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Guangdong / Southern China accents, etc?


SirDude

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yes, sorry, I have been using "etc." too often in this thread: so for me the "lip service" kind of erhua found in some TW materials are the following:

- 這兒, 那兒, 哪兒, 一會兒, 一點兒

I have also heard actors use 玩兒 occasionally, but I'm not so sure about the status of words like that, and if they would be as pervasive as the five adverbs above.

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Also another thing: children's books would reflect, if anything, the standard as Mandarin taught to Taiwanese citizens, not to foreigners. As I said I'm not sure how this actually is done, but I could imagine that these would also be two sets of different guidelines.

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I can't imagine that a textbook called "Helen and David in China" will have a lot of currency in Taiwan. Who's the publisher, and do you know of university programmes actually using it?

I looked at my old textbook 實用視聽華語 published by 台灣大學, there's virtually no erhua in it except for those adverbs (but it's 玩 without erhua) (which is congruent with my own experiences, as erhua was never brought up by the teachers at all, though I didn't start from the elementary level, so I can't vouch for its complete absence from the curriculum).

Why I think it's important to distinguish between the two situations: I can imagine that for elementary schools, an older, more prescriptivist paradigm might still prevail, while for the CSL classrooms they might actually follow a model that comes closer to the way people actually speak, i.e. without virtually any erhua. I think my textbook reflects that quite well.

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:shock: WOW! :shock:

Now I'm feeling like a totally dummy, because I got lost way back on page two. :conf

So I'm trying to understand Erhua, I did some searching for Erhua.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhua has breakdown of the different parts of China and who / how people use Erhua. It also has an MP3 (at the bottom of the page) but this is all lost on me at this point in time. And, the notice at the top of their page warns people that the information is heavily based on one person's writing, so I have to take that with a grain of salt.

Where or when (if at all) does Erhua come into my studying? I'm guessing from after reading http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/26-traditional-vs-simplified-characters410 it's not going to be for a long time???

Since people don't seem to agree on the use or non-use of Erhua, is it like the American English fighting over the word "Tomato"? You say "to-may-toe", I say "to-ma-toe"????

I just started my paperwork for going back to college and now I'm starting to think I need to go back to grade-school! :lol:

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Ok one thing about Chinese its syllables are much simpler than in English (except for the tones which we'll ignore for the moment).

So while in English a syllable can end in many different consonants, in Chinese this is much more limited, in Mandarin it's basically only -n or -ng, the rest all end in vowels.

However, there's one exception, the "er" which occurs by itself in a tiny number of words, such as "two" or "son". Now this had taken a life of its own and can be stuck onto other words, adding another option to the language.

So a word like yidian ending in -n then becomes yidiar.

This can't be done randomly, you have to learn which words have this, and as has been discussed so fiercely here, there are some regional differences. It's nothing to be concerned about though, just wait and see.

The point renzhe was making was that if you learnt these words with a textbook adhering to the Beijing standard, and you follow it, no matter if the people you talk with in the South use it themselves or not, they will still be able to understand you.

I hope this clears up matters a bit.

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Since people don't seem to agree on the use or non-use of Erhua, is it like the American English fighting over the word "Tomato"? You say "to-may-toe", I say "to-ma-toe"????

Yeah, something along those lines. :mrgreen: Like in case of English, it's worth to be familiar with the usage with or without Erhua, whereever you live and whatever your reasons for learning Putonghua. You'll come across if you use any standard textbook, or most standard textbooks.

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This can't be done randomly, you have to learn which words have this,

When I started reading this I was like, great, it's just like some of the people on the upper east coast in the US saying "idea'er" VS "Idea" (i.e: "I have a great ide'er" VS "I have a great idea."

But as far as I know, there 's no lesson taught in school that says you need to say ide'er when you are speaking to someone in New York state.

So someone has to learn when to use it or not, but there's no clear rule to using it? I saw that there's a "儿" at the end of the words people use in their examples, so 儿 = "er", is it that clear?

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Actually it's a bit similar. Some people on the East Coast don't pronounce the r at the end of a syllable, like in "I pahked my cah at Hahvahd Squah". Now if such a speaker wanted to pronounce the Rs they would have to learn that too, as you couldn't do it randomly either.

That's why JFK said "Cubar" instead of "Cuba", because he had been trained to pronounce his Rs as it would have more mass appeal, and sometimes he'd slip up..

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what do you mean by "accent" here? "hao ba" doesn't have any erhua in Chinese.

When I listen to the lady say "hao ba", and I know there's no erhua, I still hear it as " har bar". It was one of the eaziest words for me to remember since it sounded like someone from the US east coast saying "harbor".

So I'm trying to figure out, from what everyone is talking about, does a person from the north sound like this lady? Even if there's no 儿 on the word, does one say "ba" and another say "bar" like the ide'er / idea example?

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OK, that's what I am trying to make sure of. Since I am trying to save for college, I have been studying from free online lessons, and some of them are very clear that they were not what everyone else was teaching, (audio) so until I can efford Pimsleur's or get into a college class, I am not sure what sounds right or not.

For all I know this lady could be speaking Cantonese and I wouldn't know it until I met someone one day and called them a bad name or something.

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I can speak to a Taiwanese person on the phone and they wont know I'm foreign.

I can speak to a person from China and they will tell me that I dont have a strong Taiwanese accent.

We eagerly await your participation in this thread :clap Feel free to come up with something of your own if you don't like the provided articles.
only to certain words' date=' and "hao" and "ba" aren't among them.[/quote']是吗?你好好儿想一想,啊。有时候“好”也可以带儿化音 :mrgreen:
it's just like some of the people on the upper east coast in the US saying "idea'er" VS "Idea"
Many people mistakenly think that erhua is only an accent thing. However it typically does change the meaning/nuance of the word, even if that change is only slight.
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SirDude, as long as you stick to standard textbooks and study materials, there is nothing to worry about.

Simply learn the words the way they are introduced in official textbooks. Then there's nothing to think about.

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:mrgreen:

This thread is actually really making me laugh,:lol: I think because poor old SirDude just wants to know what to learn and we're all confusing him!:wink:

In reply to Sir Dude, and Sir Dude alone.

Do what renzhe says and learn standard Mandarin. :lol:

In reply to some other stuff..

I DO speak with a Taiwanese accent, but I dont do what some Taiwanese people do, which is to add in lots of long endings to their sentances.. hence.. I wouldn't say "tau yin laaaaaaaaaa" if something was annoying, which can usually give someone a clue that you're speaking with a Taiwan accent.

I think that my friend from Haerbin had spoken to several Taiwanese who tend to do this with their words and was surprised that I didn't.

He had the kind of accent where there was a hint of an er at the end of some words, but not all.

I guess he thinks that I dont have a strong Taiwanese accent, though of course, I do have a Taiwanese accent.

Put it this way: I'm from London, England, and I have a mild Southen English accent, not cockney. therefore I have a mild standard Taiwanese accent, not daiwangoyu accent where I would say things wrong. I'm sure you would know what I meant when I say this.

Chrix.

I'd be interested to know what text books you used to learn your Mandarin in Taiwan.

I learned from a book called "shi ting hua yu". I can still remember a lot of erhua words which were taught as standard in this book, even from lesson one:

Examples include:

Xiangpianer (photograph), xiaohaier (child), jer (here), hua huaer (painting). This list continued throughout the text books, from beginner level to higher level. I even had American students complaining about Taiwanese people speaking Mandarin "badly" because they were not using the erhua which they had learned. :lol:

Imron, strangely enough, I can probably only read about 60-70% of what's written on that page (in simplified chinese! :mrgreen:)

A good place to hear my pronunciation of Chinese would actually be at http://kongming.net/ where I managed to pronounce a lot of the names of the characters in The Three Kingdoms and posted these on their profiles.

I will definately take a look at that page though, and see if I dare to post my speaking :lol::lol:

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