Talk:Taiwanese Mandarin

message: I think this should be moved to Taiwanese Mandarin--Confuzion 08:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Move?

message: Defining language usage preferences between the PRC and Taiwan can be a messy art form.  The Google hits are meant to help answer the question: "How common is the term __ in the PRC vs. Taiwan?"  It is not a particularly sophisticated form of statistical analysis.  However, it is quick and easy, and it gets across the general idea.  I decided to put in the statistics because of an earlier dispute about the word for bicycle (腳踏車 jiǎotàchē vs. 自行車 zìxíngchē).  While zìxíngchē is used in both the PRC and Taiwan, jiǎotàchē is used less outside of Taiwan.  This is because jiǎotàchē originated from the Taiwanese word: kha-ta̍h-chhia.
A-cai 08:20, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google hits 

message: I decided to use POJ for all Taiwanese terms on the Taiwanese Mandarin page.  POJ seems to be the most popular way to represent Taiwanese (Min Nan) on the internet.  There is even a Taiwanese version of Wikipedia that is written in POJ.  Here is a conversion chart for those out there who may have learned another system.
A-cai 13:34, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  POJ 

message: If nobody objects, I have taken out the reference to "培根" (péigēn) vs. "煙肉" (yānròu).  A quick search on Google reveals that "培根" (péigēn) is actually used far more in the PRC than the term "煙肉" (yānròu).  Here are the results:
**培根 Google hits: .cn
**煙肉 Google hits: .cn
A-cai 03:10, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explanation for the removal of the reference to the term bacon 

message: In the chart of loan words from Taiwanese, why are characters "As seen in print" are different from corresponding "Taiwanese Han" (column 2)? Also, it may be appropriate to add a note that in some cases the Taiwanese Han characters are not standardized. Oniows 14:02, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reason why "in print" (1st column) characters are different from Taiwanese Han (2nd column) 

message: * the distinction between n and l is blurred
I removed the above line from the list of Taiwanese-influenced differences from Mandarin because it is innacurate or needs to be nuanced.  Taiwanese language does make a distinction between the two phonemes n and l.
Thus, if there is indeed a blurring between the two sounds in Taiwan (and I don't know if there is; no example of it was given), it cannot be attributed to the lack of a corresponding Taiwanese sound; it should be listed in another category (such as: "influence of Taiwanese cognates", "other influences", or "later phonological shifts", if it were the case).
By the way, it has been noted elsewhere that such blurring is occurring in Cantonese, especially among younger speakers. But that is a Cantonese phenomenon. --HYC 03:06, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In Mandarin dialects:
In some (especially southern) areas people do not distinguish between initial l- /l/ and n- /n/ sounds, and may merge them in some or all words, to either l- or n-. --Skyfiler 18:52, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blurring between ''n'' and ''l'' ? 

message: I have taken a closer look at the Taiwanese influenced section.  After reading the definitions for basilect and acrolect, I am not sure that this section accurately captures the situation in Taiwan.  Bear in mind that my comments are not from the point of view of an expert in linguistics.
# It seems to me that the part that talks about pronunciation differences between basilect and acrolect could better be described as the difference between a speaker of Standard Mandarin (which also de-emphasizes the retroflex "r" ending) and a native speaker of Min Nan who speaks Mandarin with a Min Nan accent.  I will use two of Taiwan's most well known politicians to illustrate my meaning.  Ma Ying-jeou is the current mayor of Taipei.  His family came to Taiwan after 1949, he is not a fluent Min Nan speaker.  Chen Shui-bian is the president of Taiwan.  His ancestors moved to Taiwan from Fujian Province several hundred years ago.  Chen is a native Min Nan speaker.  Obviously, both of these men give frequent speeches in Mandarin.  According to the description in the article, neither of the two should ever pronounce "fei" as "hui" in a formal speech.  This is always true for Mayor Ma, but not often true for President Chen.  The reason is not because President Chen  forgets that he should use the acrolectal form when giving a formal speech.  The man has a Min Nan accent!
# The issue of zh-z, sh-s etc. is not confined to Taiwanese Mandarin.  I would call this a feature of Mandarin as spoken in many parts of Southern China.  Again, Mayor Ma's parents are from Hunan, but he often says "zeli" rather than "zheli" (here 這裡), even in formal settings (same is true for Lien Chan).  On the other hand, I don't often hear him saying "suo" instead of "shuo" (speak 說).  Of course, this is my subjective opinion.  A speaker with a thick Beijing accent might mistake Mayor Ma's "sh" for an "s" for all I know.
*I am writing this on the discussion page because the section in question was clearly written by a linguistics major.  However, I do think my comments should be taken into consideration.  Perhaps some of my observations could be worked into the wording.
A-cai 14:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: on the same theme, this link brief comparison of the accents of Chen Shui-bian (Taiwanese peasant background), Soong Chu-yu (Hunan mainlander background), and Lien Chan (Taiwanese aristocrat background):  --Jiang 05:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Acrolectal Taiwanese Mandarin is more closer to Jiangnan/Shanghai accent of Mandarin, since most educators in Taiwan during the 1950's-1970's came from the Jiangnan region and passed on their Jiangzhe accent to Taiwanese. Even today, Wu Chinese is spoken by a small minority in Taiwan, but it's rapidly becoming extinct. Bloodmerchant (talk) 08:13, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: [[basilect]] vs. [[acrolect]]

message: Jiang, please explain what's wrong with my edits?--Bonafide.hustla 06:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explanation 

message: I was considering adding a section that deals with English proper nouns.  Common examples include:
Taiwan      	PRC         	English
雷根          	里根          	Reagan
布希          	布什          	(George W.) Bush
奧克拉荷馬州      	俄克拉何马州      	Oklahoma
I can't decide if it's overkill or worth the effort.  Opinions? -- A-cai (talk) 13:43, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps you could start a new article called something like List of proper names translated differently between Taiwanese Mandarin and Mainland Mandarin. That particular one could be too long, though, and I don't know if it's appropriate or not. The idea is nevertheless really good. 石川 (talk) 15:59, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I would take part in adding words to this list, if someone becomes interested again. Noteably: 巴拉克·奥巴马 Bālākè Àobāmǎ (mainland), in Taiwan the new US President's last name is written and pronounced as 歐巴馬 Ōubāmǎ. Even Chinese Wikipedia uses both, very confusing. Hopefully, with growing cross-straight ties there will be more communication and hopefully less such cases. --Anatoli (talk) 23:29, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Transcription of names are not loanwords. Having multiple transcriptions of a name is not something special. There are multiple ways to write "Mao Zedong" in English, too. --Voidvector (talk) 04:48, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  It is special enough for a small section or a paragraph describing possibilities of different modern standard transcriptions of the same name in mainland China and Taiwan. This feature also makes 2 versions of Mandarin a little different. For learners it may be of interest to know some major names of people, countries or cities. A comprehensive list is not worth the effort, of course. --Anatoli (talk) 12:34, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I would support a separate section noting such phenomenon, because names are generally not considered loanwords. Section can mention other aspects as well, such as movie titles (e.g. some are translated literally, some are given a whole new name). --Voidvector (talk) 22:10, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  loan words from English? 

message: I really think there ought to be more emphasis on the differences in pronunciation. It should contain not just differences of certain words, and differences where it is close to Min-nan accent, but more subtle and general ones. For instance, according to the Standard Mandarin article, there is this phoneme /ɤ/, but it is often realized as /ə/ from my experience.
Another striking difference is the final /ɤŋ/: when preceded by "b, p, m, f", it is almost never pronounced that way, but instead as /ɔŋ/ or /oŋ/. The same goes for /uɤŋ/ ([ʊŋ] with initials) being pronounced /uɔŋ/ or /uoŋ/ ([ɔŋ] or [oŋ] with initials).
Also, after certain vowels like /i/ or /ə/, /n/ and /ŋ/ are identical, both in realization and in perception. This is particularly evident in cases where people writing online often mistype 因該 when it should be 應該. Relatively fewer people even have trouble distinguishing betwenn /an/ and /ɑŋ/.
Of course, these are not linguistic observations, and I don't know if these phenomenons are really "differences", but in either case it would be worthwhile to include the information in either this article or Standard Mandarin.
石川 (talk) 15:48, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  More pronunciation differences 

message: oate/chubao/xue>xie
+lots ofrepititn i/art.--pl.note:i'vRSI>typin=v.v.hard4me!>contactme thruMSNpl.if unclear[sven70=alias (talk) 12:38, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  misin 

message: 公共汽車
I think in Taiwan this is a bus, and mainland this is a government official's vehicle. If anyone wants to confirm this and put it up? :)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.59.181.41 (talk) 02:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never heard anyone call a bus that before, ever. Only 公車.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.111.179.5 (talk) 05:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  same words different meaning 

message: Who wrote that "可愛" is from the Japanese "kawaii"? I was initially merely surprised, but then I notice that whoever added it hadn't filled in the column for the Mainland preferred usage, and also had given the pinyin as "ke4 ai" even though it's definitely "ke3 ai4". Course I've been out-of-country for many years now, and maybe all you Taiwanese younglings are pronouncing it that way these days -- if so, do tell. Otherwise, I suspect that this is not an accurate addition. If there is radio silence after a week, I will go ahead and delete it. --14 February 2011
:: The term "可愛" can be found in literature back in the Han dynasty. It is definitely not originated from Japanese. Cervantes80 (talk) 22:33, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "kawaii"/"可愛" 

message: I don't think that 落跑 is derived from Taiwanese. It would be like from other Chinese dialect. Especially 跑 is very rarely used in Taiwanese. On the Internet we can find many folk etymologies about Taiwanese terms. We should be careful about that.luuva  (talk) 18:34, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: 落跑

message: Taiwanese people pronounce /z/ for /ɻ/ ? Fête (talk) 16:05, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  /ɻ/ 

message: Taiwanese Mandarin is different than Guoyu.  Taiwanese Mandarin is inflected with Hokkien accents while Guoyu is neutral sounding.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.78.141 (talk) 14:56, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading Title 

message: "the syllable written as pinyin: eng before b, f, m, p and w is pronounced as [ʊŋ] in all tones."
You mean "after" not "before", don't you? --2.245.67.97 (talk) 16:43, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion 

message: Non-phonetic Chinese writing systems (e.g. traditional versus simplified) are independent of dialect. The fact that Taiwan uses traditional characters is independent of their speaking Taiwanese Mandarin--the former is a political choice while the latter is more an evolution of Standard Mandarin as was spoken in China's Republican era. In my opinion, the "Script" section in the differences section and any other references where the Taiwanese Mandarin and traditional characters appear to be related should be removed. Mingjai (talk) 21:29, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Script

message: I deleted the entries that said qi > ki and chi > tu. That's nonsense. Chi might become cu for a person with a really heavy accent, but never tu. Added a [citation needed] note on "ng before b, f, m, p and w is pronounced as [ʊŋ] in all tones", although the vowel isn't [ʊ], but closer to [o], even more open. Don't have any references for that one right now though. The overall lack of citations in this section is disturbing. Goderich (talk) 11:09, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Taiwanese-influenced pronunciation

message: As suggested by two of my friends as linguistics scholars and considering semantics difference in the pair, I think we should decide whether to change the name of the entry, content as well.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Asvaghosa (talk • contribs) 14:46, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Taiwan Mandarin against Taiwanese Mandarin

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: ,  was there any British spelling in this article before you made this change? Note that MOS:RETAIN says that "an article should not be edited... simply to switch from one variety of English to another." Phlar (talk) 20:39, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  British spelling? 

message: Standard Taiwanese Mandarin and Putonghua may be in parallel, but I wouldn't say Standard Taiwanese Mandarin is derived from or secondary to Putonghua! ha ha ha! I believe it is more likely that China has a standard form of Mandarin and Taiwan has a standard form of Mandarin which are pretty similar. That's all. No need to bring in an extra step there. No disrespect to anyone is intended, but this does need to be clarified. Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:11, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standard Taiwanese Mandarin 

message: would the word for college fit into this section? 
Guoyu usually use 大學 to refer to the step after secondary education
while Putonghua speakers use 本科 
(Guoyu speaker raised in the US) 2601:7C0:C500:8610:2C4D:B45F:3A7:9062 (talk) 18:13, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differing usage or preference - college 

message: I read:
: ōubāsāng, 'elderly woman', from  おばさん obasan
This cites a source that's unavailable to me. And unfortunately I don't know Chinese. But I wonder: is this right? Obasan means "aunt" (or a somehow aunt-like person), not "elderly woman"; the word for "grandmother" (or a somehow grandmother-like person) is おばあさん obāsan. -- Hoary (talk) 13:03, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello, ? -- Hoary (talk) 21:33, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi! I rechecked the source and this does appear to be correct. I don't know Japanese, though, so I searched around, and it looks like other sources similarly give おばさん as the etymology, not おばあさん, even though that does make more sense (e.g. this oped). "Auntie" is a frequently used, generic form of address in various Chinese languages for women older than you, which may be how it evolved to mean just "older woman" in general. Both Wiktionary entries give 歐巴桑 as a descendant, though, so something has gotten mixed up along the line. It's entirely possible the authors of these sources similarly mixed up the two words if they didn't know Japanese well. I'll try to look for an etymological dictionary source to see what's up. Thanks for pointing this out! WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs)  21:58, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Oba(a)san

message: The first paragraph of terms and definitions translates fāngyán (方言) as dialect. This is confusing especially when the opening sentence refers to Chinese as a group of languages. It then mentions that these languages are "extremely divergent" and mutually unintelligible. 
I suggest translating fāngyán as topolect or regionalect and avoiding the use of dialect to refer to the group of languages considered to be Chinese. This would ensure that there is then no ambiguity in distinguishing different dialects of Mandarin through the body of the article. Davidreid (talk) 02:06, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: (Disclaimer: I don't own this article despite having brought this to GA status last week. Others are always free to disagree.) I felt that given just how widespread the use of 方言 is in Chinese (including in some of the sources cited in this article), even if it may be inaccurate, it was worth mentioning. That's also why I follow that sentence with  before continuing to adopt that standard for the rest of the article. I just added a bit of text to that quote to try to further clarify (Western linguists tend to treat them as separate languages rather than dialects of the same language...) WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs)  22:14, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fangyan 

message: Pinging  — I believed I had revised the original wording to address your objection, which as I understand it is over the implication that Hakka and Hokkien are indigenous. , the previous wording, is accurate and avoids implying Hakka and Hokkien are indigenous. The original alteration that I reverted, made by , was related to the timing of Hakka and Hokkien immigration, which is a separate issue (and which I'm realizing I was mistaken in reverting, because my interpretation was based on a typo, my bad). Given that, I don't think it's particularly important to change at this point, though strictly speaking "Mandarin was not prevalently spoken" and "Mandarin is not indigenous" are two separate claims. I'd recommend it be reworded to .  WhinyTheYounger ※ Talk 19:00, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I endorse the new change of “Mandarin was not a prevalent spoken language” instead of previous wording by saying it’s not an indigenous language, which makes more sense than defining which is native. Of course Mandarin is not “indigenous”, neither is Hokkien and Hakka, but the previous phrase made the sentence sound like Mandarin is the only one not being“indigenous”. I realise you made a change in the ordering of the sentences, but which does not resolve the confusion and people may still be misunderstanding in the definition of “indigenous languages” over the context of the sentences. 
About the early immigrants in which time point to start, I think it should add more references to support the claims, either stating from 16th century or 17 century, should be given by the reliable sources. I would help to improve that by finding more supportive sources, otherwise I would prefer to omit the part about when the early Chinese settlers came, or just delete it from the article. LVTW2 (talk) 19:13, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead wording on indigeneity  

message: - 四条河原町 (talk) 20:59, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Reverted. You clearly have not read the article, which is not about republican era mainland China. —Kusma (talk) 21:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: If the article itself refers to Zhonghua Minguo Guoyu in the first paragraph and in the info box, it is only appropriate to account for the fact that it was used in MLC and how the dialect evolved there. You cannot just overlook the evolution of Guoyu there. 四条河原町 (talk) 21:40, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

text: Also stop making assumptions about whether one has read the article or not; the article is inadequate for failing to account for Guoyu's history in the mainland. 四条河原町 (talk) 21:41, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed the article is not about historical Guoyu on the mainland, but about modern Guoyu in Taiwan and things like how it is influenced by 台語 and Japanese. There are other things that are called "中華民國國語", but they are not covered by this article, so "Guoyu (Republic of China)" would be a misleading title. It could be a title for a separate article about Guoyu in republican-era mainland China. —Kusma (talk) 21:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the elaboration. 四条河原町 (talk) 17:19, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Renamed the article to reflect the fact that it was spoken in mainland China during the republican era