#nonsyllabic

[thenotsosecretdiaryofbiyu]

A Simple Analysis of the Taiwanese Accent of Mandarin Chinese

During my time here in Taiwan, I’ve noticed a lot of differences between the standard Mandarin I learned in school and the accent commonly used here in Taiwan! Here’s a collected list of the most important things I’ve learned thus far,

—A lot of people omit the “sh” when speaking in favor of a simpler “s” sound

For example, the pronunciation of 沒事 is more like “mei2si4” instead of the standard pronunciation of “mei2shi4”

And 十 is pronounced like “si2” instead of “shi2”

Fun fact, this is very similar to how many people from Fujian Province, China speak! Geographically, Fujian Province and Taiwan are very close to each other and they both are home to a “Hokkien” language, although Taiwanese and Fujianese Hokkiens have their differences. According to a Quora user Michael Cannings, “The biggest difference is that Taiwanese has a whole layer of Japanese loanwords that would not be understood in any of the Southern Min dialects spoken in Fujian.” Not so fun fact, Taiwanese Hokkien has many Japanese loanwords because Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895-1945, before the Chinese Nationalist Party took over (The Chiang Kai-Shek era). To this day, many homes in Taiwan still speak all three languages: Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Japanese

—“不會” to mean “不客氣” (You’re welcome/Literally “don’t be polite”)

—“發票” to mean receipt

—冷氣 to mean air conditioning instead of 空調

—Certain tones are different from Mainland:

The “期” of 星期 is pronounced with a rising second tone instead of a flat first tone.

—And of course, the well-known omission of the 兒化/er-hua pronunciation

In North Mainland, especially in the cities, most people will insert a nonsyllabic final r into the words when speaking.

Ex: 點 (dian3) would be pronounced 點兒 (diar3) and 玩 (wan2) would be pronounced 玩兒 (war2), even the word 眼鏡 (yan3jing4) would likely be pronounced 眼鏡兒 (yan3jar4) in Beijing [something I learned while watching the Mandarin dub of Peppa Pig LOL)

I plan to make a new/updated list in the future too if there’s more I notice!

#whenthesevenelevenladysays「謝謝」Isay「不會」tosoundlikeoneofthecoolkids

[tsundozer]

Memories