Job Discussion Forums

[mineposa2]

Hi,

I'm coming to Taiwan in a few months to teach. I don't know any Chinese and would like to start in before I get there, but I'm having a hard time finding resources that teach the Taiwanese style. As I understand it, shorthand is used for writing on the mailand, but in Taiwan it's basically traditional (or not shorthand at any rate) and the accent is different. I suppose learning a mainland accent won't be too much trouble to adjust to, but I'd rather have the characters in Taiwanese since it's so complicated anyway.

Any suggestions for books I can buy or websites where I can get my *tongue* wet before I go?

thanks

[RoamingDave]

That's great you're making an effort to learn before you go!

You don't need to learn anything other than standard Mandarin. You can simply use the Pimsleur Mandarin series. Also, Chinesepod.com is pretty good and you can sign up for 7 free days. The mainland accent is slightly different but it's not a serious problem for a beginner.

Taiwanese, the dialect, is spoken by a lot of people in Taiwan but very very few foreigners. It would be a nice gesture, but very impracticle for you to learn Taiwanese. Many Taiwanese people in Taipei don't even speak it! The young people's Taiwanese is often very poor. I recommend highly, and almost ALL Taiwanese would agree, that you learn a good 200 hours of Mandarin first, then if you still want to, learn Taiwanese.

The characters are traditional yes. There are many resources on the internet to learn the characters. But there are no "Taiwanese characters". There are only traditional and simplified Chinese characters.

[dvasas]

http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewforum.php?f=40&sid=a5ba8630937a5a07df5d0a781f4937fe

You can go there for more info.

[wix]