Regional Accents and Pronounciation

Something quick I wanted to discuss today -- regional accents. It's something I find really, really interesting. Throughout my first year at college, I've had a lot of people jokingly point out the way I speak. A small one would be the pronunciation of Hawai'i. Many mainlanders (contiguous US) would usually pronounce it as HAH-WHY-EE, but the way we pronounce it is HUH-VUH-EE (the Hawaiian language has no "w" sound), or more commonly, HUH-WUH-EE. The 'okina (a.k.a. single quotation mark) between the two i's dictates the additional ee sound, so it's not just HUH-WHY (like a lot of non-locals believe it to be). My friends, suitemates, and just about everyone I met would always question me about this and say that everyone they have met from Hawai'i pronounces it this way as well. They find it fascinating for some reason lol, and would ALWAYS mimick my pronunciation by over-exaggerating the WUH-EE part -- of course, it's all in good fun. Everyone in Hawai'i already knows that the way the rest of the world pronounces "Hawaii" is different from the way we pronounce it. I've actually had to say "huh-why-ee" on several occasions though, because the other person didn't know what I was talking about when I said I am from "huh-wuh-ee". 

The differentiating moment came not from the way I pronounce "Hawaii," however, but from the way I pronounce "room". Room is such a trivial word, but according to a lot of college friends, my pronunciation of the word is very strange. I mean, to me, it sounds very normal. Room -- how can you determine my accent just from that one word? Apparently a lot. Friends from Norcal, Mississippi, Chicago, etc. have made fun of me for it (jokingly, no harm done), saying that I elongate the vowels, so it sounds like rooooooooom (yeah, not helpful sorry). I can't even describe it because I can't differentiate it from the way they say it. It sounds alike to me! My first instinct was that it is just the quirky way I pronounce things, but then a fellow friend from Hawaii attending a different college on the mainland (we refer to the rest of the US as the mainland) also mentioned the same thing. Her tweet: something along the lines of "I'm not pronouncing room incorrectly, maybe you are!" So it wasn't just me, especially since I hadn't mentioned this little quirk to her. It was just pure coincidence that both of us were dealing with the same type of "dilemma" at the exact same time, haha. I found it funny, but it also reinforced the distinctions between the way Hawaii people talk and the way the rest of the US talks. I mean, you don't ever really think of this -- when you live in one place for such a long time, your accent and pronunciation seems normal. Am I right? You believe the way you speak is the same as everyone else's. (Btw, people from the Minnesota and Chicago really do pronounce "bag" as baeeeeeeg, hehe).

This is the same for Putonghua, or Mandarin. Because China is huge, there's going to obviously be variations between the way people speak (and I'm not talking about dialects -- such as Cantonese, Shanghainese, or Putonghua/Mandarin). Within the Mandarin dialect alone, there are many, many different regional accents. The biggest difference is between the Northern and Southern accents. In Beijing, many people tend to add the "er" sound at the end of various words (e.g. 一点儿 yidianr); however, in Shanghai and many southern cities, people do not use the "er" sound at all (e.g. 一点点 yidiandian -- you repeat the word twice instead of adding the "r" sound). When I first learned Chinese, I used the "er" sound immensely. I liked the way it sounded, haha. But since I'm in Shanghai for the summer, I've had to correct myself and say “一点点” instead of "一点儿“ ...or the other person will correct it for me if I don't catch myself fast enough. 

The reason I am writing this blog is because as I was eating lunch with my co-workers today, one of them asked me if my Chinese teacher (told them I studied it in high school) was Taiwanese. Interesting. I've had four Chinese teachers -- the first two were from Taiwan, the third one was from Shanghai, and the last one was from Beijing. I've spent the majority of my Chinese studies with the first two from Taiwan. My co-worker was able to pick-up on this and point out my accent. But wait, since when did I have an actual Chinese accent? I've always thought my Chinese sounded very American (whatever that means), but my co-worker told me that I sound like I'm from Taiwan or Hong Kong when I speak. I still can't exactly figure out how she came to that conclusion, but one main factor might have been the way I pronounce "但是" (danshi). Whenever I pronounce this word in a sentence, I accidentally drop the "h" sound and say dan-si instead. I read this up online and apparently it's very common for Taiwanese people to do this when pronouncing sh, ch, or zh sounds. But other than that, I can't put my finger on anything else...however, that's also because my ear is not trained enough to pick out the different regional variations.

If anyone can explain to me the variation between the Taiwanese vs. Mainland Chinese accent, I'd love to hear them! I'm interested in knowing :) 

Thanks guys,

Christine