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These are among the common words that are different. I suspect the "correct" way to pronounce it in Singapore is like the PRC way, while the accent might be closer to Taiwan (aside from people from Fujian, of course). I am not so sure as I spoke only English with native Singaporeans.
week
CN: xing1qi1
TW: xing1qi2
Asia
CN: ya4zhou1
TW: ya3zhou1
garbage
CN: la1ji1
TW: le4se4
Ok.. We pronouce it the PRC way...
i guess the fact that Singapore goes by Simplified Chinese Characters rather than traditional tells a lot too
Yes. Singaporeans speak Mainland Mandarin more than Taiwan Mandarin. I cannot tell from the accent of a singapore where he comes from. But in case of Taiwan, it is so unique that you can notice once they open their mouths. But some young people are mimicing the Taiwan tone in the Mainland, which is funny.
Quote:
Originally Posted by singaporelady
Ok.. We pronouce it the PRC way...
i guess the fact that Singapore goes by Simplified Chinese Characters rather than traditional tells a lot too
Not sure how you would compare linguistic diversity. There are plenty of people who don't speak Hindi in India but China's made everybody speak Mandarin. I'm not sure how different the Dravidian (South Indian) languages are, but aren't most North Indian languages descended from Sanskrit? Which means that they're probably not much more different from each other than the Chinese languages or Romance languages. India's got many different writing systems whereas most languages in China, whether they're Chinese languages or minority languages like Tai, Mon-Khmer, and Austronesian, don't have official writing systems. Most non-Chinese languages in China are only spoken by small groups of people whereas Dravidian languages like Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam are spoken by millions of people.
I suppose this means India is more linguistically diverse.
China is rapidly losing its linguistic diversity. You don't hear Shanghainese kids speaking Shanghainese to each other any more.
It's sad, but it's the unfortunate reality that many people drag themselves into. I don't think changing government policy would help, it's more because it's the pursuit of greed at the expense of culture. Parents think some languages are 'useless' and other languages are 'useful'. So they are also equally to blame for this. In 2-3 generations it will become extinct because survival of the language doesn't just depend on older generations, but how young people acquire the language and have a strong command of it. Intermarriage with people from other parts of China is also hurting its chances. Even public announcements in Shanghainese are present just so older people can understand. It's sad when some people from Shanghai think I'm a 'foreigner' who can speak fluent, native-level Shanghainese better than their own children. Even though I have parents who were born and raised in Shanghai.
But anyway 'Shanghainese culture' isn't even distinct or unique, it's just westernized form of Jiangsu-Zhejiang melting pot culture. Very few people in Shanghai are descended from the original settlers of Shanghai back when it was a walled city. Their dialect of Wu, the Shanghainese of the 19th century/early 20th century, is also quite different than post-modern Shanghainese. It's more related to suburban Wu dialects of western Shanghai municipality and parts of neighboring Zhejiang and Jiangsu. Modern Shanghainese is basically Old Shanghainese that underwent influence from Ningbo dialect and some other nearby Wu dialects, some amount of Jianghuai Mandarin and Standard Mandarin.
Without even looking up the answer, you could guess India. The countries are now close to the same size, and China is much more economically developed. Plus I have seen those lists of the world's most spoken languages and Mandarin is always #1 followed by Spanish and English and Hindi. That tells you right there that India doesn't have a single language as widespread as Chinese Mandarin.
EDIT
I looked it up, and Hindi is the native language of only 41% of the country.
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