In my latest episode of the I’m Learning Mandarin podcast, I speak in Chinese about three things you should know before you go to Taiwan to study Chinese. It’s based on my experiences of living and studying in Taiwan in 2023.
Going forward, my plan is to post weekly episodes of the podcast. I’ll continue doing guest interviews and discussions (in English) about learning Mandarin once a fortnight. Then, in between each interview, I’ll post shorter episodes in which I speak in Mandarin about a topic.
Hi Max. Taiwanese contains more contractions than mainland Chinese. Not just different contractions, more of them. Lots more.
Young people, especially, tend to run all the words in a sentence together to an exaggerated extent that even their older relatives can have trouble understanding. Half the syllables in a sentence are routinely swallowed in a slur of vowels.
This takes time to get used to.
But perhaps a bigger issue was Taiwanese people dealing with my mainland accent.
I remember when I first arrived in Taiwan I was talking to a Taiwanese woman about how I sometimes found it hard to communicate with shopkeepers. I wanted to explain that this was because they spoke so fast in an accent I wasn’t yet familiar with. But before I’d got to the “because…” part of the sentence: “I sometimes find it hard to communicate with shopkeepers because…” the woman blurted out “…they can’t understand you!”.
In general though, besides a few funny anecdotes, it wasn’t a major issue. Over time the initial issues became less frequent (though they never disappeared entirely) and communication usually wasn’t a problem.
Having lived and learned Mandarin in Beijing, I definitely found Taiwan Mandarin a bit strange at the beginning. In general I dont find it a problem though and it is not more difficult to understand that the Mandarin of someone from Shanghai - and much easier than someone from Guangzhou.
Just recently discovered some differences like that 和 is pronounced differently in Taiwan - that really blew me away.
Also that 奔驰 (Mercedes) has a different name in Taiwan I only found out via an LTL Instagram post. Never stop learning…
I’ve been publishing weekly podcasts. Including interviews as well as supporting other learners to produce podcasts entirely in Mandarin. You can check these out here: Podcast – I'm Learning Mandarin
Anyone interested in producing their own podcast episode in Mandarin can get in touch with me at [email protected] and I’ll support you through the production and recording process.
