{"id":949,"date":"2010-05-25T03:37:56","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T03:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=949"},"modified":"2010-05-25T03:37:56","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T03:37:56","slug":"north-south-variations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/north-south-variations\/","title":{"rendered":"North-South Variations"},"content":{"rendered":"

After moving from Beijing to Shenzhen last year, I noticed numerous differences between the spoken Mandarin that I was accustomed to up north and the Mandarin spoken in this new city full of \u5916\u5730\u4eba<\/strong> (wai4di4ren2 – out-of-towners) from all over China.\u00a0 As Shenzhen is located in Guangdong province and next to Hong Kong and Macau, the lingua franca of the Pearl River Delta (Cantonese) has influenced the Mandarin spoken locally in several ways, see below for some examples:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Placement of \u5148 <\/strong>(xian1 – first)
\nIn standard Mandarin, you’d likely encounter a phrase like \u6211\u4eec\u5148\u5403\u996d<\/strong> (wo3men2 xian1 chi1fan4 – let’s eat first [lit. we first eat food].\u00a0 However, \u5148<\/strong> moves in Cantonese-influenced Mandarin such that the sentence becomes \u6211\u4eec\u5403\u996d\u5148<\/strong> [lit. we eat food first].\u00a0 This is actually more natural for native English speakers (“Let’s eat first.”)<\/p>\n

There are lexical differences as well that you may encounter.\u00a0 In the south, people are more likely to say \u585e\u8f66<\/strong> (sai1che1 – traffic jam [lit. stuck car]) in reference to a traffic jam.\u00a0 The first time I heard this I heard wrong and thought people were saying \u8d5b\u8f66<\/strong> (sai4che1 – car-racing) which , but I later realized this was an alternative to the saying of \u5835\u8f66<\/strong> (du3che1 – traffic jam.<\/p>\n

Another lexical difference is that in the north a man being accosted by a street vendor is likely to hear something like \u5e05\u54e5<\/strong> (shuai4ge1 – handsome man) whereas down south you’ll hear \u9753\u4ed4<\/strong> (liang4zai3 – good-looking guy).\u00a0 The alternative to \u7f8e\u5973<\/strong> (mei2(3)nv3 – pretty woman) is \u9753\u5973<\/strong> (liang4nv3- pretty woman).<\/p>\n

At a restaurant up north, you’d likely call over the waiter to order your meal by saying \u70b9\u83dc<\/strong> (dian3cai4 – order food), while down south people would say \u4e0b\u5355<\/strong> (xia4dan1 – placing an order).\u00a0 This likely comes from the Cantonese phrasing of \u843d\u5355<\/strong> (luo4dan1 – placing an order, notice that \u843d<\/strong> may be substituted for \u4e0b<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

This post is focused on Mandarin spoken in Guangdong province, but there are differences in speech all over the country not limited to dialects.\u00a0 Readers, leave some of your own examples in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After moving from Beijing to Shenzhen last year, I noticed numerous differences between the spoken Mandarin that I was accustomed to up north and the Mandarin spoken in this new city full of \u5916\u5730\u4eba (wai4di4ren2 – out-of-towners) from all over China.\u00a0 As Shenzhen is located in Guangdong province and next to Hong Kong and Macau…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,1,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","category-uncategorized","category-vocabulary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":956,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions\/956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}