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anticks -

Hi im planning on visiting China to study for a little while and just check out some places in
general. The places that appeal to me most so far are; Harbin, Dalian, Qingdao, Kunming, Nanjing
and Beijing 2nd.

Im just wondering; which places have the most similar accent to Putonghua? Ive read that Harbin
and Dalian and basically anywhere north of Beijing (or there about) have Putonghua as a local
dialect? But ive also read that Kunming is also a good place to study even though they have their
own local dialect. Is it because Kunminghua is very similar to Putonghua? How about The Nanjing
and Qingdao local dialects? How do they compare?

The reason places like Shanghai put me off is that, as i understand, friends and families speak
Shanghainese to eachother.

I cant find much information and really looking to be set on the right path. As im seeing it now;
Beijing and North of Beijing have the easiest Mandarin to understand from a foreigner perspective?
Someone who has been learning Mandarin in another country might find these places the best to go
to improve their language skills?

Also for those who have travelled throughout China and speak Putonghua; What Cities have the most
similar local dialects to Putonghua? Are there any cities that you can goto that are not freezing
cold but where alot of (easy to understand) putonghua is spoken among friends/on the street etc?



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anonymoose -

I had the same queries as you before I decided where to spend my year in China as an English
teacher. In the end, I picked Dalian, partly from language considerations, but also because I had
heard from various sources that it is a pleasant city.

In hindsight, I don't think choice of location is as critical as you might expect. I guess it
partly depends on what you will be doing in China. As a teacher, most of the Chinese people I had
contact with were my colleagues and students. Being from relatively educated backgrounds, they
spoke more-or-less standard putonghua. As for people on the street, it really depended from person
to person. Basically, the more 土气, the harder they were to understand. This I expect is partly
as a result of local dialect, but chances are that any large city you go to, many of the people
you meet will be 外地人 anyway, and thus have a variety of different accents. Of course, if you
are going to study in a language school, and the general public will be the main focus of your
practise, location may be a more important factor.










Xiao Kui -

Kunming is a good place to study because it's beautiful, cheap, and is in a good location relative
to other travel destinations in SW China, but the dialect is not very similar to Putonghua. If you
have studied Mandarin a while you can understand quite a bit of Kunminghua but listening to it is
definitely not going to help your Mandarin. I lived in SW China for 5 years. I also stayed in
Harbin for 2 months and I'm certain that if I had spent these 5 years there instead of Kunming and
Chengdu my spoken Mandarin would be much better, just because I would be exposed more to it in
daily life. In the case of Chengdu the Sichuanhua they speak actually hurts your Mandarin because
some of the tones are switched around. I don't know abt the tones as much in Kunminghua but maybe
they are switched, too. From my experience of learning Spanish while living in Latin America I
know that this kind of daily exposure to a language really speeds up the learning process because
there aren't as many dialects in latin America, nor are there as many English speakers as in urban
China, so you are forced to learn the language and the daily exposure reinforces everything you
learn.

I don't even know if Harbin Chinese is "standard Mandarin", but it was a lot closer to what I was
learning in the textbooks than Kunminghua. I think there are several discussions on this topic
posted already and both Harbin and Dalian are big winners as far as dialect goes. I think there
may have been some posts abt Qingdao as well, so you might want to do a search on it in the forums.










Lu -



Quote:

Harbin, Dalian, Qingdao, Kunming, Nanjing and Beijing 2nd.

The Chinese spoken in Harbin, Dalian and Beijing is very close to putonghua.
In Nanjing people speak Nanjinghua, most notable difference from putonghua is that Nanjingnese
tend to switch the l and the n (laozi for naozi, li for ni, etc. Interesting, but not very good
for your Mandarin.)
People in Kunming speak Yunnanese. Having only spent one day in Kunming I can't say much about how
understandable that is to a speaker of Mandarin, I didn't understand it, but maybe if you stay a
bit longer you get used to it. It's a Mandarin dialect, so in theory it should be easier to get
used to than Shanghainese or Cantonese. Apart from the dialect I liked Kunming as a city.
Don't know much about Qingdao, all I heard of it is that Shandongnese is quite close to Mandarin,
except that the tones are different.



Quote:

Are there any cities that you can go to that are not freezing cold but where alot of (easy to
understand) putonghua is spoken among friends/on the street etc?

Shenzhen?










anticks -

Ill most likely be studying over there.

Lu: kunming and nanjing both sound good. So Nanjinghua would be easier to understand than
kunminghua for a beginner speak you think? Do you know what the cost of living/schooling etc is
like in Nanjing compared to Kunming?

anonymoose: Dalian seems to be fullfilling most of the requirements i am looking for. I do have
one quesiton though. Ive read at a few places that Dalian locals talk funny? Whats the deal behind
that? It doesnt sound too major but i am curious.

Shenzhen sounds good too and was on my list. It dropped a bit after i read about the crime level
and that there are better places to visit with regard to culture aswell.










anonymoose -

I'm not sure exactly what you're refering to about Dalian locals talking funny. I think that most
people when talking in informal situations will be using a sloppy colloquial style which,
regardless of the region of China, will be hard for a learner of Chinese to understand, initially
at least.

There were often times when I overheard conversations between natives and found it difficult to
even recognise any of the words, let alone follow the conversation. However, in nearly all
instances when I was speaking to a local, it was sufficiently clear and well-pronounced for me to
understand. I assume that was partly as a result of people making an extra effort to talk clearly
with a foreigner. Even so, I wouldn't say it was anything like what you'd hear on CCTV, but it was
certainly good enough to be of benefit to me as a learner of Chinese.

As for people in Nanjing speaking Nanjinghua, I think you need to be careful as to what is meant
by Nanjinghua. It is true that Nanjingers speaking putonghua do pronounce l as n. However, the
local dialect, what I'd refer to as Nanjinghua, is not mandarin, but a wu dialect similar to
Shanghaihua.










Lu -



Quote:

Lu: kunming and nanjing both sound good. So Nanjinghua would be easier to understand than
kunminghua for a beginner speak you think? Do you know what the cost of living/schooling etc is
like in Nanjing compared to Kunming?

Sorry, I have no idea about the cost of living. Both are cheaper than Beijing, but that's all I
can tell you.

As to Nanjing: The local dialect is hard to understand (as anonymoose says), and on top of that
you have the n/l thing when the locals do speak Mandarin. It'll be hard to avoid to pick that up
yourself, especially if your Chinese is not very good yet.










NYC -

As someone who studied in Nanjing, I can say some things about that city's "dialect". Nanjinghua
is so different from Putonghua, they might as well be separate languages, I couldn't understand
it. But it's not Wu, it's "Southern Mandarin". In any case, the locals you come into contact will
normally speak to you in PTH only, and depending on factors like age and education, with varying
degrees of accent (some had no accent that I could detect).

Still it's a good place to learn PTH, although if you want to learn standard pronunciation, you'll
have to careful not to pick up local (mis)pronunciations, like the typical z-,c-,s- for
zh-,ch-,sh-, n/l mixup, for example.

Plus, Nanjing is also a 5-hour train trip to Shanghai so you can take a weekend trip there if you
want. And the weather is pretty good except the summer when it gets very hot.










Crivens200 -

It doesn't really matter where you learn putonghua in China. It makes next to no difference if you
learn it in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai or Kunming.

Nobody learns chinese from street talk, it's a language that has to be studied and studied
properly. And if you are studying it you will be taught by a teacher who speaks putonghua. Getting
results learning chinese is something that is directly proportional to the amount of effort you
put in, not dependent on which city you live in.

Yeah, there might be different accents but anyone under 50 will speak pu tong hua.

The only people who don't speak pu tong hua would be uneducated old farmers which I presume that
most westerners in China would have no earthly reason to speak to.

For someone to say that they would have had better chinese if they had spent more time in City A
as opposed to City B is a pile of gash.

Anyone you need to speak to in China speaks putonghua and anyone who claims to have learnt their
chinese from some method other than studying it is a goddam dirty liar










Lu -

Crivens: I think you're overestimating people's putonghua. My current language partner, well under
fifty, well-educated and intelligent, is from Nanjing and switches his n and l all the time. Many
of my local friends in Taiwan (also under 50) have no retroflexes and tend to mix up -n and -ng.

Language is not only learned in the classroom, it's learned by speaking and listening it as much
as possible, preferably with native speakers. Sure you can learn Mandarin in Nanjing, Taibei (ok
actually you can learn fine Mandarin in Taibei) or even Hongkong, but you're likely to pick up an
accent from the people you're speaking with outside of the classroom, and if you don't speak to
people outside of the classroom, your Chinese won't get that good.












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