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Mandarin immersion in Taiwan | ||
Tags: Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Immersion, Schools & Certificates |  | |
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6322 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 1 of 12 25 April 2009 at 6:11am | IP Logged |
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I've been doing a bit of reading up on working in Taiwan, as I'd like to spend a couple of years overseas working while getting immersion in a foreign language, in this case Mandarin. Taiwan seems like a pretty good place, in that it has a higher salary rate than the Mainland and also uses traditional characters, which I'm learning at the moment.
My question is whether or not Taiwan is as good as the Mainland for immersion in Mandarin. I'm aware various other languages exist and the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan is somewhat different the Beijing variety (which I'd prefer to speak). Can anyone who lives or has been there clue me in as to how good a place Taiwan would be for the someone seeking full immersion? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kaikai Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5761 days ago 27 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 2 of 12 25 April 2009 at 6:29am | IP Logged |
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I can't answer the question.
However, I very much prefer listening to Taiwan Mandarin or southern Mandarin in general. It is clearer and cleaner sounding to me. No hard R's and no strong Sh sounds like the Beijing accent. Edited by kaikai on 25 April 2009 at 2:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6896 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 3 of 12 25 April 2009 at 2:20pm | IP Logged |
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It depends where in Taiwan you plan to stay. I lived in Hsinchu for a year and found it very hard to find Mandarin native speakers there. It would have been the perfect place for learning Hakka though!
I personally found mainland China a much better place to learn Mandarin, though I may be biased as I studied in Tianjin and my university classes in the UK were geared strictly towards standard putonghua. Taiwan is not a bad alternative but I found that a lot of people couldn't differentiate between "si", "shi", "ci", "zi" and "xi". 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jimbo baby! Senior Member United States Joined 5983 days ago 202 posts - 208 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 12 27 April 2009 at 8:26am | IP Logged |
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I don't think it would be ideal for full immersion. You will probably hear a blend of Mandarin and Taiwanese, and all that code-switching could be confusing to a learner. There are some areas in Taiwan where Mandarin is more dominant. Taipei supposedly has the largest concentration of mainlanders, so that might be a better place to learn Mandarin.
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| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5614 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 5 of 12 13 August 2009 at 10:20am | IP Logged |
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First of all, let's find out the origin of Mandarin, as follows （with simplified characters）,
* Mainland China: Pǔtōnghuà (普通话) / Xiàndài Biāozhǔn Hànyǔ (现代标准汉语: Modern Standard Mandarin), * Taiwan: Guóyǔ (国语), * Overseas / Singapore: Huáyǔ (华语), Objectively speaking, Mandarin may be called "refined/educated Beijing dialect", it removed plenty of slang terms (words & sounds) from Beijing dialect, and absorbed some merits from other dialects, nonetheless, Beijing is still the birthplace of Mandarin after all. In Taiwan, before the wide popularization of Mandarin, most Taiwaners only spoke Hokkien (also: Minnanese/Taiwanese), Hakka, or Teochew as their first language (actually Mandarin isn't their native language). So, if anybody really wants to learn Mandarin, it would be better for him/her to study in Mainland China. Frankly (no offence & no political purpose), studying Mandarin in Taiwan seems just like studying Swedish in Denmark (Danish), or studying Spanish in Brazil (Portuguese), it might be an exaggeration to give this example though. Warmly welcome to Tianjin China! BTW, Tianjin dialect is quite different from Mandarin or Beijing dialect, especially when it comes to the 1st tone, and it has some unique slangs too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| karaipyhare Tetraglot Groupie Paraguay Joined 5591 days ago 74 posts - 150 votes Speaks: Portuguese, Spanish*, English, Guarani Studies: German, Italian, French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 12 25 August 2009 at 8:42pm | IP Logged |
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Paraguay being one of the few countries supporting Taiwan's independence, we receive a
lot of influence from the island and almost none from the mainland. I'm taking a short Mandarin course sponsored by the Taiwanese Foreign Affairs Department where we have two teachers. One of them, according to the other, has the vice of not pronouncing the retroflex consonants (merging "sh" "zh" "ch" "r" with "s" "z" "c" and "y"). She, the other teacher, told me that was a common flaw in Taiwan speech. It's worth mentioning that the faulty teacher doesn't have any experience teaching and didn't even know how many tones Mandarin has! I hate him.. Well, summarizing, just keep in mind of that common mispronounciation in Taiwan 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7083 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 7 of 12 26 August 2009 at 9:16am | IP Logged |
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Personally, the 'mispronunciations' in Taiwanese Mandarin are what are desirable to me. I would rather speak with a Taiwanese accent than a Beijing accent.
The retroflex sound is one of the things that drove me away from Mandarin for so long and it was only after hearing Taiwanese Mandarin that I've decided to reacquaint myself with Mandarin. Actually, if it weren't for the expansive usage of Mandarin, I would probably prefer to tackle Taiwanese. This isn't just because of the sound I prefer though, it's largely because I'm not likely to spend a great deal of time in Mainland China, but I do have the chance to spend time in Taiwan. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5614 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 8 of 12 26 August 2009 at 11:03am | IP Logged |
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Remarks： Bân-lâm-gú (闽南语/Minnanese)； Tâi-oân-oē (台湾话/Taiwanese)
Bân-lâm-gú (=Tâi-oân-oē) has something to do with Classical Chinese （ancient phonology & characters）, and it appears that, Bân-lâm-gú is more tricky and profound than Mandarin, even if you've mastered Mandarin, you won't have a good command of Bân-lâm-gú, it's quite hard to draw inferences by analogy from the viewpoint of Mandarin. The year before last, I bought myself a course book which is called "colloquial Bân-lâm-gú (such as 900 sentences)", it restricts the contents to the simplest level that needs to memorize mechanically without fully understanding detailed rules. But the key point is that, we can't deal with everything only by saying as little as what 1 or 2 colloquial courses taught you. So, laying a solid foundation for further study would be of great importance for everybody, it's wise to learn a foreign language (or a dialect) step by step, for example, the syntax, the tense, the usage, especially the grammatical differences with native language. I hope my thread does stick to the point. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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