Mandarin Chinese in drama

qetadg Author

Nov 14, 2013 08:10 pm

Hello, I know that Korean is spoken in Korean Drama and Japanese in Japanese drama. As it is, I want to learn Mandarin Chinese. Now, the problem is that Cantonese Chinese does also exist. From what country should I watch drama in order to hear Mandarin Chinese? Thank you in advance

CherryBunny VIP

Nov 14, 2013 08:15 pm

China and Taiwan. They only speak Cantonese in Hong Kong dramas.

qetadg Author

Nov 14, 2013 08:17 pm

Is that so? Thank you for replying.

meighy

Nov 14, 2013 08:48 pm

The cool thing is, they're pretty distinguishable, so you'll know if you accidentally chose something in Cantonese.

ShiningSuede

Nov 14, 2013 09:32 pm

qetadg wrote: Now, the problem is that Cantonese Chinese does also exist. From what country should I watch drama in order to hear Mandarin Chinese? Thank you in advance

o.O and many other dialects.

But seriously now. You can also watch films. Hong Kong ones too cause most of them (if not all) have dual audio (if you download from torrents DVD rips). You can also add Chinese subtitles if you started to be familiar with ideograms. Subs are used mostly for Chinese viewers who are not familiar with Mandarin nor Cantonese.

qetadg Author

Nov 14, 2013 09:42 pm

I just checked out what would be good to start with, so I ended with Autumn´s Concertto. Any there any other good dramas where they speak Mandarin? Can I really assume that every Taiwan and Chinese drama is in Mandarin? Also, does Mandarin and Cantonese really differ that much? What I know is that Mandarin has change in pitch, when in Cantonese the pitch does not matter.

CherryBunny VIP

Nov 14, 2013 09:49 pm

You can tell the difference just by the different sounds in speech. Mandarin is the official spoken language of China and Taiwan, so all dramas out of those two countries will be Mandarin. Cantonese is spoken in southern China, mostly Guangdong and Hong Kong, so most Hong Kong dramas and movies use that, though a lot of them are dubbed over in Mandarin for mainland viewers.

Plural

Nov 14, 2013 10:35 pm

In addition to the other responses, Mainland Chinese Mandarin differs a bit from the Taiwan's Mandarin. China - more heavy accent. Taiwan - more pleasant accent. I find the Mandarin from Taiwan more easier to learn, although they add in a few words of their own. In some Mainland Chinese dramas, they are dubbed over the original speakers' voice. The purpose is that since some actors/actresses have more heavy accent, so dubbing it would be easier to listen to for a majority of the population.

Butterfly

Sep 20, 2017 09:47 am

can you give me two examples of movie or drama which can differentiate China's mandarin and Taiwan's mandarin? @Plural

suyi01

Sep 20, 2017 12:43 pm

The mandarin in Taiwan and Mainland China is the same! The only difference is the accent in which they use. Taiwanese mandarin sounds more pleasant and nice sounding.
Also, in taiwan they use traditional chinese characters and mainland chinese use simplified chinese characters when writing.
Cantonese is only spoken in hong kong, guangdong province and macao.

Kate

Sep 28, 2017 03:09 pm

You could watch Prince of Lan Ling. The female lead (Ariel Lin) is taiwanese and if I didn't remember wrongly, she was not dubbed so she had a taiwanese accent while the rest of the characters spoke China's mandarin. (I'm not 100% sure though, someone correct me if I'm wrong. I just had this impression because I remember thinking that Ariel's mandarin was pretty jarring while watching that drama.)

edited

samsoons

Sep 28, 2017 03:18 pm

There's also a recent chinese drama called Nervous, where the male lead is taiwanese and the rest are from the mainland. You can clearly hear how his accent is different from the rest.

Also there's the Beijing/standard mandarin accent, which has the famous 儿 sound (something like "er", 点儿，照片儿 dian'er, zhaopian'er etc etc), which they only have in northern China. In other places in the south, like Shanghai, they speak faster but some people find it easier to understand than the Beijing accent.

jingling

Oct 27, 2017 08:13 am

If you want to learn Mandarin, watch Chinese drama. There will sometimes be Taiwanese Hokkien in Taiwanese drama, and you'll have trouble telling that apart if you're a beginner.