Getting used to Taiwanese pronunciation

[gaoshancha]

So I have a Chinese tutor from Taiwan and I am very grateful for the help.  However, I'm really struggling with catching what my tutor says due to the differences in Taiwanese pronunciation and what I am accustomed to with my learning materials.  I find myself repeating in my head what the tutor says, and then the ah-ha moment happens and it clicks.  In the mean time, the tutor is two or three sentences a head now and I'm lost!

 

The big issue is not the lack of 兒話 but the following:

zhi => zi

chi => ci

shi => si

 

Any advice on getting my brain to burn those sounds into memory?  I'm sure if I hear it enough my brain will forge the synapses or what ever and bridge the words I learned with standard pronunciation in learning materials with what Taiwanese speakers say.

 

Are there any audio materials or training materials for getting ones ears accustomed to the Taiwanese pronunciation?  I understand this is also how many Southerners in China speak, so perhaps it is not fair to call it Taiwanese pronunciation.  But hopefully the issue makes sense...

 

Appreciate any advice!

[Hofmann]

Are you sure that alveolars and retroflexes are completely undifferentiated? In my experience, the retroflexes turn into (alveolo-)palatals, but still different from alveolars. Ask your tutor to say 之 and 資 etc. next to each other.

[OneEye]

Agreed, and I've talked about this elsewhere on the forum.

 

Odds are that she pronounces zh/ch/sh as j/q/x, not z/c/s. That's not a problem though, because the finals that can be attached to zh/ch/sh are not the same as the ones for j/q/x. You just need to train your ear to hear how she differentiates the retroflex/palatal/dental series, and your brain to process the sounds in the right way.

[Lu]

Nothing against a Taiwanese accent, but if your tutor cannot differentiate between zi and zhi, then perhaps you need to find a different tutor. It's one thing if you as a learner learns it and then decide to downplay it or throw it out when you are in Taiwan, but not learning the difference at all is not good. Bit surprising if your tutor doesn't differentiate, in my experience the Chinese tutors are pretty much the only people in Taiwan who speak with obvious retroflexes.

If it's not possible to switch tutors, consider listening to music from Taiwan or watching tv series from there to get used to the accent. There is a lot of media from Taiwan, much of it quite watchable.

[imron]

Are there any audio materials or training materials for getting ones ears accustomed to the Taiwanese pronunciation?

Take a look at the Glossika materials.

[grawrt]

I agree with Lu. Until I got to the mainland all of my teachers were from Taiwan and spoke with proper retroflexes. I even experienced the same with the sweet taiwanese ladies who volunteered to help teach Chinese at my local library. Aside from the lady who ran the class, the other two women were not certified teachers and yet they all pronounced their retroflexes.

It's possible to understand that zhi->zi but at the early stage I don't think its a wise idea. I'm afraid later on you might unconsciously see zhi=zi.

[realmayo]

I understand this is also how many Southerners in China speak

 

Many southerners do speak the way you described, i.e. zh/ch/sh -> z/c/s. But if OneEye is correct, that's not how they speak in Taiwan.

[OneEye]

Well, there are certainly people who don't make the distinction here, but most do. Especially educated people under (guessing) 45 or so. Not distinguishing between z/c/s and zh/ch/sh is a feature of the so-called 台灣國語, which is stigmatized as a lower-class, uneducated-sounding dialect and not something to be proud of.

[realmayo]

So in Taiwan, pronouncing zh/ch/sh as j/q/x sounds educated, and pronouncing them as z/c/s sounds uneducated (broadly speaking)?

[gato]

How does pronouncing ch as q work? Do 吃 and 七 sound the same?

[Lu]

I don't think I've ever heard zh/ch/sh as j/q/x, but I'm not a linguist. I do know plenty of people who only barely, if at all, differentiate between zh/ch/sh and z/c/s, or between -n and -ng. (Tai-oan go-yu takes that even further, and that does usually sounds low-class.) Barely differentiating is in my opinion not good enough for a tutor, and the student runs the risk of mis-learning the pronunciation of words (or of spending a lot of time to doublecheck the dictionary on all vocabulary to make sure s/he doesn't miss any retroflexes).

[realmayo]

I dunno, OneEye hears [zh/ch/sh -> j/q/x] in Taiwan, and I've never been there. But in the rest of the south, I've heard it going to z/c/s.

 

Perhaps it's like this:

 

For people whose own dialect/language doesn't have any zh/ch/sh retroflexy stuff: 

When speaking putonghua they either: 

 

1. Don't distinguish them at all => z/c/s

2. Pronounce correctly => zh/ch/sh

3. Try to distinguish them but incorrectly and without a retroflex

 

In the last case, sometimes they'll sound somewhere between z/c/s and zh/ch/sh.

And sometimes that'll sound like j/q/x.

Perhaps in Taiwan there are more people who care about distinguishing but not about distinguishing the same way that they're supposed to on the mainland?

[OneEye]

First, when I say people pronounce zh/ch/sh as j/q/x, I'm referring only to the initials. Of course the finals in zhi/chi/shi are different than they are in ji/qi/xi (as I said above). But the point of articulation for the initials is the same (or very close). It's not just me saying this.

 

I made some recordings a while back demonstrating this.

 

We've had very, very similar discussions recently, in this thread and this one.

[Lu]

We've had very, very similar discussions recently

Yah, not much point in repeating it here. Regardless of what exactly Taiwanese people do with zh/ch/sh, in my opinion a teacher should do neither, she should pronounce her retroflexes so that the student can hear them and learn to pronounce them as well. If the student wants to cultivate a Taiwanese accent later on, that's absolutely fine, but in my opinion that is not what the student should learn from their primary teacher.

[realmayo]

True, it's not a fruitful discussion. I initially just wanted to point out that Taiwanese pronunciation is not typical 'southern' pronunciation in this respect.