Mandarin in Sichuan

godd

I think ....

I'm also in Sichuan, precisely in Chengdu, for 6 months now. i never learn the dialect, actually i understand a little bit by getting used to hear it everyday. I think you cannot only learn the Sichuan dialect, you HAVE to learn the Mandarin (in my mind). At work, I use English and Mandarin to communicate and Chinese people do as well.

I speak some sichuanhua. I picked it up from just listening to my ex GF speak to her mom all the time. If you have a good ear, sichuanhua sounds pretty close to mandarin. if you pick up some of the colloquialisms you will impress people and still be able to understand what is going on in a conversation. I found it too hard to learn the languge because many times it seems like only a tonal difference from Mandarin. When I would try to speak it in a sentence I would just revert back to Mandarin. That was only after a few months of not really trying to learn it though. If you put your effort towards it i am sure you could.

I think it depends on your goals and priorities. If you don't ever plan to leave Sichuan and travel / live in other parts of China, then perhaps you dont necessarily have to learn Mandarin, and instead Sichuanhua would do. However, if you see yourself going to other places in China in the future then Mandarin would be your best bet. The great thing about learning standard Mandarin is that everyone can (should be able to) understand you. You just may not be able to understand them. =)

In fact I do speak some Sichuan hua. I have to and it's a fun language I found that some people just dont understand if I use standard pronunciation. (That's probably because my standard Chinese is so bad..). Although I plan to stay here for a long time yet, I still don't think I can get away with just Sichuan hua. I want to work at it and get better at speaking and especially understanding it. When listening to Cpod lessons and learning some of the phrases I often find myself wondering if people use them at all around here. It is not just pronunciation, tones and the occasional phrases that are fairly easy to pick up. They have their very own set of vocabulary choice. That's where it becomes tricky. One of my Taiwanese friends has great problem understanding the locals. And that can't be just because of those slight changes we all are aware of. I actually find that I understand a speech in nice Sichuan hua better than one in Mandarin. Learning Mandarin in Sichuan is like learing German in Switzerland. Everybody understands it, nobody speaks it. Or if they speak it they speak it poorly and reluctantly. Makes us feel like country pumkins...