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Q: Do the people in Taiwan speak Mandarin Chinese?
If you speak Mandarin Chinese, can you go to Taiwan and be mutually understood by them? I've heard many different things, and I'm really curious about what they speak there
In Taiwan they speak mostly Cantonese, as in HKG and nearby areas. But if you are fluent in Mandarin, you will be understood in Taiwan without much effort.
Mandarin Chinese, the official language, is taught in school and is therefore widely spoken. Taiwanese is widely spoken in the south and in the rural areas, and English is the language most commonly understood by foreigners. About 3 months study mandarin in Mandarin Garden, a professional mandarin training school. You will start from the elementary level after that you can communicate with local people freely
Taiwanese don't speaking Cantonese, they speak Taiwanese which is widely used in Fujian Province
HappyExPat:
You are totally correct, I was thinking Hakka and somehow wrote Cantonese instead. My apologies and thanks for the clarification.
The dialect spoken in Fujian and Taiwan is referred to as Hakka. They share a very similar origin.
And there is a Taiwanese language of and by itself spoken in the southern part of the island.
And then there is standard Chinese which really came to Taiwan only in the late 1940's.
Taiwanese and Hakka are actually on the verge of extinction on the island but
Taiwanese Mandarin has received and used many words from the local Taiwanese language.
Taiwanese Mandarin, even when spoke by the administrative elite, has a noticeable accent, meaning one can tell that it is not Beijing mandarin.
As for the written language, Hakka, Taiwanese and Mandarin all use the same script.
1) Mandarin is widely understood, and is the practically the only thing heard on Taiwanese television or radio. Like in the mainland, standard Mandarin pronounciation is modeled on the recordings made by Zhao Yuanren for the "Board of Standardizing the National Language's Pronounciation" during the time of Sun Yatsen. As such, a well-educated Taiwanese person's accent will be similar to a well-educated mainlander, i.e. Hebei-like but not quite man-on-the-streen Beijing. There are some relatively minor diffferences, especially in terms of political parlance. Also, some dialectual words will be calqued in more informal speaking. Although nothing to worry about.
2) Over two thirds of the population speaks a variant on the Min Nan dialect. As with many mainland dialects, it is fairly low-status and tends to be heard among close friends and family. There is, as with many parts of the mainland, a steady continuum of registers between formal Mandarin and the most "pure" (for lack of a better term) varieties of Min Nan. Minan was traditionally written in Roman characters, but it no longer serves as a written language; ie all writing is in the same Modern Standard Written Chinese used throughout the Chinese speaking world. As with Hongkongers, although to a far lesser extent, they will slip dialectual calques into their writing to be funny or cute.
3) Chinese aboriginals have a number of languages, distantly related to Tagalog, Indonesian, etc., most of which are on the verge of extinction. Today, you'll only really hear these on the central part of the island. When they are written (again, they are quite low-prestige), they will be written in the Roman alphabet.
4) A number of other Chinese dialects (Mandarin as a first language, Kejia, and Cantonese) are also represented on various parts of the island, owing to heavy migration during a certain period of history.
Yeah, agree with Mandarin Garden!
You could say Mandarin freely.
