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i just keep on wondering about it.. how does Chinese (mandarin) is being spoken and the Taiwanese language, too.. how would you know or figure out if the person talking is a Chinese or a Taiwanese?
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There are a few languages spoken on Taiwan. What you call Mandarin is actually the primary language of Taiwan, enforced by invaders after World War II. Taiwanese is an extremely different language, and is almost completely mutually unintelligible. If you know nothing of either, it is not really possible to tell you how to tell them apart by listening. If you know something of either, then it should be pretty easy to learn to tell them apart. If you are in the capitol city of Taibei, then most likely they are talking Mandarin, which goes by the name of guoyu or zhongwen. If you are in the back country, then it is less likely. There are also various very different forms of another language, Hakka, spoken widely in Taiwan.
Mandarin on Mainland China and Taiwan are virtually the same. Fukien is the original language of Taiwan.
the language is the same, Mandarin Chinese. A fluent speaker would probably be able to pick out the different accents in much the same way you can tell if somebody comes from Texas or California.
Chinese mandarin is spoken both in China and Taiwan. there are however differences in accent, and probably since Taiwan has deviated from China, there are variations in the language. Another important note is the usage of Fookienese Dialect. Most of the chinese who migrated to Taiwan were of that province. So sometimes you might hear Taiwanese speak the dialect, but of course they also know how to speak Mandarin.
on an added note: for me, my impression when i hear mandarin is that its a bit more "formal" compared to hearing fookien. also, even though both use the same structure of written language (except that the characters used in china were revised to make them simple), mandarin (monosyllabic) is almost always spoken 1 syllable per character, while in fookien there might be some 2 characters spoken as one or three syllables. kinda like mixing a weeny bit of japanese to mandarin when you hear fookien.