 18 02 June 2012 at 1:10am | IP Logged |
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Do not choose what you like, choose the standard one(s)!
Some like 儿话 the other don't, but since Beijing is so dominant most people will approve of it. It you can make perfert beijing accent, we'll be deeply、deeply impressed. In mainland, some like tanwan accent may think it is cute, but some dislike it for it think the accent make a 25yearold girl sound like ten,and that's annoying. Please only choose,from above. I don't want to hear local accent coming out from a foreiner's mouth, unless you're trying to amuse everyone. And not only remote areas have accents. In guangdong where cantonese is still dominant, some people, much older than me of course, but not old enough to be out of workplace, could have strong cantonese accent. Or just say a mixture of cantonese and mandarin. I have seen people from north struggle to understand them. All in all, go with your course or dictionary. If one speaks mandarin you'll be understood anyway. Though accents vary, they aren't that different. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| michaelyus Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4566 days ago 53 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Italian, French, Cantonese, Korean, Catalan, Vietnamese, Lingala, Spanish Studies: Hokkien | Message 6 of 18 05 June 2012 at 3:11pm | IP Logged |
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The Standard Mandarin pronunciation is more or less defined as with a Beijing accent, naturally with extra clarity (fewer phonetic reductions). 儿化 erhua I would call a lexico-grammatical feature, which is used very commonly in the native Beijing dialect; but Standard Mandarin grammar is based on the 'modern literary classics' not on the grammar of the Beijing dialect.
普通话 was defined in an edict from 1955: 普通话就是现代汉民族共同语，是全国各民族 通用的语言。普通话以北京语音为标准音，以 北方话为基础方言，以典范的现代白话文著作 语法规范。 Wikipedia gives this translation: "Putonghua is the common spoken language of the modern Han group, the lingua franca of all ethnic groups in the country. The standard pronunciation of Putonghua is based on the Beijing dialect, Putonghua is based on the Northern dialects [i.e. the Mandarin dialects], and the grammar policy is modeled after the vernacular used in modern Chinese literary classics". I'm not sure whether Taiwan's 國語 or Singapore's 华语 was ever 'defined' in this way. Like with standard British English, it is possible to speak standard Mandarin with a non-standard accent, and I'd go far as to say all in all it is more common. It is just as very very few native English speakers use conservative RP, although perhaps more use the "current RP" of modern broadcasting. As of different accents, ChinesePod gave a blog post, now on Shanghaiist. Search for "How well do you know your Chinese accents?". I wrote a little megapost on my identification of the features of the (north) Fujian accent and dialect-influenced Mandarin on Chinese-Forums.com from the overseas perspective. A post under the thread "How to speak with a Fujian accent? + Fujianese slang?". Edited by michaelyus on 05 June 2012 at 3:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ClaytonL Newbie United States Joined 4650 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes | Message 7 of 18 09 June 2012 at 3:59pm | IP Logged |
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Hey,
Interesting topic. I would say that the people I know with the clearest accents are people from in the far northeast. I've never traveled there, but I have met many people from this region living in Beijing. I am always impressed by how clear they sound. I don't find accents, dialect excluded, too hard to understand, its just the northeast (non beijing) seems the clearest to me. I sometimes throw 儿s in, but less often lately. I found when traveling, especially in Yunan, people were very unimpressed, mostly due to political resentment. Just a thought. Clayton 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 8 of 18 01 July 2012 at 5:29am | IP Logged |
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Hi Guys,
Great discussion, how do resources (textbooks/CDs and podcasts) line up with the different accents. For those of your who are further along what learner materials have you found to be useful when aiming for a specific accent. For example ChinesePod is Shanghai based, PopopChinese is Beijing based as is CSLPod, while ChineseLearnOnline is based in Taipei. Any comments on other series or even some the textbooks, New Reader/Integrated, Assimil, Linguaphone, Living Language Ultimate or Teach Yourself use? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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