Job Discussion Forums

[Miguelito]

Many people on this board have suggested that the best way to learn Mandarin Chinese is just getting out there, talking to people and practicing. If you are teaching in Beijing, this seems possible since the official dialect there is the standard Mandarin understood all over China. But what if you are somewhere else in China? For example, if you are working in Shanghai, they speak the Shanghainese dialect, which I have been told sounds nothing like Mandarin, same goes for working in Guangdong. They speak Cantonese there. Therefore, when you are walking around town, you will not hear the official dialect, but the local one only.

Does anyone know of the other cities outside of Beijing where "standard" Mandarin (or close to it) is normally spoken among the local population and, therefore, would provide opportunities to practice?

[MyTurnNow]

Location is everything. If you are in the North finding standard Mandarin is not difficult and in many areas the Mandarin you hear is not so different from Beijing's. The northeast (Dalian, Changchun, Shenyang, Harbin, etc.) seems especially good but you will find local dialects there too.

In China pretty much everyone speaks Mandarin except the older generations who were never in postrevolutionary schools. Most people can speak their local dialect and Mandarin with equal fluency. A lot of people can speak several dialects including Cantonese with equal ease and it's absolutely frightening.

The only question is how "standard" the Mandarin you hear is. In general the further south you go the more Mandarin will mutate, but there are pockets of weirdness all over China. Well-educated people everywhere will tend to speak Mandarin beautifully. Here in Jiangsu Province, I have considerably more difficulty understanding "street" Mandarin than I did in the North even though my fluency has picked up a lot. A lot of people here and in Hunan seem to substitute 'L' for a lot of 'N' and 'R' sounds....some Hunanese call their home "Hulan", milk becomes "niu lai", etc. My housekeeper is from rural Jiangsu and she does this; I try to teach her some English (we're also good friends) and this inability to hear and reproduce 'N' makes it a challenge.

I can easily find good teachers and conversation partners here but I am selective! If your ear isn't yet sufficiently sensitized to hear accents, ask about education...again, usually the better-educated a person is the more standard and correct their speech will be. Kinda like English in America.

MT

[taiwan boy]

I think you will find people speaking good Mandarin in many places in China these days, especially younger well-educated people. Also in some places like Shanghai and Shenzhen a lot of people come from all over China to work so you can find plenty of people who speak Mandarin as a first language and even more who speak it with good pronunciation.

I have heard it said that the Mandarin spoken in Harbin is "the most standard" but what is standard anyway? It's a bit like BBC English--how many people actually talk like that in the real world? You can be sure any Chinese person teaching the language in China will have good pronunciation. Just make sure you talk to a range of people so you are exposed to different accents and you'll be fine.

[Roger]

I see it the same way as taiwan boy. Migration in China takes care of the spread of Mandarin everywhere. in Shenzhen, the majority of people are Mandarin speakers, and in point of fact many training centres are making money selling Cantonese lessons (sometimes taught by underperforming migrants).
In Yunnan, a local girl claimed her Mandarin was as good as Peking Chinese "because most of us Yunnanese originally hailed from the North". In Xinjiang there hardly is a local variant. And the Northeast has traditionally been inhabited by Mandarin speakers.

[MyTurnNow]

Migration accounts for a good bit, I think. Maybe schools nationwide holding classes in Mandarin should get some attribution too. And then there's CCTV, blowing (in several senses of that word ) out of Beijing to every corner of the country.

Mass media has made a lot of inroads toward homogenizing the regional accents and cultures of the USA. Sure, the differences are a lot more profound here, but why shouldn't the same thing essentially happen here over time?

MT