could you tell your experience there?

thx!

I have spent 9 months studying Chinese in Taipei, and I would like to spend some more time there, and perhaps other parts of Taiwan, but before that I also want to travel around China and spend a few months settled down a bit somewhere in the country specifically so that I can broaden my exposure to different ways of speaking. Not to mention the cultural differences.

I also find it very unlikely that people in Beijing could not understand a Taiwan accent. I thought everyone in the mainland watched tv shows and movies from Taiwan-or are they just reliant on the subtitles?

Your point 2) is certainly a valid and important one. However, 1) is problematic. I’m not really sure what you mean in 3) and I interpret it as an extension of 1). I will therefore focus on the theme of “standard language” that runs through both 1) and 3). It’s a complex topic and I’m just touching very lightly on it. Apologies for rambling! I’d suggest consulting some of the literature in Sociolinguistics, Critical Applied Linguistics and related fields.

You might find James Tollefson’s paper is a good start
http://www.languages.ait.ac.th/hanoi_proceedings/tollefson.htm

“Standard” language is an abstraction and a socio-political construct. It needs to be questioned, rather than taken uncritically as a given concept with a common-sense meaning.

The idea of “standard” also feeds into the myth of “one China” in the sense of the Han people and their language being synonomous with “Chinese”. For example, we usually translate 汉语/ 漢語 (language of the Hans) as “Chinese”. Anybody who has studied an introductory course in Linguistics must be familiar with the age-old problem of defining “language” and “dialect” in the context of China. Most linguists talk about the “Chinese languages” these days when they refer to Cantonese, Taiwanese, Hakka etc. It’s no longer to say these are “just dialects” because they are spoken within one country (sort of) and share a common writing system as people used to argue.

What is “Standard”? For Chinese (Putonghua), one partial (and trivial) test might be to say speakers who distinguish initials zh, ch, sh from z, c, s have a more “standard” pronunciation than those who don’t. No surprise that this rules out much of China, as well as Taiwan. So a lot of people [most!] are speaking varieties of Chinese that have conflated these sets of initials or use them in free variation. It’s clear then that it doesn’t make much difference in communication (once you get used to it). A stereotypical example is the pronunciation of 四 and 十. Without the s vs sh distinction, all we have is a different tone. In fast speech it can be hard to distinguish. But, any ambiguity is soon handled by making a 十字 with the fingers to accompany the pronunciation.

Of course, it can be hard for a foreigner [especially beginners] to deal with variation. But it’s a fact of life – it won’t go away. My ex-father-in-law spoke with a heavy Sichuan accent and all the tones seemed completely upside down to me. My ex-mother-in-law had a Wuhan accent mixed with God knows what! Being around them was an interesting experience for a foreigner who has been learning/speaking the language for 30 years (and has also taught it). It was very humbling not to be able to understand simple words sometimes. But that was my problem.

Think about what happens with English. International students go to many different English-speaking countries to learn English. They meet different accents and different vocabularies and idioms. Is this a problem? Not anymore. It’s even considered a good idea to hire EFL teachers these days who come from a number of different backgrounds – including teachers who have English as a second/foreign language. The emphasis is not on learning some “standard”, but becoming familiar with the diversity that one may easily meet and preparing learners for dealing with it. (The term “World Englishes” is now a common one.)

I don’t see why the future should be any different for teaching Chinese. Taiwan? Beijing? Sichuan? Heilongjiang? If you are serious about studying “Chinese” (I mean going beyond artificial textbook language) and having the knowledge of the language and how its used comparable to an educated “native speaker” [another abstraction], then you need to be exposed to as many different varieties as possible. As a foreign user you will probably model your own speech on some abstract “standard”. But familiarity with the “Chineses” we find in the real world can only be to our advantage. If you are planning to live the rest of your life in Newfoundland and just talk to Newfies, then you’d better learn to speak “Newfie” and forget about the rest of the world. Similarly, if the only Chinese you ever meet are from Heilongjiang, then just learn their way of speaking. But the result, in both cases, will be speakers who are 井底之蛙!

As language learners surely we all need to climb out of our “wells” and expand our “repertoires”...it might seem “natural” that we start with an ideologically constructed “standard”, but that’s just the elephant’s tail (as in the chengyu story 盲人摸象).

1) The language in Taiwan isn’t really that standard (as defined by most of the billion+ Mandarin speakers in the world). When I was in Beijing, a fair number of people couldn’t understand me due my Taiwanese accent and diction. Especially during my first few days there, I had to spend a lot of time explaining myself and asking for clarifications.
2) Price is a huge factor in mainland China’s favor. It’s MUCH cheaper to study there.
3) The issue of size is also important. The article never mentioned Taiwan, but it never mentioned Heilongjiang province specifically, either. Heilongjiang is known as the place with the most standard Mandarin in China. It also has nearly double the population of Taiwan and one of the most prestigious Mandarin schools in the world.

I realize Taiwan is in a special situation and can’t be compared to just any old Chinese province. However, with higher living costs, non-standard language and with less than 2% of all Mandarin speakers living here, it’s hardly a shoe-in as a Chinese learning destination. For EFL teachers, though, Taiwan is the place.

Dan

letters@time.com

Anyway, good post man.