Mandarin at Home vs in Taiwan: Accents and Hokkien Words

If Mandarin was a language you heard growing up at home, you may have noticed that it does not sound quite like the Mandarin of a textbook or of the evening news. Perhaps a grandparent’s shì came out like sì. Perhaps your parents said 你有看醫生嗎？ where the course teaches 你看醫生了嗎？. Perhaps some of the words you know best are not in the course at all.

None of this is “wrong” Mandarin. It is the Mandarin of Taiwan, as many people speak it, and much of it comes from living alongside Taiwanese Hokkien. This page describes the features you are most likely to have heard, and how they relate to the standard written language. For the differences between Taiwan and mainland Mandarin, see Taiwanese vs Mainland Mandarin; this page is about differences within Taiwan.

One language, a range of speech styles

In Taiwan, Mandarin is usually called 國語 (ㄍㄨㄛˊ ㄩˇ, guóyǔ). It is often described as a range rather than a single fixed thing:

• Standard Guoyu (標準國語) is the variety taught in schools and used in most news broadcasts and official contexts.
• Taiwan Guoyu (臺灣國語, ㄊㄞˊ ㄨㄢ ㄍㄨㄛˊ ㄩˇ, tái wān guó yǔ), at the other end, is everyday Mandarin most influenced by Taiwanese Hokkien, especially common in central and southern Taiwan. Taiwan’s Ministry of Education dictionary defines it as Mandarin with a heavy local accent and local grammar.

Formal settings such as television news lean towards the standard end; everyday conversation can sit anywhere along the range. If the Mandarin you heard at home sat towards the everyday end, it is a real form of Mandarin, and a widely spoken one.

Sounds you may have grown up hearing

In casual speech, two features are common among nearly all Mandarin speakers in Taiwan:

Feature	What happens	Example
zh, ch, sh → z, c, s	The retroflex sounds fall together with their non-retroflex partners	是 (ㄕˋ, shì) can sound like 四 (ㄙˋ, sì)
-ing, -eng → -in, -en	The -ng endings often come out as -n	星 (ㄒㄧㄥ, xīng) can sound like 心 (ㄒㄧㄣ, xīn)

Several further features reflect Hokkien influence and are more typical of the everyday end of the range:

Feature	What happens	Example
f- softens	f comes out closer to a soft h	反 (ㄈㄢˇ, fǎn) can sound like 緩 (ㄏㄨㄢˇ, huǎn)
-eng → -ong after b, p, m, f, w	the vowel is rounded	風 (ㄈㄥ, fēng) as fōng
n- and l- overlap	above all before -n and -ng	男 (ㄋㄢˊ, nán) can sound like 藍 (ㄌㄢˊ, lán)
-n and -ng merge	pairs differing only in the ending can sound alike	真 (ㄓㄣ, zhēn) and 爭 (ㄓㄥ, zhēng)

Mandarin in Taiwan also seldom adds the 兒 (-r) ending heard in Beijing speech.

If this describes the Mandarin you know, your ear is tuned to Taiwan. The only practical catch is spelling: Zhuyin, Pinyin and phone keyboards follow the standard pronunciation, so now and then you will need to look up whether a word takes ㄕ or ㄙ, ㄣ or ㄥ.

Grammar: putting 有 before a verb

One grammatical habit comes straight from Hokkien. To ask whether something has happened, Mandarin in Taiwan often places 有 before the verb:

• 你有看醫生嗎？ (ㄋㄧˇ ㄧㄡˇ ㄎㄢˋ ㄧ ㄕㄥ ˙ㄇㄚ, nǐ yǒu kàn yīshēng ma?) “Did you see a doctor?”
• Textbooks give the pattern 你看醫生了嗎？, with 了 after the verb.

Hokkien uses its own 有 (ū) in the same way, and the pattern carried over into Mandarin. If your family says the first, expect textbooks to show the second.

Words from Hokkien

The Mandarin of Taiwan has taken many words from Taiwanese Hokkien. Some are spoken with Hokkien sounds and some with Mandarin readings; the more familiar a loanword becomes, the likelier it is to be read in Mandarin. Some changed a character along the way. Here are several, with the Mandarin entry from Taiwan’s Ministry of Education Mandarin dictionary and the Hokkien entry from its Taiwanese Hokkien dictionary:

Mandarin	Mandarin reading	Hokkien	Hokkien reading (Tâi-lô)	Meaning
番薯	ㄈㄢ ㄕㄨˇ fānshǔ	番薯	han-tsî / han-tsû	sweet potato
拜拜	ㄅㄞˋ ˙ㄅㄞ bàibai	拜拜	pài-pài	to make offerings to the gods
黑白講	ㄏㄟ ㄅㄞˊ ㄐㄧㄤˇ hēibáijiǎng	烏白講	oo-pe̍h-kóng	to talk nonsense
槓龜	ㄍㄤˋ ㄍㄨㄟ gàngguī	摃龜	kòng-ku	to win nothing on a bet or lottery ticket

黑白講 shows how a loanword can change shape: Hokkien uses 烏 for “black”, and the Mandarin form put the Mandarin word 黑 in its place. 槓龜 travelled even further; the Hokkien dictionary notes that 摃龜 comes from Japanese.

Two further words appear in both of the Ministry’s dictionaries, with meanings that closely match:

• 鬱卒 (ㄩˋ ㄗㄨˊ, yùzú; Hokkien ut-tsut), “gloomy, fed up”.
• 打拚 (ㄉㄚˇ ㄆㄢˋ, dǎpàn), “to work hard”, which the Hokkien dictionary spells 拍拚 (phah-piànn).

Two smaller borrowings you may recognise: the affectionate 阿 placed before a name or kinship word, as in 阿妹 (ㄚ ㄇㄟˋ, āmèi) for a younger sister, and the letter Q for a pleasantly chewy food texture, from the Hokkien word khiū.

Words that are not Mandarin at all

Some words you grew up with may not be Mandarin loanwords at all but simply Hokkien or Hakka, dropped into the middle of a Mandarin sentence. 阿公 (a-kong) and 阿媽 (a-má, also written 阿嬤) for grandparents are one example: both appear in the Ministry of Education’s Hokkien dictionary, and 阿公 is in its Mandarin dictionary as well.

Taiwanese Hokkien (臺語) and Hakka (客家話) are languages in their own right, each with its own sounds, grammar and dictionaries. A Mandarin course will not teach their words, so it is expected that you will not find them there. 台語 vs Mandarin explains how Hokkien and Mandarin meet in Taiwan, and the Taiwanese surname directory gives the Hokkien and Hakka readings of common surnames next to the Mandarin.

What this means for learning to read

Your spoken Mandarin is an asset, not something to unlearn. Two points matter in practice:

• Learn the standard spelling, keep your voice. Reading, typing and dictionaries all go by standard readings. Knowing that 是 and 四 sound alike in your speech tells you exactly which words to look up. You do not need to change the way you speak.
• Expect the page to be more standard than the kitchen table. Schools and most news use Standard Guoyu, so some home words will show up in writing in a different form, as 黑白講 did.

If you are starting to read, How to Learn to Read Chinese When You Already Speak It sets out a route, and the heritage learner route gathers the tools for it.

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Related Reading

• You Speak It. Now Read It: Heritage Learner Route — A reading route for heritage learners, from placement through reading.
• Taiwanese vs Mainland Mandarin: Key Differences — Vocabulary, pronunciation and script on either side of the strait.
• 台語 (Taiwanese Hokkien) vs Mandarin: What to Know — Where Hokkien and Mandarin meet in Taiwan.
• Learning Taiwanese Mandarin, Not Mainland-First — Picking material that teaches the Mandarin of Taiwan.