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Ari 桑 -

Can anyone point me to a source that explains regional differences in mandarin pronounciation?
I've been trying to find something along those lines, but so far I can only find comparisons on
dialects.

My reason being, I originally studied chinese in beijing, but decided I would rather use a
southern accent, from zhejiang, guangdong, or yunnan. When in those places, I can pick up on the
regional differences, but its hard to compile them in a concrete way, so I can make sure I'm
speaking rationally, and not just making things up.



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anonymoose -

Do you know of a source that explains regional differences in English pronounciation?

I think it's quite difficult to explain regional differences in pronunciation in any language,
save for the use of sound files, and even then it would take a lot of effort to compile the
neccessary comparative sound clips.

As for mandarin, very generally, southerners tend to pronounce sh as s, and zh as z as has been
discussed many times here before. I don't think you will find much else in a lot more detail than
this, but I'm happy if anyone can show otherwise.

Besides, why would you specifically want to talk in a southern accent? Unless your chinese accent
is very good (which it may be, but I don't know), you're still going to sound like a foreigner
regardless of whether you learnt your mandarin in Beijing or in the south, so I don't see the
point trying for a specific regional accent.










trien27 -

Mandarin is founded later than most of the other dialects: Cantonese, Fujianese/Foochow dialect,
Shanghainese, etc.... Most dialects have between 6-9 tones, yet Mandarin only has 4.

"As for mandarin, very generally, southerners tend to pronounce sh as s, and zh as z as has been
discussed many times here before. I don't think you will find much else in a lot more detail than
this, but I'm happy if anyone can show otherwise."

They did not intend to pronounce sh as s or zh as z. It is because the regional dialects don't
have an "sh or zh" sound, so the people approximate by using the sound closest to Mandarin in
their own dialect. Example: in Cantonese the word for "stone" is "sek", which is pronounced "shi"
in Mandarin. Occasionally, people would romanized it as "shek", yet still say "sek". Shi/Shek/Sek
that I have just mentioned is the Chinese word or the Chinese surname. But this is not always the
case: Zhen, one of the Chinese surnames, is "Yan/Yen" in Cantonese: Donnie Yen, martial arts/kung
fu fighter: for more information, click here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0947447/. or Martin Yan,
the cook.

As anonymoose just posted "It's very hard to find a source". Besides there's too many dialects,
subdialects and sub-subdialects in Chinese. Finding a source that could properly distinguish all
these one by one, is very difficult. The reason if you read the history of the Chinese language is
that all dialect speakers are unintelligible to each other if you speak different dialects to each
other, unless the regions that they're from, are very close to each other. All dialects share a
common written language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language










Lu -

Generally speaking, southerners don't say the retroflexes (zh is z, sh is s, ch is c, and r- is
either y- or l-), and mix up -n and -ng endings. And of course they have no erhua.
In addition, some areas mix up l- and n-; and Hunan changes h- into f-, I think.

Please, do not pick up this accent. It's not considered standard Mandarin, not even by the
southerners themselves. If you want to speak less Beijingnese, throw out the erhua, but do keep
the distinction between s and sh and the others, and between -n and -ng. You'll be understood just
fine all over China.










Ari 桑 -

I have many friends from different parts of china, and many use relatively non-standard
pronounciation. Like anyone else, I learn the language by emulating those around me. Because some
of my closest friends come from the far south, I have gotten used to their accent, and accusomed
myself to saying things the same way. Because I have been using more and more of the southern
pronouciation of things, it is becoming more natural to me than standard mandarin. Most of my
prounouciation is an emulation of my friend from zhejiang.

However, I am making an effort to not go outside the bounds of what would be understood by all,
and so far I've never had a problem. For example, when saying 上, I say it more like shang, if
that makes sense. The "sh" sound is faint and not stressed, but still there, rather than "sang."
Same goes for "zhe" sounds.

Another distinct part of my friends accent is the "r" sound at the beginning of words. 然后 is
pronounced "lanhou" or "yanhou" (something between those two） and 人 is "l/yen" Would you
consider this deviation from the norm more extreme that the "sh" and "zhe" mutation?

This accent comes to me more naturally than standard madarin, and I can say things without much of
an accent easily, but saying 一点儿 etc sounds forced and american.










Jive Turkey -

Ari, it's completely up to you to sound however you want to sound, and IMO, many people who preach
that one should learn as standard a Mandarin as possible are often chasing a standard that they
aren't really immersed in or even exposed to. That is the nature of Putonghua. I personally chose
to learn what's considered standard for tones and the consonants and vowels, but gave less
attention to -erhua since that is something peculiar to northern speech. I learned in Taiwan, so I
quickly learned the correspondence between how locals pronounced certain things and what the
"standard" pronunciation was. I think that if you want to learn a Putonghua dialect, then you
should at least know what the "standard" form of whatever it is you hear in that variety of speech
is. In fact, if you ever want to use reference materials, you will have to know what the standard
pronuncation is.

IMO, learning what's considered "standard" is fine, but most of the people I've known who focused
on that had piss poor listening comprehension once they left the northeast. If a learner expects
to be able to use Putonghua to communicate with people from different areas, he needs to have at
least some exposure to dialect accents. Unfortunately, most mainland teachers and publishers think
that is heresy. I know of one series of books designed with the intent of helping CSL learners
understand "non-standard" Putonghua:
Varieties of spoken Standard Chinese. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1984.
I've seen two volumes in this series. I think the books have a full transcript of a long
conversation between a really standard speaker and a not so standard speaker, and a tape
recording. I think there are also exercises for matching up the pronunciation of certain dialect
influenced phonemes with their standard equivalents. One volume is on a speaker from Tianjin, the
other volume is on a speaker from Taipei. I think there are other volumes, but I've never seen
them.










Luobot -

I'm also interested in this subject, so I followed-up on Jive's post and found the following from
Amazon:

Vol 1 -- $102.28
Product Details
* Paperback
* Publisher: Foris Pubns USA (January 1983)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 907017667X
* ISBN-13: 978-9070176679
* Amazon.com Sales Rank: #4,603,959

Vol 2 -- $68.38
Product Details
* Paperback: 171 pages
* Publisher: Foris Publications USA (November 1984)
* Language: English, Cantonese
* ISBN-10: 9067650404
* ISBN-13: 978-9067650403
* Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,573,486

The first one is presumably Mandarin. The second indicates it's Cantonese.

These seem to be a little expensive for just some paperbacks. It doesn't mention anything about
including a CD or even tape (not that I could play tape). Also, there are no reviews, which is not
a good sign.










cdn_in_bj -

I have wanted to post about a related topic for a while. For now, let me just say that here in
Beijing, one is exposed to a wide variety of mandarin pronounciations due to the large numbers
that have moved here from 外地 for school and/or work (and I'm not just referring to the migrant
workers). Ironically, I find the Beijing dialect and especially some of the 东北 pronounciations
to be the most challenging to understand for a non-native learner of mandarin. I have little
difficulty understanding most southern pronounciations.










atitarev -



Quote:

...IMO, learning what's considered "standard" is fine, but most of the people I've known who
focused on that had piss poor listening comprehension once they left the northeast. If a learner
expects to be able to use Putonghua to communicate with people from different areas, he needs to
have at least some exposure to dialect accents. Unfortunately, most mainland teachers and
publishers think that is heresy. ...

This is quite understandable, since teachers try to maintain the standard Mandarin. Non-standard
is different everywhere, which can be picked up if you go and stay in that area for a longer time.
It's probably more beneficial to learn that local dialect, not the local Mandarin accent.

Most local speakers understand the standard Mandarin very well, anyway.



Quote:

Can anyone point me to a source that explains regional differences in mandarin pronounciation?
I've been trying to find something along those lines, but so far I can only find comparisons on
dialects.

My reason being, I originally studied chinese in beijing, but decided I would rather use a
southern accent, from zhejiang, guangdong, or yunnan. When in those places, I can pick up on the
regional differences, but its hard to compile them in a concrete way, so I can make sure I'm
speaking rationally, and not just making things up.


Ari 桑, you are better of searching for specific dialects, there's plenty of info on Cantonese.
The other dialects have much less resources, especially written. If you ask a speaker of those
dialects, they (in many cases) will recommend you to learn Mandarin.










DrZero -

Just my two cents, something I've mentioned here before: If you plan to spend an extended period
of time in the south, it's advisable to drop the er-hua. The southerners find it annoying and kind
of pretentious. It's probably better to maintain the s/sh and z/zh distinctions rather than
speaking just like the southerners, but if you spend enough time with southerners you just may
find some of that distinctions fading away in your own speech.












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