User Comments - hyzhenhok

Posted on: Chinatown Diary

Another issue is that while you can find Mandarin speakers in some US Chinatowns, these are often migrants from Taiwan, and thus they don't don't usually speak very 标准 (biāozhǔn). You'll have the usual zh->z, ch->c and sh->s issue, along with a slew of other Taiwanese peculiarities. To make matters worse, they're often not even aware how non-standard their speech is.

Posted on: Chinatown Diary

It looks like the phonetic translation for San Francisco is 三藩市 (sānfānshì).

Another word for 唐人街 (tángrénjiē) is 中国城 (zhōngguóchéng), which of course is a direct transliteration from "Chinatown." The 唐人街 in Washington, D.C. has 中国城 written in traditional writing on a huge sign above its street.

Note that many American Chinatowns are comprised mostly of Cantonese speakers, not Mandarin speakers, so they may not all be the best place to go to practice your 普通话 (pǔtōnghuà)!