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How different are the spoken and written languages? If I learn Mandarin and try to communicate with the Taiwanese, will I experience any difficulties?
The verbal spoken language is fine; there is really very little difference, other than accent.
The real problem would be the written language or the written script.
There are 2 different Chinese writing systems:Simplified and Traditional
The Simplified system was created by China's government in the early 1950s and heavily promoted; basically, it is a simplified version of Chinese language, and heavily promoted throughout the nation at all educational levels and the only allowed version for all printed materials (novels, books, magazines, journals and newspapers). The main idea was to increase literacy and national unity. Despite stereotypes of Chinese dedication to education, the reality is that before the simplified version came along, the vast majority of China's population were illiterate. this system has also been adopted by Singapore's education system.
The traditional script is basically what it means; you may be interested to note that it has remained static and unchanging since 5th century AD. It is in use in Taiwan and Hong Kong. It is far more difficult to learn
It depends on if you're talking about the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan or "Taiwanese" which is very different. Most Taiwanese people speak Mandarin (a majority also speaks "Taiwanese"), though, so you would have no problem communicating with them.
Languages spoken in Taiwan: Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka.
Hokkien is commonly called Taiwanese here, it has some Japanese influence which Hokkien spoken in China doesn't have(still mutually intelligible, though). The majority of the population more or less speaks it.
Hakka is spoken by some Taiwanese, which I don't understand a word.
The announcements on metros or trains contain all three of them, and English, of course.(I think we definitely should add Japanese announcement as Japanese are the largest tourist source market here other than the Chinese.)
Chinese and Taiwanese Mandarin are about as different as British and American English, other than some different terms, different slangs, and the accents, they're basically the same.
The scripts are quite different, though, as Tigerbalm said, they use simplified Chinese and we use traditional Chinese. Taiwanese are usually fine with reading simplified script though, I mean, it's called "simplified" for a reason, lol. And most Chinese have no problem reading traditional script either, as far as I know.
Last edited by Greysholic; 01-04-2015 at 01:49 AM..
Agree with Greysholic. You can learn either mainland Mandarin or Taiwanese Mandarin, and will be able to communicate with both sides.
However, actors and broadcasters in mainland China are required to pass a pronunciation test, so they must be able to pronounce all the standardized sounds. The positive side is they speak very clearly that way, but the negative side is they may sound too artificial. Most (over 90%) mainland Chinese do not speak very "standard" Mandarin though.
Both mainland and Taiwan has Chinese dialects too, but foreigners probably don't need to learn them.
All educated Chinese in mainland can read traditional characters too. So that's not really a problem.
If the educated knows traditional characters, then why learn the simplified version?
I've never discussed this with the Chinese whom I personally know but I guess it's because they're still quite similar.
Btw there are a lot of frequently used characters which were already simple enough so they didn't need to be simplified.
The older generation would probably know but the younger generation that has been purely bought up on simplified script would probably understand anyway from 65% to 70% of it.
1 Many are still the same (60-70%).
2 For Those that are not the same, most are very similar.
3 Traditional characters are still seen in mainland China.
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