Making news

You may not really believe this, but I made the news in Taiwan. Someone who has been helping me find people for interviews in Tainan (for my dissertation data) called a reporter-friend. The reporter interviewed YT & I for about an hour, though actually it seemed he did most of the talking. The article was in the paper, the 聯合報 (or United Daily News) the next day (Saturday 3/1). It turns out that it was originally intended to be in a local insert for the Tainan city area (longer, and with a photo), but then the editor cut it down to a few inches but pushed it up to island-wide distribution. It's not quite as accurate as I would wish it could be, on a number of levels, but what can you do. The reporter was very nice, and I enjoyed meeting him, and most of all, it's refreshing to feel that others may be interested in what I'm working on as well.

The link (in Chinese) is here, and my quick translation (as requested) is below. Before you ask, Taiwan-guoyu refers to a mixed variety of Mandarin heavily influenced by local dialects, and is traditionally associated with speakers with little education or low social status. Just to be clear, I'm still in the process of examining my data, and I never said that these attitudes have necessarily changed; however most of the people I've interviewed are not quick to admit (if they do at all) that they have low conceptions of speakers of this variety, as they may have in the past. There are other things worth clarifying, but I'll spare you the details. Anyway, if you're interested, here you go.

American [BB] has found that Chinese pronunciation is very interesting, lately he is in Tainan looking for people to interview, he is studying the Taiwan-area standard of Mandarin for his doctoral research; in the process he has found that Taiwan-guoyu is gradually rising, and is influencing standard Mandarin pronunciation.
34-year old [BB] was sent in 1997 by the church to Chongqing and Henan in mainland China for three years to teach English. He studied Mandarin just prior to this, but when he encountered the Sichuan accent he was totally lost, the standard "{bai2}" is pronounced in Sichuan as "{bai4}". [BB]'s doctoral research topic is "Research on the standardization of Mandarin in Taiwan". [BB] said that as local identity is rising, speaking Taiwan-guoyu is no longer shameful, and the Beijing accent of Mandarin is no longer strictly held as the standard.
What is Taiwan-guoyu like? [BB] has finished more than one hundred interviews, but everyone's answer is not completely identical, the most common example given is "wo3" is pronounced as "o3" -- and that is Taiwan-guoyu.

I guess that's it for now. The next quarter starts tomorrow, which means getting up early again for class. Time for bed. BB