A few months before moving to Taiwan, Josh and I started attempting to learn Chinese via podcasts, apps, and online resources. And let me just say, I am SOO grateful for every little word and phrase we picked up before arriving!’
But it was frustrating at times trying to figure out which variances of the words we heard on those different programs, would be best for Taiwan. And after painstakingly repeating phrases over and over we arrived in Taiwan to discover that some of them were wrong or unnatural sounding here. So that was bit discouraging. If you find yourself in similar position (trying to learn a little Mandarin before arriving in Taiwan) here are a few notes from a couple beginner Chinese speakers to another!
- Chinese (as in I’m sorry, I don’t speak Chinese.): Here in Taiwan they use Zhōng wén NOT pǔ tōng huà or Hàn yǔ.
- The number 2: Thanks to Fiona’s Chinese Video lesson, we were aware that èr is pronounced more like the “ir” in “fir“ then like “ar” in “car”.
- Where: But somehow we missed that this “èr” sound comes up a lot in Northern Mainland China as an attachment to the end of words but not in Taiwan. The two big ones we immediately discovered were “where” and “a little”. “Where is __?” you might learn is zài nǎr but here in Taiwan it’s zài nǎ li.
- A little: So in Northern China the phrase is “yī diǎr” but here in Taiwan it is “yī diǎn” … So you if you want to say “I speak a little Chinese” you would say “Wǒ huì shuō yī diǎn Zhōng wén“
- Week. So, there’s more then one word for week. My favorite Chinese app (Mindsnacks Mandarin) taught me xīng qī. Which they do used here (yay!) Except my teachers kept correcting me on the tone, saying its xīng qí. My favorite Chinese-English dictionary (Mandarin spot) doesn’t even verify this as a legitimate variant for the word. But according to both of my Mandarin teachers this is in fact the correct way to pronounce it here. Although, you might want to just skip using xīng qí and use “lǐ bài” instead as it seems to be the more common word for week here. Plus its just fun to say shàng gè lǐ bài really fast!
And there you have it! This actually still happens to us here. Along with taking some private night, we also supplement our studies with podcasts, apps and other online resources. Which means there are still times when I go to class proud to use some vocabulary I’ve memorized only to discover it’s not the one used here in Taiwan. And of course that IS part of the process of learning and the reality of languages. No matter what this will happen to some degree. But if we can help you avoid a few of those moments, why not, right?! So we’ll continue to add to the list as we stumble across them (in fact we have! click here or on the picture below)
Of course the biggest language hurdle between Taiwan and China is in reading and writing. Taiwan uses traditional Chinese characters while switched to simplified characters in the mid-1990s. But that’s a whole another blog! Thankfully the variants in spoken Mandarin are much less exteme!
*We’d love to hear which words you’ve noticed are different in Taiwan then the words commonly taught to beginner Chinese students!