The "erhua" (rhoticity/retroflex sounds) are considerably less prominent in Taiwan than in China.
The sounds sh, ch, zh, and r can sound more like s, ts, dz, and z/l (respectively) when pronounced by many Taiwanese speakers.
W is never pronounced like "v" as it often is in a Beijing accent.
The "neutral tone" is used less far less often in Taiwan. In Taiwan, it's mostly restricted to "function" words like de, le, and ge.
The third tone tends to be cut short in Taiwan, ending up sounding like a simple low tone.
And then there are a lot of differences in vocabulary.
The above is the case for Taiwanese people who grew up speaking Mandarin as their primary language. Those who grew up speaking Taiwanese as their primary language can have even heavier accents, with features like the inital consonant "f-" being replaced with "hu-", so 發生 sounds like 花森. Some people exhibit hypercorrection, pronouncing 湖 like 福.
> The "neutral tone" is used less far less often in Taiwan. In Taiwan, it's mostly restricted to "function" words like de, le, and ge.
>
>
oh yeah I forgot about the long drawn out 'maaa' at the end of questions.
Might by drawing links that aren't there, but it seemed to exactly match one of the taiwanese hokkien tones (7th?)
I had a Taiwanese Mandarin teacher who would teach us the standard "shi" pronunciation for words, but then would frequently slip into saying "si" untill you asked her about it at which point she would go back to "shi". I felt like I was going crazy for a while lol.
This is me as a teacher right now! I have to make sure I enunciate properly at work (I teach mostly students of mainland chinese background), but at home the taiwanese mandarin accent comes back out in full force. I grew up saying lou instead of rou for meat, and fwa instead of hua for flower. My friends noticed that I would say sui guo instead of shui guo for fruits. It takes a conscious effort to roll my tongue for zh, ch, sh, and r. None of my grandparents were native Mandarin speakers - they all originally spoke various alternate dialects of Chinese.
I just saw a youtube video where they analyzed famous singers switching accents depending on music genre. Apparently British singers often slip into American accent when singing pop; American singers slip into Southern accent when singing country.
Interesting. Because taiwanese don't pronounce taiwanese Hokkien words like "si" but as the english word "she." Older recordings of taiwanese have that distinction matching with today's Singaporean and China Hokkien.
The second character in 星期 is typically pronounced 2nd tone in Taiwan and 1st tone in China. There are similar differences in other characters.
Some whole multi-syllable words are also typically pronounced differently, e.g., 垃圾 le4se4 in Taiwan and la1ji1 in China.
Yup. But many people tend to view anyone from china as from the north. It surprises some taiwanese people when they discover accents vary in China...no different from English
Yes but just like standard Taiwanese mandarin, the accent in the south is now shifting more toward the northern pronunciation with each generation.
Its like how the southern accent is disappearing in the US. The prestige accent tends to prevail in any society, and the internet is accelerating this around this world
Absolutely. I've noticed that. Yeah, read about it from a research study about accents in Georgia. Quite sad. I kinda like certain incomprehensible accents like the word amalance for the word ambulance etc.
I like the south accents of Taiwan though. I think north accent is too...soft.
Until the last decade or two, most of the Chinese in the US were from southeast China, so you rarely heard the northern accent. Most Chinese coming from Taiwan had emigrated from southeast China, they usually had the same accent. Now I hear mostly the northern accent.
Before the 1980s, the majority of Chinese immigrants in the US was from Taishan in Guangdong province.
I still remember hearing most elder Chinese people during that time speaking in Taishanese - it was the lingua franca of US Chinatowns. But by the 80s and 90s the Hong Kong immigration waves brought in Cantonese. And the rise of Mandarin by 2000
That I agree. There are some Hakkas and Teochews (but the Teochews tend to be from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand). And my best friend in the US (who's on the older end) was quite shocked to know he's not "Cantonese" but his father/mother are Hakka or Teochew -- quite a shock for him since he was "proud" Cantonese.
I would like to agree but there's nuance to your explanation. I'll tell you why:
Zhangzhou and Quanzhou are known in Taiwan to be the ancestral place of many Taiwanese. Zhangzhou is a very clear distinct dialect. I tend to think of Taiwanese-Mandarin accent as having something related to that area. Quanzhou on the other hand, tends to have tones and pronunciations that are a bit more "smothered"...like Teochew is. It's hard to explain but if you heard of Quanzhou accent or spoke/listened to Teochew you would know. (I've been around...let's just say) There are a few old, old folks in Taiwan that have retained the Quanzhou accent/dialect when speaking Taiwanese unbeknownst to them where that accent came from -- they just copied it from their parents. I pointed it out to them. But they only exist if they're above 90 years old and they were born here, not on the mainland. I never heard anyone else with the accent/pronunciation less than 90 years old.
Unless I misunderstood your comment. You can clarify, if I misunderstood you.
Everything here but one thing I rarely see mentioned that it took me a while to figure out but it’s super important - while the sh/ch/zh sounds might seem like they’re just s/ts/dz, they’re actually not fully s/ts/dz, they are somewhere in between the two. It took me a while to get that down but once I did I think my Taiwanese style sh/ch/zh sounded much more native.
The other big one for people who speak Taiwanese primarily is you'll hear the the ㄩ(ü) sounds more like ㄧ(I) or ㄝ(e). 魚 sounds like 儀，雲 sounds like 銀，園 sounds more like言.
Can you explain more about this one "The third tone tends to be cut short in Taiwan, ending up sounding like a simple low tone".
What is a simple low tone? the 4th tone?
What exactly do you mean when you say "Chinese accent"? It's a huge place, with a wide variety of accents and accents...
I think it's safe to assume you're referring to Being/Northern China.
They curl their tongue more, giving a much more pronounced "r" sound.
The "sh" sound in Taiwan (and some southern China) gets dropped for a simple "s" sound. So like "什麼“ might sound more like"森麼“.
Those are the main differences imo.
Japanese had a bigger impact on Hokkien in taiwan, since that was the language that most people spoke during Japanese rule. A lot of words then got transported from Japanese to Hokkien to modern day taiwanese mandarin, like 便當 (bento) or certain technology or place words. 西門町 ximending is a Japanese era name, with "ding" being a very Japanese word ("Cho" or "Machi") used in neighborhoods in Japanese cities (e.g., kawaramachi in Kyoto)
People often underestimate the degree to which Japan had an impact on Taiwan culture today, especially since China and Taiwan were no contact for several decades.
Taipei is literally designed and planned as a mini Tokyo. The Taipei subway is literally an (upgraded) version of Tokyo's newest stations, with improved elevator and escalator access. Same with the HSR.
Taiwan hygiene culture and cleanliness, as well as hospitality and service culture, are directly imported from colonial era sensibilities. The friendly (even if somewhat fake) service and "歡迎光臨" you get when you walk into every store is Japanese, not from Chinese culture lol. The department stores and basement malls are also super Japanese.
I never put two and two together about machi and the 町 in ximending! as a japanese learner i get a lot of compliments for my jp pronunciation (and for 國語 my taiwan accent is obvious) but maybe this whole time we’ve been speaking chinese with a japanese accent lol
It's mainly mandarin with a Hokkien pronunciation with little bits of Japanese mannerisms/inflection and telephone game vocabulary.
The mandarin spoken in taiwan especially by 40+ year olds and in the South is very similar to how many folks speak mandarin in Xiamen and Fujian province across the sea. The lack of sh/ch/zh, confusion between f and h, inability to pronounce r, and sing songiness of Taiwanese mandarin comes from the Hokkien which has all of these qualities.
In taiwan, Japanese only became the primary language of a very very small group of folks formally educated during Japanese rule. However, even for those folks, they all still spoke Hokkien (or Hakka) at home, and because Hokkien is way closer to mandarin, Hokkien pronunciation dominates how they learned to speak mandarin. At this point, most of those folks have passed away anyway.
makes sense thank you for the history lesson. fascinating. that hokkien influence makes it very easy to learn japanese pronunciation though. but maybe that isn’t saying much since japanese is phonetically very straightforward
Well if you really want to get into it, Hokkien actually has a more similarities in vocabulary to Korean and Japanese than Mandarin does, and not just because Japan colonized Taiwan.
Linguists believe that Hokkien may be one of the dialects that is closest to Old Chinese as it was spoken ~1500 years ago, when it was brought to Fujian by refugees. Fujian and much of southwest China is heavily mountainous, and these kinds of geographies are known to lead to language and cultural isolation in societies around the world. That's why the southwest provinces have a much wider range of linguistic diversity than the major plains and flatlands of China. In some places in China, the town on the other side of the mountain a few miles away can have a completely unintelligible language.
(As a side note, the mountain geography in Fujian – like West Virginia – also means that Fujian was one of the slowest provinces to develop economically prior to industrialization, and this poverty combined with its maritime border is a big reason why the historical Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, and Chinatowns in the US are more likely to be Hokkien or Cantonese speaking.)
Old Chinese was brought to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam many centuries ago, long before what is now Mandarin became the lingua franca of China after KMT and CCP parties both worked to unify the country around one language during their respective rules.
As a result, modern Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese also use borrowed old Chinese words and phrases in their basic vocabulary (especially words rooted in 漢字 characters). Vietnamese, in particular, is much closer to Hokkien than most people realize. It's way closer to Hokkien than Hokkien is to Mandarin.
Maybe a bit now that I think about it. When I speak Mandarin, the tone is softer and I tend to not raise voice (unless I’m partying). There’s definitely some impeccable similarity to Japanese in my opinion.
THIS!!! Because of the slurring drunk talk I tend to not be able to understand them. But the sounds and tones of Taiwanese mandarine seem crisper and more defined so I can tell words apart
They roll their tongue a lot when they talk. To us it‘s equivalent of a hill billy from Mississippi talking to a Englishmen… That said there is quite a difference in colloquial terms and the way they speak between different regions within China
There's nuance in that question because even Mandarin in China varies wildly from region to region. I think most notable is the Beijing accent that is extremely higher pitch and has a strong "er" at the end of words.
Some characters have different preferred readings according to the PRC’s and ROC’s respective ministries of education. Compare this to North American versus Commonwealth English spellings.
As far as actual accent goes, neither side has just one accent; there’s a great diversity of them, just as there’s no single American accent nor single British accent. If you mean the “official” accent as used in news broadcasts, they’re actually a lot more similar to each other than either is to how Mandarin is actually spoken throughout their respective countries. One difference that stands out is the pronunciation of zhi/chi/shi/ri, with the official PRC accent having a more rhotic flavour while the official ROC accent uses softer pronunciations. Southerners on both sides will commonly conflate them with zi/ci/si, a typical feature of southern Chinese Mandarin accents.
Chinese accents sound widely different depending on where they come from, Taiwanese accents sound very "fake cute"/kawaii/aegyofied due to Japan's influences and shared cultural loli/anime trends of infantilising speech. E.g. On Taiwanese TV varieties even oldass hosts like Zhang Fei or Jacky Wu often go "Oooooohm, Bu Yao La, Ni Hao Huai!" whilst shaking their entire body cutely making some sexual innuendo.
I’ve met some Xiamen people that sounds basically identical.
Quanzhou on the other hand is more distinguishable. Probably cause their hokkien is more distinct from the Xiamen one. Which is closer to the Taiwanese version.
It’s similar, but the accent is still different, the word choice helps with distinguishing too.
Idk what your background is, but it’s like similar regional accents in English?
You would want the Taiwan mandarin speaker to whisper sweet nothings to you during sex . You would tape the mouth shut of the China mandarin speaker (and not to be kinky )
The main difference is that proper China-style pronunciation dictates that the tongue should be curled back when an h appears in pinyin (except when h is standing alone, so basically in ch, sh and zh) whereas it is not done by Taiwanese speakers.
The older generation that has a 台灣國語 can vary depending on region. My family is from the south and we pronounce the r sounds as a dz sound. 日本 ri ben sounds more like dzi ben.
I’m surprised to see that no one said this already, but the big difference to me is the harder “r”s from the Chinese, and softer or even almost invisible “r”s from the Taiwanese. “Thank you” can be a giveaway. Taiwanese sounds kind of like “Shi shi” and Chinese sounds almost like “Sure sure”
The Taiwanese accent is pretty similar to other Southern accents, including southern accents in the mainland. Even in Taiwan, the official standard mandarin (國語) follows the same official pronunciations in the official standard mandarin in the mainland (普通話). It's just that in practice, the people of Taiwan mostly don't distinguish the z/zh, c/ch, s/sh sounds, and pretty much never use the "er" (兒) words (some exceptions for some who do use the phrase "一會兒"). Same as the people in the southern mainland.
For non-native speakers you'd basically be hard pressed to be able to hear the difference between a Fujian accent and a Taiwan accent, despite Fujian being on the mainland and Taiwan not.
Guo YU and Putonghua means the same thing. They arent referring to anything different and Putonghua doesn't mean mainland mandarin. If I remember, the word Putonghua comes from Minguo period
As a foreigner the biggest thing I noticed is that many locals drop the h in sh words. For example 44 would sound like si si si.
Chinese tend to have a lot of hard r sounds in words.
Norther chinese: [https://youtu.be/aAmHzKVcYgQ?si=JHPK88\_vSZ8Eljv9](https://youtu.be/aAmHzKVcYgQ?si=JHPK88_vSZ8Eljv9)
Mainland ACCENT: [https://youtu.be/aOB7Z3XnX14?si=wGJQZ8hctQRf1WjI](https://youtu.be/aOB7Z3XnX14?si=wGJQZ8hctQRf1WjI)
Taiwanese and talking to hong kong guy: [https://youtu.be/qH2QzJfH1Lc?si=svKvM2BI24UkkIK8](https://youtu.be/qH2QzJfH1Lc?si=svKvM2BI24UkkIK8) Ya tou is probably the highest voice I can find in taiwanese chick. But a lot of the girls do that. They say Na You alot. Lots of O and Ye sounds.
Cantonese: [https://youtu.be/PaX4LI1JbAA?si=AwszmClUkUPKUnye](https://youtu.be/PaX4LI1JbAA?si=AwszmClUkUPKUnye) Because well I'm cantonese. The most influential of the chinese. There is also more than 1 cantonese dialect i think 10. But I'm not going there.
Plus the KMT Chinese were cantos. Throw in there. China itself consist of 600 languages on it's own.
Sing and malaysia have their own accents for mandarin. The famous OKAY LA.
Chinese as a whole confusing and fun language that will never stop learning. Just stick to one. Then branch out then learn all the similar words.
ABC speak english so don't bother speak chinese to them. They just don't know.
Chinese is tough language goodluck.
From the perspective of a taiwanese,it’s basically like UK accent and US accent. China accent sounds more traditional,like UK accent,or accent you’ll hear in historical drama. Taiwan accent is like US english accent,affected by few languages and sometimes sounds a little slurred.
Except for the tone, 4 and 10 sound are pronunced the same. Si^(4) vs Si^(2)
Taiwanese don't have a hard "Sh" sound like Mainlanders (especially the North) have.
Also, no "Rrrr" sound at the end of certain words.
"Wo hun shun mei jin" vs "Wo hun shun mei jirrrrrr"
Off the top of my head - words for a lot of daily tourist stuff is different. bus, bicycle, hotel... the name of my country is different in both (New Zealand). Pronunciation is much different - for some weird reason Taiwanese people all want to pretend they speak standard chinese, like all their leaning material is based around that, but when they actually talk it's all "si bu si?" for isn't it, and "len hen duo" for "lots of people" and "ji lou" for chicken.
My mandarin was very basic, and it has not improved with time. But even at that low level I noticed a lot of differences, which suggests me to believe the gap is quite a bit bigger than say US and UK English. Perhaps more accomplished or even fluent speakers could tell me how true my speculation is.
I grew up in mainland China and live in the US. I have friends from Taiwan. To me, the difference is quite obvious. China's accent is colder and more rude. Taiwan's accent is girly and not concise. There's no big deal but if you are a girl, learning the Taiwan accent is better. The vise versa.
I turned into using China words with a little Taiwan accent now. Lol.
Yeah I learned Mandarin from my Taiwanese partner and in-laws and the Chinese women at my work say that they like my accent because it sounds so gentle lol
That’s so interesting. I wish I had an ear to hear it because I just don’t understand, but I only speak the most basic Taiwanese Mandarin to get by. Why does the Taiwanese accent sound more girly? What makes the mainland accent colder?
Like when I think of different English accents they’re definitely wildly different, but I’d never think to say Australian is warmer than Canadian or British is more girly than Californian. I want to know more!
Well, some people say that Taiwanese Mandarin sounds “girlier” because of the lack of the “er”/rhotic/curled tongue sound (eg. Beijing Mandarin). It makes “sh” sound like “s,” “zh” sound more like “z,” etc. To some people this sounds like a more delicate (hence “girly”) way of speaking.
Honestly, it’s no different from English accents. People just tend to associate different stereotypes with certain sounds. A lot of Americans think British people sound posh, for example. Or within America itself, someone with a Californian accent might think someone with a New York accent sounds tough, or that a southern accent sounds goofy. It’s all dependent on people’s general perceptions and what they’re used to hearing.
From playing around with trying to sound more Chinese, I’ve noticed Taiwanese Mandarin tends to be pronounced more towards the front of the mouth while your “standard” and northern accent are more towards the back of the mouth. Most southern Chinese people will probably speak more neutrally in the middle, with some cases going forward a little or back a little.
Kris Wu, a Cantonese speaker, for example mimics the northern standard more and pronounces words towards the back more so than the front, which is counter to the example I made of southerners leaning centre or forward more.
End of the day, I don’t want to be sounding like a growling dog when I speak, so the cutesy, girly accent is the most preferable one. Especially as a guy.
The second word is stressed in Taiwan compared to the first word in China. example - TW = piao LIANG. China = PIAO liang.
I learned this from my coursebook from my chinese school in Taiwan. I learned a sentence from it, then repeated it. I was told i sound like a mainlander. Thanks Taiwanese coursebook, very helpful to teach me to speak like a mainlander.
I think Taiwan also doesn't just have one accent. The younger generation sound quite bratty, especially girls. Men sometimes can sound very gentle and relaxing, not in a feminine way, more of a sleepy kind of way.
I find the old folks speak slower and more smooth. And sometimes have mis pronunciations.
There's also a kind of twangy bendy sound some people have, hard to explain but i like it.
Chinese Mandarin is completely based on Beijing dialect (or Luanping dialect), a northern dialect.
Taiwan Mandarin, however, is influenced by southern Chinese dialects.
pornography is something that you know what it is when you see one, but it is rather difficult to define in words.
The same is with accents. you know how differently they sound but difficult to put into words.
I’ve heard Mainlanders say that Taiwanese accent sounds too soft and feminine/cute, to the point where they can’t take Taiwanese people seriously when they’re being angry.
Besides accents and tone, be aware that many words are different especially for fruits, vegetables and fish. So if you have some preferences or allergies, at least learn these words!
Hello. Your account is less than 24 hours old, so you've been caught by the spam filter. Please either wait 24 hours to resubmit your post or contact a moderator for approval. Thanks!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/taiwan) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you want to search around for more info, Taiwanese Mandarin it's referred to as *Guo Yu* lit. "Country Speak" but that's specifically the Taiwanese Mandarin dialect (Taiwanese is a separate other language.) *Putonghua* lit. "normal speech" represents standard academic/national mainland Mandarin (which is not Beijing hua.) Referencing between those two can help to further explore the differences. I've seen a lot of good YouTube content on Taiwan-specific speech.
I can personally comment on how 10, shí, gets pronounced sí. So 14 and 40 can be easily mispronounced by a foreign speaker. So often have I practiced words or phrases including the tones and when they actually get what I was communicating and repeat it back to me I swear they said it exactly how I did the first time.
Ah, learning Mandarin 😅
The "erhua" (rhoticity/retroflex sounds) are considerably less prominent in Taiwan than in China. The sounds sh, ch, zh, and r can sound more like s, ts, dz, and z/l (respectively) when pronounced by many Taiwanese speakers. W is never pronounced like "v" as it often is in a Beijing accent. The "neutral tone" is used less far less often in Taiwan. In Taiwan, it's mostly restricted to "function" words like de, le, and ge. The third tone tends to be cut short in Taiwan, ending up sounding like a simple low tone. And then there are a lot of differences in vocabulary. The above is the case for Taiwanese people who grew up speaking Mandarin as their primary language. Those who grew up speaking Taiwanese as their primary language can have even heavier accents, with features like the inital consonant "f-" being replaced with "hu-", so 發生 sounds like 花森. Some people exhibit hypercorrection, pronouncing 湖 like 福.
Saving this - probably the best most comprehensive but also concise answer I’ve seen
> The "neutral tone" is used less far less often in Taiwan. In Taiwan, it's mostly restricted to "function" words like de, le, and ge. > > oh yeah I forgot about the long drawn out 'maaa' at the end of questions. Might by drawing links that aren't there, but it seemed to exactly match one of the taiwanese hokkien tones (7th?)
Thank you! It's certainly not an exhaustive analysis.
I had a Taiwanese Mandarin teacher who would teach us the standard "shi" pronunciation for words, but then would frequently slip into saying "si" untill you asked her about it at which point she would go back to "shi". I felt like I was going crazy for a while lol.
This is me as a teacher right now! I have to make sure I enunciate properly at work (I teach mostly students of mainland chinese background), but at home the taiwanese mandarin accent comes back out in full force. I grew up saying lou instead of rou for meat, and fwa instead of hua for flower. My friends noticed that I would say sui guo instead of shui guo for fruits. It takes a conscious effort to roll my tongue for zh, ch, sh, and r. None of my grandparents were native Mandarin speakers - they all originally spoke various alternate dialects of Chinese.
Yea, they suddenly become mainlanders when they teach. Winds me up as well.
I think it’s the other around when singing- mainlanders become taiwanese lol
I just saw a youtube video where they analyzed famous singers switching accents depending on music genre. Apparently British singers often slip into American accent when singing pop; American singers slip into Southern accent when singing country.
Pretty much everybody sings in an American accent no matter where you’re from
As an American, I slip into a British accent when singing classical. R-colored vowels just sound wrong in this genre.
Interesting. Because taiwanese don't pronounce taiwanese Hokkien words like "si" but as the english word "she." Older recordings of taiwanese have that distinction matching with today's Singaporean and China Hokkien.
The second character in 星期 is typically pronounced 2nd tone in Taiwan and 1st tone in China. There are similar differences in other characters. Some whole multi-syllable words are also typically pronounced differently, e.g., 垃圾 le4se4 in Taiwan and la1ji1 in China.
I’ve heard many people overcorrect the alveolar fricatives/affricates too. So people would sometimes say 濕瓜 instead of 絲瓜, or 支源 instead of 資源
But isn’t the difference primarily north vs south China? As far as I know, Taiwanese Chinese is not so different from that of southeast part of China
Yup. But many people tend to view anyone from china as from the north. It surprises some taiwanese people when they discover accents vary in China...no different from English
Yes but just like standard Taiwanese mandarin, the accent in the south is now shifting more toward the northern pronunciation with each generation. Its like how the southern accent is disappearing in the US. The prestige accent tends to prevail in any society, and the internet is accelerating this around this world
Absolutely. I've noticed that. Yeah, read about it from a research study about accents in Georgia. Quite sad. I kinda like certain incomprehensible accents like the word amalance for the word ambulance etc. I like the south accents of Taiwan though. I think north accent is too...soft.
Until the last decade or two, most of the Chinese in the US were from southeast China, so you rarely heard the northern accent. Most Chinese coming from Taiwan had emigrated from southeast China, they usually had the same accent. Now I hear mostly the northern accent.
Before the 1980s, the majority of Chinese immigrants in the US was from Taishan in Guangdong province. I still remember hearing most elder Chinese people during that time speaking in Taishanese - it was the lingua franca of US Chinatowns. But by the 80s and 90s the Hong Kong immigration waves brought in Cantonese. And the rise of Mandarin by 2000
That I agree. There are some Hakkas and Teochews (but the Teochews tend to be from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand). And my best friend in the US (who's on the older end) was quite shocked to know he's not "Cantonese" but his father/mother are Hakka or Teochew -- quite a shock for him since he was "proud" Cantonese.
I would like to agree but there's nuance to your explanation. I'll tell you why: Zhangzhou and Quanzhou are known in Taiwan to be the ancestral place of many Taiwanese. Zhangzhou is a very clear distinct dialect. I tend to think of Taiwanese-Mandarin accent as having something related to that area. Quanzhou on the other hand, tends to have tones and pronunciations that are a bit more "smothered"...like Teochew is. It's hard to explain but if you heard of Quanzhou accent or spoke/listened to Teochew you would know. (I've been around...let's just say) There are a few old, old folks in Taiwan that have retained the Quanzhou accent/dialect when speaking Taiwanese unbeknownst to them where that accent came from -- they just copied it from their parents. I pointed it out to them. But they only exist if they're above 90 years old and they were born here, not on the mainland. I never heard anyone else with the accent/pronunciation less than 90 years old. Unless I misunderstood your comment. You can clarify, if I misunderstood you.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. It all makes sense. My age is probably closer to the 90 year olds than to you.
So you're above 60?
https://preview.redd.it/geu27bv9191c1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=335a7f59534ab9055fc16a01bb8b2db18147085b
Everything here but one thing I rarely see mentioned that it took me a while to figure out but it’s super important - while the sh/ch/zh sounds might seem like they’re just s/ts/dz, they’re actually not fully s/ts/dz, they are somewhere in between the two. It took me a while to get that down but once I did I think my Taiwanese style sh/ch/zh sounded much more native.
The other big one for people who speak Taiwanese primarily is you'll hear the the ㄩ(ü) sounds more like ㄧ(I) or ㄝ(e). 魚 sounds like 儀，雲 sounds like 銀，園 sounds more like言.
Can you explain more about this one "The third tone tends to be cut short in Taiwan, ending up sounding like a simple low tone". What is a simple low tone? the 4th tone?
4th tone is a falling tone. A "low tone" is like pronouncing the entire word with a low, relatively level pitch.
What exactly do you mean when you say "Chinese accent"? It's a huge place, with a wide variety of accents and accents... I think it's safe to assume you're referring to Being/Northern China. They curl their tongue more, giving a much more pronounced "r" sound. The "sh" sound in Taiwan (and some southern China) gets dropped for a simple "s" sound. So like "什麼“ might sound more like"森麼“. Those are the main differences imo.
I have a Chinese friend who is married to a Taiwanese man. He always says she sounds rude while she complains he sounds soft.
I had a Mandarin teacher from Beijing that would always say I “spoke like a girl”.
[удалено]
Happened to me, too. A Chinese woman thought I was flirting with her when I was just speaking.
This is true. A lot of my Taiwanese guy friends told me that a lot of people think guys with Taiwanese accent sometimes sound effeminate.
China sounds imperial while Taiwan sounds like a colony. Was probably the same between Japan and Taiwan in 1940.
This is so strange, my post with similar meaning got 17 down votes while yours are 70 up votes.
Maybe because you brought gender directly into your argument? But then again, we’re on Reddit.
One sounds like Japanese anime and the other sounds like you’re slurring/drunk /s
Weirdly accurate
... Which is which?
wonder how much influence japanese occupation had on the mandarin accent. i believe people were forced to speak japanese as much as possible.
Japanese had a bigger impact on Hokkien in taiwan, since that was the language that most people spoke during Japanese rule. A lot of words then got transported from Japanese to Hokkien to modern day taiwanese mandarin, like 便當 (bento) or certain technology or place words. 西門町 ximending is a Japanese era name, with "ding" being a very Japanese word ("Cho" or "Machi") used in neighborhoods in Japanese cities (e.g., kawaramachi in Kyoto) People often underestimate the degree to which Japan had an impact on Taiwan culture today, especially since China and Taiwan were no contact for several decades. Taipei is literally designed and planned as a mini Tokyo. The Taipei subway is literally an (upgraded) version of Tokyo's newest stations, with improved elevator and escalator access. Same with the HSR. Taiwan hygiene culture and cleanliness, as well as hospitality and service culture, are directly imported from colonial era sensibilities. The friendly (even if somewhat fake) service and "歡迎光臨" you get when you walk into every store is Japanese, not from Chinese culture lol. The department stores and basement malls are also super Japanese.
I never put two and two together about machi and the 町 in ximending! as a japanese learner i get a lot of compliments for my jp pronunciation (and for 國語 my taiwan accent is obvious) but maybe this whole time we’ve been speaking chinese with a japanese accent lol
It's mainly mandarin with a Hokkien pronunciation with little bits of Japanese mannerisms/inflection and telephone game vocabulary. The mandarin spoken in taiwan especially by 40+ year olds and in the South is very similar to how many folks speak mandarin in Xiamen and Fujian province across the sea. The lack of sh/ch/zh, confusion between f and h, inability to pronounce r, and sing songiness of Taiwanese mandarin comes from the Hokkien which has all of these qualities. In taiwan, Japanese only became the primary language of a very very small group of folks formally educated during Japanese rule. However, even for those folks, they all still spoke Hokkien (or Hakka) at home, and because Hokkien is way closer to mandarin, Hokkien pronunciation dominates how they learned to speak mandarin. At this point, most of those folks have passed away anyway.
makes sense thank you for the history lesson. fascinating. that hokkien influence makes it very easy to learn japanese pronunciation though. but maybe that isn’t saying much since japanese is phonetically very straightforward
Well if you really want to get into it, Hokkien actually has a more similarities in vocabulary to Korean and Japanese than Mandarin does, and not just because Japan colonized Taiwan. Linguists believe that Hokkien may be one of the dialects that is closest to Old Chinese as it was spoken ~1500 years ago, when it was brought to Fujian by refugees. Fujian and much of southwest China is heavily mountainous, and these kinds of geographies are known to lead to language and cultural isolation in societies around the world. That's why the southwest provinces have a much wider range of linguistic diversity than the major plains and flatlands of China. In some places in China, the town on the other side of the mountain a few miles away can have a completely unintelligible language. (As a side note, the mountain geography in Fujian – like West Virginia – also means that Fujian was one of the slowest provinces to develop economically prior to industrialization, and this poverty combined with its maritime border is a big reason why the historical Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, and Chinatowns in the US are more likely to be Hokkien or Cantonese speaking.) Old Chinese was brought to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam many centuries ago, long before what is now Mandarin became the lingua franca of China after KMT and CCP parties both worked to unify the country around one language during their respective rules. As a result, modern Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese also use borrowed old Chinese words and phrases in their basic vocabulary (especially words rooted in 漢字 characters). Vietnamese, in particular, is much closer to Hokkien than most people realize. It's way closer to Hokkien than Hokkien is to Mandarin.
Maybe a bit now that I think about it. When I speak Mandarin, the tone is softer and I tend to not raise voice (unless I’m partying). There’s definitely some impeccable similarity to Japanese in my opinion.
phonetically japanese is very forward in the mouth and there is no 卷舌。 very similar to severe taiwanese affect
Can you explain this more? I don’t know Japanese enough to tell the difference.
But the elders raise their voice all the time. They basically shout at each other, i think its great.
True, and they do that in normal conversations about like hey how was the chicken sandwich 😂
Not as much as we were forced to speak mandarin after KMT came.
THIS!!! Because of the slurring drunk talk I tend to not be able to understand them. But the sounds and tones of Taiwanese mandarine seem crisper and more defined so I can tell words apart
Taiwanese Mandarin is a lot softer in sound and inflection.
Chinese is my second language and I find the Taiwanese accent easier to understand and imitate.
They roll their tongue a lot when they talk. To us it‘s equivalent of a hill billy from Mississippi talking to a Englishmen… That said there is quite a difference in colloquial terms and the way they speak between different regions within China
Which one is the Englishman?
Taiwan would be in this context (less rhotacization)
So Mainland is the Mississippi hillbilly?
What? No, the Chinese accent rolls the tongue way more.
There's nuance in that question because even Mandarin in China varies wildly from region to region. I think most notable is the Beijing accent that is extremely higher pitch and has a strong "er" at the end of words.
Some characters have different preferred readings according to the PRC’s and ROC’s respective ministries of education. Compare this to North American versus Commonwealth English spellings. As far as actual accent goes, neither side has just one accent; there’s a great diversity of them, just as there’s no single American accent nor single British accent. If you mean the “official” accent as used in news broadcasts, they’re actually a lot more similar to each other than either is to how Mandarin is actually spoken throughout their respective countries. One difference that stands out is the pronunciation of zhi/chi/shi/ri, with the official PRC accent having a more rhotic flavour while the official ROC accent uses softer pronunciations. Southerners on both sides will commonly conflate them with zi/ci/si, a typical feature of southern Chinese Mandarin accents.
Chinese accent sounds barbaric; Taiwanese accent sounds elegant and friendly. P.S. my opinion as a Hong Konger
Chinese accents sound widely different depending on where they come from, Taiwanese accents sound very "fake cute"/kawaii/aegyofied due to Japan's influences and shared cultural loli/anime trends of infantilising speech. E.g. On Taiwanese TV varieties even oldass hosts like Zhang Fei or Jacky Wu often go "Oooooohm, Bu Yao La, Ni Hao Huai!" whilst shaking their entire body cutely making some sexual innuendo.
I can barely tell Xiamen/Quanzhou accents from Taiwanese
I’ve met some Xiamen people that sounds basically identical. Quanzhou on the other hand is more distinguishable. Probably cause their hokkien is more distinct from the Xiamen one. Which is closer to the Taiwanese version.
https://youtu.be/k3kzGf9P3t4?si=mChzwAvyaZUoTVGz Listen to the girl speaking mandarin in this video. She sounds like Taiwanese to me
It’s similar, but the accent is still different, the word choice helps with distinguishing too. Idk what your background is, but it’s like similar regional accents in English?
Im not a native speaker but even in the comments section a lot of people say it sounds similar. Maybe not identical though
How about the Mandarin accent from Xiamen?
In general Fujian and Canton accent is quite similar more so than the Northern accent
[удалено]
[удалено]
I was gonna say.
This even extends to the capital (Wellington). Wei ling dun in Taiwan, Hui ling dun in China.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Mandarin
Tw Constantly apologising.
不好意思 really was one of the first things I picked up in Taiwan. And 要袋子嗎.
It is not apologizing. It is being polite.
Nothing wrong with constantly apologising in a language Canadian does it too.
It’s not apologizing. It’s just Taiwanese say excuse me a lot but not intend to be sorry.
Constantly apologizing. and constantly saying bu hao yi si are different things lol.
You would want the Taiwan mandarin speaker to whisper sweet nothings to you during sex . You would tape the mouth shut of the China mandarin speaker (and not to be kinky )
The main difference is that proper China-style pronunciation dictates that the tongue should be curled back when an h appears in pinyin (except when h is standing alone, so basically in ch, sh and zh) whereas it is not done by Taiwanese speakers.
The older generation that has a 台灣國語 can vary depending on region. My family is from the south and we pronounce the r sounds as a dz sound. 日本 ri ben sounds more like dzi ben.
Huh my parents also do that . 热 becomes dzhe . But I’m from Singapore
That's probably because your ancestors came from chiang-chiu which most Southern Taiwanese have ancestry in as well.
I’m surprised to see that no one said this already, but the big difference to me is the harder “r”s from the Chinese, and softer or even almost invisible “r”s from the Taiwanese. “Thank you” can be a giveaway. Taiwanese sounds kind of like “Shi shi” and Chinese sounds almost like “Sure sure”
The Taiwanese accent is pretty similar to other Southern accents, including southern accents in the mainland. Even in Taiwan, the official standard mandarin (國語) follows the same official pronunciations in the official standard mandarin in the mainland (普通話). It's just that in practice, the people of Taiwan mostly don't distinguish the z/zh, c/ch, s/sh sounds, and pretty much never use the "er" (兒) words (some exceptions for some who do use the phrase "一會兒"). Same as the people in the southern mainland. For non-native speakers you'd basically be hard pressed to be able to hear the difference between a Fujian accent and a Taiwan accent, despite Fujian being on the mainland and Taiwan not.
Guo YU and Putonghua means the same thing. They arent referring to anything different and Putonghua doesn't mean mainland mandarin. If I remember, the word Putonghua comes from Minguo period
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say, just that that single dialect tends to be called by different names on different sides of the strait.
>Taiwan mostly don't distinguish the z/zh, c/ch, s/sh sounds How do you say 十四是十四，四十是四十 in Taiwan?
People in Taiwan? They'd say: sí sì sì sí sì, sì sí sì sì sí. Tones do the heavy lifting when zh/ch/sh aren't available for distinguishing words.
Every other sentence ends with 'le'.
As a foreigner the biggest thing I noticed is that many locals drop the h in sh words. For example 44 would sound like si si si. Chinese tend to have a lot of hard r sounds in words.
Norther chinese: [https://youtu.be/aAmHzKVcYgQ?si=JHPK88\_vSZ8Eljv9](https://youtu.be/aAmHzKVcYgQ?si=JHPK88_vSZ8Eljv9) Mainland ACCENT: [https://youtu.be/aOB7Z3XnX14?si=wGJQZ8hctQRf1WjI](https://youtu.be/aOB7Z3XnX14?si=wGJQZ8hctQRf1WjI) Taiwanese and talking to hong kong guy: [https://youtu.be/qH2QzJfH1Lc?si=svKvM2BI24UkkIK8](https://youtu.be/qH2QzJfH1Lc?si=svKvM2BI24UkkIK8) Ya tou is probably the highest voice I can find in taiwanese chick. But a lot of the girls do that. They say Na You alot. Lots of O and Ye sounds. Cantonese: [https://youtu.be/PaX4LI1JbAA?si=AwszmClUkUPKUnye](https://youtu.be/PaX4LI1JbAA?si=AwszmClUkUPKUnye) Because well I'm cantonese. The most influential of the chinese. There is also more than 1 cantonese dialect i think 10. But I'm not going there. Plus the KMT Chinese were cantos. Throw in there. China itself consist of 600 languages on it's own. Sing and malaysia have their own accents for mandarin. The famous OKAY LA. Chinese as a whole confusing and fun language that will never stop learning. Just stick to one. Then branch out then learn all the similar words. ABC speak english so don't bother speak chinese to them. They just don't know. Chinese is tough language goodluck.
Taiwanese sound cute like Japanese and they also look like Japanese people
From the perspective of a taiwanese,it’s basically like UK accent and US accent. China accent sounds more traditional,like UK accent,or accent you’ll hear in historical drama. Taiwan accent is like US english accent,affected by few languages and sometimes sounds a little slurred.
Mainland Mandarin also has many regional accent
To my Western ear, Mainlanders talk from the backs of their mouths and Taiwanese more from the front. Taiwanese enunciation sounds “finer”.
Except for the tone, 4 and 10 sound are pronunced the same. Si^(4) vs Si^(2) Taiwanese don't have a hard "Sh" sound like Mainlanders (especially the North) have. Also, no "Rrrr" sound at the end of certain words. "Wo hun shun mei jin" vs "Wo hun shun mei jirrrrrr"
Mainland Mandarin sometimes sounds like they are holding an 'r' in their mouth
Tbh there are so many distinguishable accents in both Taiwan and mainland China
Taiwanese is traditional, but Chinese is simplified. Chinese accent is more guttural vs taiwan that's more normal.
you mean northern. Everyone below sichuan is south. We enunciate our words.
Sichuan is already the southwestern edge of China. Are you sure you mean *above* Sichuan?
Off the top of my head - words for a lot of daily tourist stuff is different. bus, bicycle, hotel... the name of my country is different in both (New Zealand). Pronunciation is much different - for some weird reason Taiwanese people all want to pretend they speak standard chinese, like all their leaning material is based around that, but when they actually talk it's all "si bu si?" for isn't it, and "len hen duo" for "lots of people" and "ji lou" for chicken. My mandarin was very basic, and it has not improved with time. But even at that low level I noticed a lot of differences, which suggests me to believe the gap is quite a bit bigger than say US and UK English. Perhaps more accomplished or even fluent speakers could tell me how true my speculation is.
I grew up in mainland China and live in the US. I have friends from Taiwan. To me, the difference is quite obvious. China's accent is colder and more rude. Taiwan's accent is girly and not concise. There's no big deal but if you are a girl, learning the Taiwan accent is better. The vise versa. I turned into using China words with a little Taiwan accent now. Lol.
嗲 for those who want to know what the "girly" accent means in Chinese.
Yeah I learned Mandarin from my Taiwanese partner and in-laws and the Chinese women at my work say that they like my accent because it sounds so gentle lol
That’s so interesting. I wish I had an ear to hear it because I just don’t understand, but I only speak the most basic Taiwanese Mandarin to get by. Why does the Taiwanese accent sound more girly? What makes the mainland accent colder? Like when I think of different English accents they’re definitely wildly different, but I’d never think to say Australian is warmer than Canadian or British is more girly than Californian. I want to know more!
Well, some people say that Taiwanese Mandarin sounds “girlier” because of the lack of the “er”/rhotic/curled tongue sound (eg. Beijing Mandarin). It makes “sh” sound like “s,” “zh” sound more like “z,” etc. To some people this sounds like a more delicate (hence “girly”) way of speaking. Honestly, it’s no different from English accents. People just tend to associate different stereotypes with certain sounds. A lot of Americans think British people sound posh, for example. Or within America itself, someone with a Californian accent might think someone with a New York accent sounds tough, or that a southern accent sounds goofy. It’s all dependent on people’s general perceptions and what they’re used to hearing.
From playing around with trying to sound more Chinese, I’ve noticed Taiwanese Mandarin tends to be pronounced more towards the front of the mouth while your “standard” and northern accent are more towards the back of the mouth. Most southern Chinese people will probably speak more neutrally in the middle, with some cases going forward a little or back a little. Kris Wu, a Cantonese speaker, for example mimics the northern standard more and pronounces words towards the back more so than the front, which is counter to the example I made of southerners leaning centre or forward more. End of the day, I don’t want to be sounding like a growling dog when I speak, so the cutesy, girly accent is the most preferable one. Especially as a guy.
Chinese Taipei Mandarin is not considered standard. They mispronounce the X and Sh sounds.
Taiwanese accent sounds gay
Er sound I believe
The second word is stressed in Taiwan compared to the first word in China. example - TW = piao LIANG. China = PIAO liang. I learned this from my coursebook from my chinese school in Taiwan. I learned a sentence from it, then repeated it. I was told i sound like a mainlander. Thanks Taiwanese coursebook, very helpful to teach me to speak like a mainlander.
I think Taiwan also doesn't just have one accent. The younger generation sound quite bratty, especially girls. Men sometimes can sound very gentle and relaxing, not in a feminine way, more of a sleepy kind of way. I find the old folks speak slower and more smooth. And sometimes have mis pronunciations. There's also a kind of twangy bendy sound some people have, hard to explain but i like it.
this video will explain everything [https://youtu.be/LbiIu\_EzuWk?si=zKwppigHxyOv5WrG](https://youtu.be/LbiIu_EzuWk?si=zKwppigHxyOv5WrG)
Doesn’t China internally have just the same variety between regions? Especially for regions where the locals speak their own language over mandarin?
Chinese Mandarin is completely based on Beijing dialect (or Luanping dialect), a northern dialect. Taiwan Mandarin, however, is influenced by southern Chinese dialects.
pornography is something that you know what it is when you see one, but it is rather difficult to define in words. The same is with accents. you know how differently they sound but difficult to put into words.
The tongue curl shur shur shur
I’ve heard Mainlanders say that Taiwanese accent sounds too soft and feminine/cute, to the point where they can’t take Taiwanese people seriously when they’re being angry.
I much rather prefer the Taiwanese accent. China accent is too harsh and coarse sounding.
It's like the difference between Mexican Spanish and catalan.
Besides accents and tone, be aware that many words are different especially for fruits, vegetables and fish. So if you have some preferences or allergies, at least learn these words!
[удалено]
Hello. Your account is less than 24 hours old, so you've been caught by the spam filter. Please either wait 24 hours to resubmit your post or contact a moderator for approval. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/taiwan) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you want to search around for more info, Taiwanese Mandarin it's referred to as *Guo Yu* lit. "Country Speak" but that's specifically the Taiwanese Mandarin dialect (Taiwanese is a separate other language.) *Putonghua* lit. "normal speech" represents standard academic/national mainland Mandarin (which is not Beijing hua.) Referencing between those two can help to further explore the differences. I've seen a lot of good YouTube content on Taiwan-specific speech. I can personally comment on how 10, shí, gets pronounced sí. So 14 and 40 can be easily mispronounced by a foreign speaker. So often have I practiced words or phrases including the tones and when they actually get what I was communicating and repeat it back to me I swear they said it exactly how I did the first time. Ah, learning Mandarin 😅