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Standard Mandarin (Mainland vs. Taiwan)
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Jive Turkey –
Quote:
Originally Posted by BeijingSlacker
I dont know linguistics nearly as much as you fellas.
Yes, you’ve made that quite clear in your post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BeijingSlacker
But to me, its counterintuitive that Beijingers, whose accent the Mandarin language is based on,
do not speak Mandarin as standard as folks in Taiwan
There’s nothing counterintuitive about understanding what Shibo77 and I have written. Only basic
reading skills are necessary to understand that what we are talking about and what you’re talking
about are two entirely different things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by I
These non-dialect influenced differences between Taiwan and Mainland Guoyu can be traced back to
the Republican era.
In no dictionary, whether from the ROC or PRC, is the Taiwanese pronunciation of “shi” considered
“biaozhun.” What we are talking about, and which you seem so intent on ignoring just so you can
have your typical Beijinger rant about how “non-standard” other people’s Putonghua is, is that
many of the differences in tones and some vowel and consonant sounds found between Taiwanese Guoyu
and Mainland Putonghua have absolutely nothing to do with dialect or people not following
established standards of pronunciation. Nobody has said that your grandfather or other older
Beijingers should pronounce “shi” as “si” or “xie” as “say.” It seems that you didn’t read in any
detail before going off on your prejudiced rant. Read again. Then go back and listen to your
grandfather speak. I’d be willing to bet that he says some words with the same tones as Taiwanese
people do. I know a few teachers here in HK who left Beijing duirng the cultural revolution. I’ve
heard all of them say at least a few words in tones that are standard in ROC dictionaries. These
are people who grew up in Beijing and have graduate degrees from Beida. They would laugh in your
face if you told them that their pronunciation is wrong.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BeijingSlacker
with the most obvious difference being he does not sound girlish to me in the way most Taiwanese
men do.(no offense)
Oh yes, I’m sure that your bigoted statement was intended to cause no offense at all. Do you think
that the Beijing dialect is considered easy on the ears in Taiwan or southern China?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BeijingSlacker
do not speak Mandarin as standard as folks in Taiwan where people came from all over the place in
China with their own dialects, many of which are not even understandable to mandarin speakers nor
to each other, and where many people still speak Mandarin as their second language.
Oh, me too. I just can’t stand all those filthy, uneducated people who speak those dirty dialects.
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39degN –
Quote:
The prevalent pronunciations in the Mainland are basically what Taiwanese loathe at, because it is
the language of the peasant farmers. Like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the rest of the founders of
the People’s Republic. In this way, the pronunciation of the masses, though poor, prevailed. As it
is with politics, it is reflected in dictionaries.
you are kidding.
no one among mao zedong, zhou enlai and rest of the founders of PRC has been able to speak
STANDARD MANDARIN in their whole life. BTW, Kuomintang leaders either. as eveyone knows, they
speak mandarin with serious accents.
BeijingSlacker –
Jive Turkey wrote:
Quote:
The prevalent pronunciations in the Mainland are basically what Taiwanese loathe at, because it is
the language of the peasant farmers. Like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the rest of the founders of
the People’s Republic. In this way, the pronunciation of the masses, though poor, prevailed. As it
is with politics, it is reflected in dictionaries.
Jive, may I ask you a question? Do you ever listened to any Beijing standard mandarin at all? or
do you have any ideas how Mao Zedong and any of those old polical leaders speak? That statement of
yours makes me feel that all your thoughts on Beijing Mandarin is purely built on imagination.
I am positive that anyone who has studied Chinese for more than one month would be able to tell
the difference between Beijing standard Mandarin and Mao’s thick accent since it is as big as the
difference between Queen’s English and some Indian village folk’s accent. Being a native
Beijinger, I,myself, sometimes have to use the context to guess what Mao was saying.
I am really curious how you can make all these highly assertive conclusions about differences
between Mandarin accents when you dont even know what you are talking about.
Do you mind sharing with us your language background? I can’t help being curious.
Jive Turkey –
Quote:
Originally Posted by BeijingSlacker
Jive Turkey wrote:
Quote:
The prevalent pronunciations in the Mainland are basically what Taiwanese loathe at, because it is
the language of the peasant farmers. Like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the rest of the founders of
the People’s Republic. In this way, the pronunciation of the masses, though poor, prevailed. As it
is with politics, it is reflected in dictionaries.
What are you talking about? Can you read? I didn’t write this passage that you are attributing to
me. This was written by Shibo77.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 39degN
Quote:
The prevalent pronunciations in the Mainland are basically what Taiwanese loathe at, because it is
the language of the peasant farmers. Like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the rest of the founders of
the People’s Republic. In this way, the pronunciation of the masses, though poor, prevailed. As it
is with politics, it is reflected in dictionaries.
you are kidding.
no one among mao zedong, zhou enlai and rest of the founders of PRC has been able to speak
STANDARD MANDARIN in their whole life. BTW, Kuomintang leaders either. as eveyone knows, they
speak mandarin with serious accents.
Shibo77 didn’t say that the Mandarin of Mao or Zhou was “standard” Putonghua. He said it was
PREVALENT. If you can’t tell the difference between these two words, then no amount of explaining
will help you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BeijingSlacker
I am really curious how you can make all these highly assertive conclusions about differences
between Mandarin accents when you dont even know what you are talking about.
WTF? Have you bothered to read anything I’ve written above? Do you even understand what
differences I’m talking about? If you want assertive conclusions, compare any dicitonary printed
in the PRC during the 1950s to ROC dictionaries printed any time from the 1920s until now. Then
listen to any older, educated Beijinger speak. Listen for how they pronounce words like
企业，时期，古迹，拥有，危险，寂寞 or 轻微. You are likely to hear them
pronounce these words and 60 to 70 other words according to the same pronunciation standards found
in ROC dictionaries. This is as common as nails. You could walk into any linguistics department in
Beijing and ask them if anyone has researched this “phenomenon.” They will laugh and probably tell
you that dozens of graduate theses have been written on this topic and that it is old news. The
older folks in such departments will probably even pronounce the above words in the orginal
standard way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BeijingSlacker
Do you ever listened to any Beijing standard mandarin at all?
What are you talking about? Do you mean to ask if I have ever listened to the Beijing dialect of
Putonghua? Yes, I’ve heard plenty of it. Or do you mean to ask whether I’ve heard standard
Putonghua, or “standard Mandarin” as you call it? Putonghua and the Beijing dialect are not the
same. Putonghua/Guoyu are more or less based on the Beijing dialect, but they are clearly not the
same. If you can’t hear the differences, then compare the differences between CCTV news broadcasts
with what is commonly heard on Beijing streets.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BeijingSlacker
Do you mind sharing with us your language background?
I don’t see how that is relevant to this discussion. Both Shibo77 and I have made strong, evidence
based arguments. Are asking about language background and saying that we don’t know what we’re
talking about the only responses you have?
39degN –
Jive Turkey wrote:
Quote:
Shibo77 didn’t say that the Mandarin of Mao or Zhou was “standard” Putonghua. He said it was
PREVALENT. If you can’t tell the difference between these two words, then no amount of explaining
will help you.
shibo77 wrote
Quote:
The prevalent pronunciations in the Mainland are basically what Taiwanese loathe at, because it is
the language of the peasant farmers. Like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the rest of the founders of
the People’s Republic. In this way, the pronunciation of the masses, though poor, prevailed. As it
is with politics, it is reflected in dictionaries.
if you cant even understand (the 言外之意 of )those simple words, even God couldnt help you.
roddy –
Quote:
I am from Beijing, so whatever I say, it could be biased toward Beijing standard.
I know lots of people from Beijing who aren’t biased towards any ‘Beijing standard’ – are there
any other reasons you might be biased?
Quote:
How did these differences arise? Was there perhaps a difference between Beijing standards and
Nanjing standards?
Now there’s an interesting question . . .
Roddy
shibo77 –
shibo77 wrote
Quote:
The prevalent pronunciations in the Mainland are basically what Taiwanese loathe at, because it is
the language of the peasant farmers. Like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the rest of the founders of
the People’s Republic. In this way, the pronunciation of the masses, though poor, prevailed. As it
is with politics, it is reflected in dictionaries.
Yes, I edited this out, sorry!
I was saying that Taiwan dictionaries are more close to the beginnings of 白话运动 than a
mainland 新华字典 from 1971. However the masses pronounce words, that’s their problem.
Depending on your enviornment, your friends’, teachers’, and relatives’ pronunciations. Whether to
abide by the pronunciations of a dictionary or not. I believe most people, at least in Taiwan does
not read from a dictionary and start to abide the pronunciations as canonical and abide by them in
daily speech.
Standard is an abstract idea. It is forced upon, fixed. Beijing, Taipei, Wuhan… which is the
standard? None. Only that the standard is fixed by the respective governments on the two sides of
the Strait. Then comes a People’s Republic Standard based upon the Beijing Mandarin dialect, with
the authorities in Beijing printing out Xinhua dictionaries. Another standard in Taipei, by the
authorities of the de facto government there, printing out whatever standard dictionaries they
have. Based upon the standard Mandarin spoken around 1949 and with other influences in Taiwan
after 1949, including influences from Min. I don’t try to hide meanings in my words, especially
with a foreign language. Whatever misunderstanding, it would be from my bad English skills.
I don’t think it has much to do with Nanjing. The ROC Nationalist government changed capitals
because the Japanese kept occupying them. Nanjing was just a temporary capital, as with Chongqing,
and Taipei was supposed to be just another temporary capital as well. I don’t think the
pronunciation could have shifted in such a short time from Beijing (then Peiping) to Nanking.
-Shibo
xin_ke_le –
you guys sure get worked up over such a frivolous topic. OOhhh Taiwan doesnt speak standard cause
we prounounce sh/ch/zh as s/c/z. WHO cares??? Chinese languages have little standard at all to
compare to.. There are so many variations and fang yan influences that to call one a standard for
the rest would be stupid.
And then some try to make it a political argument? Yes our government is the one that is in charge
of the language we learn, but also know that for many Chinese, the ‘standard’ is not always the
first language.
And to say us Taiwanese guys tlak like girls is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard someone
say. Sorry we aren’t choppy and harsh sounding like Beijing people.
Altair –
Thanks everyone for the responses.
Quote:
These non-dialect influenced differences between Taiwan and Mainland Guoyu can be traced back to
the Republican era. Taiwan still follows the standards set about 70 years ago. If you talk to
older, educated Beijingers and others from the northeast, you will probably notice that their
tones more closely follow what is considered standard in Taiwan.
Quote:
The Turkey is right. Mainland dictionaries collect the changes and lists all of the different
pronunciations, while Taiwan dictionaries are more formal and standard. If you want proper
pronunciation from the beginnings of 白话运动Baihua Yundong “the Movement towards a Vernacular
Standard” in China started early last century, then learn from a Taiwan dictionary.
This makes a lot of sense. One of my favorite dictionaries is Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and
Dictionary by Rick Harbaugh. This dictionary adheres to a Taiwan Mandarin standard, but shows in
the head entries where there is a divergence between Mainland and Taiwanese standards.
Occasionally it also shows non-standard variants. One drawback of the dictionary is that it does
not show these alternatives within entries or compounds. Many times I have been surprised by
certain tones and have assumed my memory was faulty, only to realize later that it was a case of
variant tones.
When I first became aware of the divergence, I thought it was due to some regional influence from
Taiwan, but then I learned a tiny bit of Cantonese and was surprised that many of the variant
Taiwan tones matched up better to the Cantonese ones (e.g., 期 qi2 and keih4) than the Beijing
ones. This seemed to imply that these Taiwanese tones reflected Tang Dynasty tones better. They
explanation above seems to account very well for this phenomenon.
Quote:
Like skylee said,
儘 (尽 in simplified chinese) (jin3) – (1) to the greatest extent (2) as much as possible (3)
always
盡 (尽 in simplified chinese) (jin4) – (1) exhaust, finish, use up (2) everything, all, complete
This explanation sounds great , but for a poor non-native speaker like me, it does not seem to
match up; for instance, why does 尽底下 (“the very bottom”) use jin4? This seems to reflect the
first definition better than the second, does it not?
As I read all the explanations and consider some of the compounds in my dictionaries, I wonder if
the distinction has to do with using 尽 as an adverb (jin3) and using 尽 as a verb (jin4). One
dictionary gives both pronunciation for 尽量, but one distinguishes 尽量 (jin4 liang4) as
meaning: “to the best of one’s ability” or “as far as possible” and 尽量 (jin3 liang4) as
meaning: “drink/eat to the full.” Of course, Chinese verbs are often used as coverbs and thus have
adverb-like properties. This might, however, explain why one can say jin3 liang4 (尽量), but
only jin4 li4 (尽力).
As for 场, I think I gave poor examples and confused the issue. My question is not about tone
sandhi, but rather about variant tones.
I have a book, whose English title is Chinese-English Dictionary of Polyphonic Characters. The
Chinese title is 多音多义字汉英字典. This book lists 场 in both the second and third
tones. Third-tone compounds include: 操场, 场合, and 磁场. Second-tone phrases/compounds
include: 赶场 (go to the fair) and 打谷场 (“a threshing ground”). These distinctions seem
fairly clear, although a little surprising.
In addition to these, my book distinguishes between two different uses of 场 as a measure word.
Examples of the third-tone measure word are: 第三场 (“Scene 3″) and 两场 球赛. An example
of the second-tone measure word is: 一场大雨 (“a downpour”).
I was very surprised see these distinctions, because I did not recall running across them before.
My question is whether this information accurately reflects current usage?
shibo77 –
儘 (尽 in simplified chinese) (jin3) – (1) to the greatest extent (2) as much as possible (3)
always
盡 (尽 in simplified chinese) (jin4) – (1) exhaust, finish, use up (2) everything, all, complete
尽底下 is listed as ” jin3 di3 xia4″, matches to skylee’s>>
儘 (尽 in simplified chinese) (jin3) – (1) to the greatest extent
so in traditional characters: 儘底下
儘底下jin3 di3 xia4 changes into 儘底下jin2 di3 xia4
————————————————————————————–
Not sure about adverb-verb distinction….Both can mean a range of things, adverb, adjective,
verb, noun.
Flipped…
尽量jin3 liang4 meaning to the best of one’s ability (not necessarily full).
尽量jin4 liang4 adverb meaning do something (eat, drink..) to the full.
Of course, using traditional Chinese characters would save you the headache…
儘量jin3 liang4
盡量jin4 liang4
These pronunciations will probably merge into one in a few decades in the mainland.
————————————————————————————
Sorry about the 场 explanation… as you can see, I like to overkill….
Right,
场chang2, a level open ground or yard; measure word, a period of, a spell of. (场院yard,
一场大雨aperiod of downpour)
场chang3, a big square where people gather; occasion, situation; scene, measure word, a scene;
measure word, used to count recreational sports activities. (广场square,第一场”scene
one”,两场球赛two matches of a certain ballgame, probably asoccer)
I’m not sure why this distinction exists, the traditional character is the same for both
pronunciations.
————————————————————————————
Just an addition, I did not say Taiwan pronunciations are “the correct standard”. Most Taiwanese
have very different pronunciations from their dictionary. I said Taiwan dictionaries are more
close to the old Baihua standard, which is pretty new, 1920′s… At most, it will probably go back
to Qing dynasty pronunciations… Taiwan dictionaries doesn’t bother to include much of what is
actually pronounced in Taiwan. I don’t think Taiwanese lexicographers are very proud of the
average Taiwanese’s Mandarin abilities…
While in China, the mainstream character dictionary would be Xinhua Character Dictionary, and it
is dynamic… one can see the changes in pronunciation from its 1925 edition to 1971 edition to
2003 edition. It brings in what is actually pronounced in the mainland. Of course, there is always
the more canonical 辞海CiHai, both very standard on both sides of the strait. It is like
comparing Oxford to Webster New World….
-Shibo
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