Many people in Taiwan are fluent in both Mandarin and Taiwanese.
Taiwan is an island off the southeastern coast of China with a population of about 23 million. Though the official language of Taiwan is Mandarin Chinese, many Taiwanese speak and regularly use the Taiwanese language. Taiwanese is related to several other languages in the southern province of mainland China. You can find online courses, dictionaries and resources for learning about the Taiwanese language and culture. You can even use websites to find language partners in your community to help you learn Taiwanese.
Instructions
1. Take an online course in Taiwanese. You can find online language courses for instruction in Taiwanese, some of which are free. Look on the website Omniglot for a list of online Taiwanese lessons and language resources. You can also find native speakers online with whom you can practice. Exchanging English instruction for Taiwanese is an economical alternative to paying for a private tutor. Find a language partner on LiveMocha, MyLanguageExchange, or Meetup.
Be clear that you are interested in a language partner who speaks the Taiwanese dialect. Remember that Mandarin is the official language of Taiwan, so emphasize that you are interested in learning Taiwanese and not Mandarin.
2. Practice the tones. Learning the pronunciation of tonal languages can be especially tricky. Tones are the the "rising" and "falling" sound of the voice; (think of the way the voice "rises" at the end of a question in English). In Taiwanese, the tones indicate the actual meaning of the word, rather than the context of the word or mood of the speaker, as in English. The key to mastering tones is repetition; listen to and repeat the tones of Taiwanese words and phrases so you can get used to the pronunciation. Exaggerate the sounds of the tones as you begin your learning process, as this will make the sounds more clear to you.
3. Practice reading and writing. Taiwanese is written using either the Latin alphabet or the Chinese script. If you are not already familiar with the Chinese script, learning with the Latin alphabet will be much easier and less time-consuming. However, you will need to learn the way the letter combinations represent the sounds specifically used in Taiwanese. The website Omniglot features an entry on Taiwanese that shows the letter combinations as they are used to represent sounds in Taiwanese.
Tags: Chinese script, find online, instruction Taiwanese, language partner, language Taiwan, Latin alphabet