This is actually a thing, Taiwanese Mandarin accents are difficult to the point that even Taiwanese people acknowledge it because the other way around with another accent is usually easier to understand
Imagine if the OP sent their son to some other Chinese diaspora and comes back with fluent Wenzhounese and is completely unable to communicate with 99.95% of Mandarin and Cantonese speakers
since southerners including taiwanese don't distinguish s/sh, z/zh, c/ch, and in some cases r/l and f/h, it could be a bit difficult to listen and understand for beginners.
I was thinking about from a learner's perspective. and local people, especially middle age and older, don't talk like people on TV.
but yeah sichuanese or like hubeinese with their weird bendy tones and stuff is way more difficult for me as a non-native than southeastern mandarin, but i found most people in central/western china can code-switch to a kind of standard mandarin as well
This is actually a thing, Taiwanese Mandarin accents are difficult to the point that even Taiwanese people acknowledge it because the other way around with another accent is usually easier to understand
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Imagine if the OP sent their son to some other Chinese diaspora and comes back with fluent Wenzhounese and is completely unable to communicate with 99.95% of Mandarin and Cantonese speakers
"So do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese?"
"Wenzhounese."
"When Joe needs you to do what?"
"No, I speak Wenzhounese. It's the most divergent form of Wu Chinese. 5 million native speakers. Spoken in Zhejiang province."
"...So do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese?"
since southerners including taiwanese don't distinguish s/sh, z/zh, c/ch, and in some cases r/l and f/h, it could be a bit difficult to listen and understand for beginners.
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I was thinking about from a learner's perspective. and local people, especially middle age and older, don't talk like people on TV.
but yeah sichuanese or like hubeinese with their weird bendy tones and stuff is way more difficult for me as a non-native than southeastern mandarin, but i found most people in central/western china can code-switch to a kind of standard mandarin as well