I just got back from spending a week in Chengde (see pic below ), and it got me thinking about something I’ve heard quite a few language students ask: “If I study in places like Beijing,Chengdu or Beihai, will I pick up a local accent?”
I wanted to share my own experience and hear your thoughts too!
Chengde was super interesting. The immersion is real — you pretty much have to speak Chinese the whole time, which is amazing for learning. The accent there is definitely much closer to the Beijing one, which makes sense geographically. But as someone who’s been living in Taipei for a while, I definitely felt the difference! In Chengde the sounds felt harsher or more “standard,” depending on how you look at it
So that brings me back to the question — how much does the location really matter when you’re learning Mandarin? I know tons of people who’ve studied in places like Kunming, Guilin, or even Shenzhen and still speak super standard Mandarin. But then again, accents do sneak in.
What’s been your experience? Have you noticed a shift in your pronunciation based on where you studied?
I’ve been to Chengde twice and spent a total of about 3-4 weeks there. I found my Mandarin also improved significantly during that time.
I’ve only ever lived in the north of China so I don’t really have much feedback about picking up standard Mandarin in other regions.
I do very clearly remember my first trip to the south of China, in Guilin. The first taxi ride felt like I’d gone to another country, it was so overwhelmingly different.
In time you get used to it but there’s no doubt you should mentally be prepared for a challenge when you change regions!
Accents is an interesting topic. I noticed in most cities in China (even the relatively smaller ones), there are a lot of people who moved there for work. So even though they may have their own dialect back home, a lot of the Mandarin in populated areas becomes pretty standard anyway, as it’s just the easiest way to communicate with people. Plus standard mandarin is used in the schooling system around the country.
Also South China (including Beihai!) has quite a large population of Northern Chinese people who moved south for the warm weather, so pretty much everywhere you go in China, you’ll be exposed to plenty of standard Mandarin
Having lived in both Beijing and Taipei, and travelled between those places in the past year, here is my experience:
Beijing people: you have a Taipei accent
Taipei people: you have a Beijing accent
me having an identity crisis
I easily “take” the accent of people around me, which could be the result of years of repeating what I hear around me for practice.
One time a friend from the UK said I hang out with too much italians because when I speak English sometimes I have an Italian accent, so being influenced by your environment without realising is real!
A lot of native mandarin speakers say they speak standard mandarin and then you notice there are different variations of standard mandarin. Qingdao people speak standard mandarin to Beijing people. There is an accent difference.
To Chinese learners, it can be difficult to distinguish between the variations until becoming more experienced.
), and it got me thinking about something I’ve heard quite a few language students ask:
