I had a grin today. I was out in Huxian with the village people who tell me they speak Tu-yan - or fangyan - local dialect. They
don't speak putonghua. But ... they can understand my Chinese as can the taxi drivers and most Xi'an locals. And I can almost understand them. So clearly I am getting a very local accent. I was talking about this to the Chinese mate who came with us, and he was saying that despite the accent and the words being so different from standard putonghua that it is pretty unintelligible, it is actually fairly close. (
).
He was saying that he figures my speech is 'Lotus-hua" in that I confuse tones still. But I pointed out to him that when I say a particular tone in standard putonghua my Sichuan mates correct me (forcefully!). His view - do NOT listen to any western Chinese speaker, any southern Chinese speaker. The ONLY Chinese speakers who are half-way right with the tones are northern ones and those only from some provinces, not all!! Of course the other province speakers will tell me not to listen to the provinces he nominates as good speakers!
So it is not just Wade Giles that stuffs things up. It is across the board.
I also noted that the Chinese gov't is worried about the standard of Chinese language teaching across China - they believe that people are less and less able to understand each other. Possibly because only 68% of the new teachers they have hired this year to teach years 1-9 are qualified teachers. This is an 86% increase on previous hirees with qualifications. And their pay is 18,000 per year.