Perceptions Of The Chinese About The North And South Accents

Name: Huang Xinyi Instructor: Chunsheng Yang Course: CHIN 3275 Date: 4/26/2018 Perceptions of the Chinese about Accents of the North and the South China China is one of the largest countries on the globe and there exist several dialects. Therefore, there is little surprise in the way people from different parts of China sound when communicating using Mandarin (Standard Chinese). There are major differences in accents between Mandarin spoken in North China (Shijiazhuang Mandarin) and that spoken in South China (Nanjing Mandarin). It is important to note that it is only when speaking Mandarin that these differences are seen. Whereas the Northerners speak in a high pitched tone, the Southerners are known to speak slowly in an audible manner. Therefore, it is normally difficult to understand the Northern dialect for a person hearing the language for the first time. Even though Northern Mandarin is closer to official pronunciation that is the standard, those from the South actively refuse to adopt it. They believe that the Southern accent is better and the one used by the Northerners is ugly. This is something that Northerners never agree with. It is a disagreement that has been fought and talked about on several platforms, including social media and international news agencies. And despite the extensive coverage the debate has received, there has never been a clear winner and there is little doubt that any winner will ever emerge from the debate. The linguistic variation between North and South china is an evidence of its diverse ethnic culture, history, and geography (Cao et. al. n.p). The choice to maintain one’s pronunciation can be attributed to regional rivalries in China that started way back. Most uprisings that were witnessed in China during the 1800s were deeply rooted in regional ties. The Chinese government has attempted to ensure that there is linguistic standardization in the country. The core language of Chinese people today is “Putonghua” which is based on the Northern dialect (Junying 3). But even this has not encouraged the Southerners from stopping using their own accent. Even though the government has been able to suppress several regional ideologies, nothing has been achieved to harmonize the dialect between the North and the South and there is little hope that the debate will be brought to rest any time soon. The belief that the northern dialect is better is something that has been going on for ages and yet there are some people that believe that it is the other way. Historically, Cantonese lost narrowly to Putonghua in the vote to decide which language should be the official language. Perhaps it is this perceived narrow loss that has made the Southerners bitter, making them feel that their dialect bears the same level of importance as the northern dialect. The situation would not have been different even if it had been Cantonese that was made the official language of the mainland China. The South normally has more varieties in languages. Anyone who has lived in the south, then comes to the North would find it hard to get used to the “rhotic” pronunciation (Gong et al. 224). In fact, most of the languages spoken in the South have little resemblance to Mandarin. The Southern language normally never tries to retroflex which is common in the Northern Mandarin. Softer constants such as “ch”, “zh”, “sh”, and “s” are normally commonly used in the language. In the Southern Mandarin pronunciation, “sh” normally sounds like “s” and they normally add long “a” at the end of certain syllables. Moreover, for the Southern Chinese, “ch” normally sounds like “c”. In certain circumstances, Nanjing Mandarin speakers struggle to distinguish between “ng” and “n” especially when they are used at the end of sentences. Most people from the South would tend to omit “g” in most words, whereas the Northerners would include it. How People Perceive Northern and Southern Chinese Dialects To determine how people perceived the languages, I conducted a small survey based on certain questions to help in understanding how people felt. 50% of the non-Chinese speaking people were not able to differentiate between the two speakers, to tell whether they were from the North or South. But I decided to go with the opinions with all of them because it was about what they chose of the languages and not if they could identify them. On average, 70% of the people that responded to the survey agreed that the Northern dialect was faster. 30% of them thought that it was faster in terms of variations in pitch, 80% of the respondents agreed that there were more variations in pitch in the Northern dialect. 20% of the respondents thought that the southern dialect had more variations. Several of the respondents thought that the Southern dialect was slower and therefore easier to understand. The Northern dialect was difficult for people to understand and was considered less sexy. As a result, the Southern dialect speakers looked more successful and sexy to most people. It is as if people treat success with speaking in a more audible manner. Many people thought that it would be easier to learn the Southern dialect compared to the Northern dialect. When I asked them which language they thought should be the official language of China, many respondents thought that the Southern dialect was better and ought to have been used as the official language. Interestingly, several of my friends, the young generation does not have an issue with learning either dialect, whereas the elderly people from Shijiazhuang especially the parents of my boyfriend have a negative attitude towards the Nanjing Mandarin, the younger generation especially my friends from Shijiazhuang are more than willing to accept Nanjing dialects because they believe it presents them with an opportunity to learn several dialects. This presents a promising future in harmonizing these dialects and reducing the ranges of controversies that have persisted over the years between the North and the South of China. There are parents from Nanjing that can speak the Shijiazhuang from a young age. Even people from various parts of China can ...