After being to China and Taiwan, I just wanted to elaborate how different both countries are. I will do some comparisons with their languages (dialects) as I know that most people cannot tell the difference between a Chinese and a Taiwanese person. You guys have no idea how many times I heard people say, "are you Chinese?" to someone and they would blur back "I am not Chinese I am Taiwanese"...or vice versa!
China uses Mandarin as their national language throughout their country. However, it is not the only dialect that they have! There are over 46 dialects of Chinese on the mainland and this obviously creates many situations where they don't even understand each other. This is the main reason why the communist government implemented Mandarin as their common language. This dialect is much simpler than it's old counter-part traditional Chinese. Even so, the many instances of confusion, misunderstanding, common verbal words are all messed up the more west you go in China. If we compare it to Taiwan, there are not many dialects. They do speak Mandarin but they use traditional characters in every day use. If you compare a traditional character with a simple one you can see the beauty of the traditional way of writing compared to the new. Well, they also Taiwanese, Hakka among other tribal dialects more from the northern part of Taiwan. The big difference in this case is that most Taiwanese understand each other in every way! Taiwanese and the other dialects have huge similarities that make it that much easier to understand. I studied Mandarin at my university and it is very hard to learn. However, I understood quite quickly that Mandarin is much simpler to learn in writing compared to the traditional way; unless you were born in Taiwan or the most southern parts of China.
How they speak to others is huge in my opinion. I can always clearly remember that Taiwanese or the people from there spoke very well and with clarity. I would always have a hard time understanding my Chinese teacher at school as his speech was too deep and used the throat much too often to express so many words. I should add that in China many of their words if you write in pinyin (common language) would end with "er". I cannot stress how annoying it was to hear it because it made it that much harder to understand the person. A friend of mine that was in my class was Taiwanese and when she spoke, it was crystal clear!
I'll try to write more but I am quite busy lately!
China uses Mandarin as their national language throughout their country. However, it is not the only dialect that they have! There are over 46 dialects of Chinese on the mainland and this obviously creates many situations where they don't even understand each other. This is the main reason why the communist government implemented Mandarin as their common language. This dialect is much simpler than it's old counter-part traditional Chinese. Even so, the many instances of confusion, misunderstanding, common verbal words are all messed up the more west you go in China. If we compare it to Taiwan, there are not many dialects. They do speak Mandarin but they use traditional characters in every day use. If you compare a traditional character with a simple one you can see the beauty of the traditional way of writing compared to the new. Well, they also Taiwanese, Hakka among other tribal dialects more from the northern part of Taiwan. The big difference in this case is that most Taiwanese understand each other in every way! Taiwanese and the other dialects have huge similarities that make it that much easier to understand. I studied Mandarin at my university and it is very hard to learn. However, I understood quite quickly that Mandarin is much simpler to learn in writing compared to the traditional way; unless you were born in Taiwan or the most southern parts of China.
How they speak to others is huge in my opinion. I can always clearly remember that Taiwanese or the people from there spoke very well and with clarity. I would always have a hard time understanding my Chinese teacher at school as his speech was too deep and used the throat much too often to express so many words. I should add that in China many of their words if you write in pinyin (common language) would end with "er". I cannot stress how annoying it was to hear it because it made it that much harder to understand the person. A friend of mine that was in my class was Taiwanese and when she spoke, it was crystal clear!
I'll try to write more but I am quite busy lately!
2 comments:
my ex-boyfriend's taiwanese and he really does stresses out that he's taiwanese and not chinese. I remember there were times when he talked to other chinese guys and will tell me afterwards that they did not understand each other.hehe
Thanks for the info about Chinese and Taiwanese! What you said in the first part of the post are really true.
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